By Pete Cataldo
Preparing your own food is one of the best skills you can learn while trying to lose weight. Here’s how to start cooking healthy meals.
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This isn’t a post about becoming a foodie and adopting a love of all things brussels sprouts and learning how to sous vide a pig.
But instead, one of the best things you can do for yourself to ensure your weight loss journey is a success is to be willing to prep the majority of your meals at home.
As I’ve pointed out numerous times, restaurant meals are loaded with calories.
I’m not saying you should never eat out again; in fact I have an entire article dedicated to navigating restaurant meals while on a diet.
However, the bulk of your eating should come from food that is inside your own kitchen that you’ve been preparing yourself.
But, what if you have no knowledge of how to cook? Or perhaps you know how to mix it up in the kitchen but lack the knowledge to prep some foods that are mostly healthy?
Well, you’ve got to start somewhere.
It’s time you embraced the full #Adulting culture to learn how to make lower-calorie meals for you and your family.
In this article, we’re going to go over a few things you need to learn in order to finally start cooking healthy meals at home to help bolster your calorie deficit and fat loss journey.
Let’s get into it.
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Embrace the world of cooking as though you are creating
You don’t have to be a Jedi Master on the level of Yoda to have an appreciation for cooking up culinary excellence every single day.
But you should at least have a baseline knowledge of how things work and how to make up dishes to serve a variety of diners: whether you’re eating alone, enjoying a romantic meal with your partner, or creating a feast for the whole family.
Let’s chat about the reasons why you should learn how to create sustenance for you family:
Save some money
Dining out and eating fast food is expensive. While the occasional splurge is totally fine and even encouraged, relying on another chef (gourmet or fry chef) to make your meals is a drain on your wallet.
Mark Bittman of The New York Times took to a fast food establishment to buy a dinner for four and compared that to a home-cooked meal prepared from his local grocery store (in Brooklyn, no less).
The McDonald’s meals were $14 more than his home-cooked fare of chicken, potatoes and a salad. Add that up over a few nights a week and you can see a massive detriment to the budget.
With a more dedicated approach to building a fat loss meal plan and then executing with your more targeted grocery store list for optimizing that fat loss meal plan, you’ll be in much better shape going forward.
Related: Here are my tips for eating healthy on a budget.
Home cooking is healthier
To fully embrace the job as a role model dad for your kids means to be engaged in healthful lifestyles.
In the battle between dining out and home cooked meals, the cooking variety remains undefeated for keeping you in tip top condition.
At home, you control the ingredients and portion sizes.
In the restaurant setting, it’s up to the chef to keep you coming back. Bland foods that are lower in calories won’t get the job done.
When you eat out, you can expect any given recipe to include at least one to two tablespoons more of butter or oil and almost twice as much salt and sodium as you’d expect at home.
Salts and fats make even boring foods taste more awesome. So keep that in mind.
Start cooking healthy by having a quality game plan
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers didn’t win Super Bowl LV by slapping together a few plays and seeing if they worked.
It took a solid game plan, practice and execution to put it all together to beat the Chiefs.
Your graduation from kitchen noob to culinary expert starts before you even turn on the burner. It begins with the preparation for the grocery store.
Set aside time each week to get an idea of the next seven days worth of eating. Plan out any or even all of your meals and determine what you’ll need from the store to make it happen.
Take some pressure off of your partner
If your family basically doesn’t eat unless your wife makes the food, then you are failing the idea of “partnership.”
A dependence on your partner as the sole provider of meals for the clan is just unacceptable. It’s always nice to take a vacation.
And it’s up to you to step up to the task of allowing your partner to do just that every once in a while.
This is that blunt smack to the face for any dudes reading right now.
It’s now more manly than ever to get behind the idea of creating in the kitchen. And that’s exactly how you should approach this task.
For some reason, there was a toxic culture of dumbassness that declared men should be strangers to the areas of culinary excellence and it was their female counterparts that should be confined to the quarters of the enclosed spaces of stoves, ovens and appliances.
It was the man’s job to bring home the bacon and the women’s job to cook it up.
Thank god we’ve discovered that the misogynistic assholes who encouraged this culture for years have lost the battle.
Being a badass with the grill is a skill and deserves props. But, it’s not enough.
What happens when the dead of winter means blizzards and snowed-in families looking to dad to create something up? Don’t be that dude who’s stuck looking at a package of microwavable processed crap.
Step the game up to start cooking healthy.
And let’s make it as easy as possible to get started.
Google is your friend: Don’t make it harder on yourself than it has to be
The key to start cooking healthy meals (or any quality food, to be honest) is to find a few dishes that you are comfortable making and then master them.
Enjoy making scrambled eggs? Cool.
Make the best damn scrambled eggs in town and know how to add the best seasoning and spices to turn simple breakfast into a brunch-worthy classic.
Consider chicken to be a palette for creation.
A roasted chicken with some lemon and some thyme, spatchcocked, tossed with olive oil and thrown in a roasting pan with red potatoes is a dinner for an entire family in about 90 minutes of time.
It all starts with the ability to read.
Congratulations. If you can read this article telling you about the importance of learning how to cook … you can absolutely learn how to start cooking healthy meals.
The work has already been done for you by millions of other wannabe Bobby Flays.
They’ve all created billions of recipes, and take on the recipes, and take on the takes of the recipes.
All you have to do is log on to the web, find something you like and execute.
Here are a few good resources for places to learn some easy to prep recipes that are easy to prepare (many of the options on these sites are healthier in nature, but still pack a flavorful punch):
Additional keys to victory
Start small. No need in trying to conquer veal shank osso buco over saffron risotto if you have a hard time cooking pasta in boiling water to a perfect al dente.
Stick to a few recipes and learn them inside and out.
Eventually, you get so comfortable in the kitchen with your handful of go-to meals that you won’t even need the instructions.
This is when the magic happens and you get to a Jedi Master level of awareness when you can play around with the ingredients to find even crazier takes on these dishes.
Then you can start playing around with spices.
Adding some balsamic vinegar, squirting a pinch of lemon over a finished product or even adding the occasional exotic fruit or vegetable in place of the stapes can really take a dish to the next level.
Once you’ve reached a level of comfort with your easy to prep meals, graduate to some more complex dishes for special occasions, like a romantic evening with your baby mama, or for when you’re entertaining guests.
The same rule applies in terms of repetition.
Make a culinary complex meal several times to get familiar with it before trotting out your veal shanks in front of company.
Just like learning the intricacies of the perfect jump shot in basketball, it takes practice.
Additional tips:
- Whenever possible, buy in bulk to save on the ingredients you’ll need on a weekly basis.
- Take a day to cook several meals for the week that can be packed for lunches or reheated for dinners.
- OR look for larger meals that can create all kinds of leftover options. Roasting a full chicken on Sunday can lead to multiple meals like chicken soup, sandwiches or just pulled chicken over leafy greens for a protein-added punch to your lunch salad.
Staying on the healthier course
One of the biggest and most successful keys to pulling off a consistently healthy and incredibly tasty meal is to stick with some basic cuisines and mind the big four factors of your dish: Proteins, Carbs, Vegetables and Fats.
Every time you dine, if you focus on a decent inclusion for all of these pillars, you are doing a great job.
When shopping, keep in mind that fresh foods like fruits and vegetables win the day. Look to leaner cuts of meat for the protein sources.
In simple sound byte form: Avoid most foods that are packaged in a bag or a box.
In other words, don’t eat pre-produced meals and sides.
A way to really kick this into another gear of mindful and healthful eating would be to stick to slimmer options for the majority of your dining.
Think close to 80-percent of all your meals being focused on lean proteins and lots of vegetables with a good dose of starchy carbs and some fats.
Many restaurants, even the ones that claim to be healthier options, load up their dishes with all kinds of oils and butters to amplify the taste.
This is usually why the recipes you try to recreate never quite live up to the restaurant versions.
But, this small sacrifice in taste can lead to major improvements in health.
And that’s why it is so crucial to learn how to start cooking healthy foods on your own. In time, you’ll know how to substitute excess oil for better spices or pan juices to increase flavor profile.
In turn, this will help reduce the bottomline on your waistline.
Here are a few more tips to get the tastiest bang for your lower calorie buck:
Skip the sauces
They are loaded with excess crap and processed ingredients. Usually this means tons of sodium and sugars that you don’t need.
Instead, get more comfortable learning how to develop natural sauces from pan drippings or by utilizing lower calorie ingredients to develop sauces with things like chicken stocks.
Aim for better condiments
Mayo is loaded with calories and doesn’t add much to the nutrient profile. Instead, opt for things like greek yogurt or smearing some avocado instead.
With the yogurt, you’ll cut down on calories while adding a little bit of protein.
When you go with avocado, you’re adding extra healthy fats.
Watch your oils and butters
There’s nothing wrong with using a little nonstick cooking spray from time to time to cut back on the calories from oils and butters.
But, if you truly want that natural flavor, no worries. Just learn to scale back the oils and butters to keep the calories low.
Remember, those calories still count. And the calories from fats like that can lead to quite the calorie creep.
Make your own dressing
Every single day, I eat what is commonly called a BAS: a Big Ass Salad.
It’s got tons of greens, some roasted vegetables, a healthy dose of proteins, healthy fats (like avocado or mixed nuts) and other random things that I toss in the bowl.
It’s usually about 3-4 servings of vegetables in one meal and leaves me full for hours.
But the dressing is where so many people go wrong. Those things can be loaded with empty calories that carry next to nothing in terms of nutrients.
I opt to keep it light with my go to:
- 1.5 TB Balsamic vinegar
- 1 TB Greek yogurt
- Splash of lemon juice
- Hit of Sriracha sauce
Boom.
If I need a little more fats in my meal, I’ll sometimes add a little olive oil. But, usually, I have that covered with the avocado. When mixed into my salad with the yogurt, it’s a nice creamy addition to my BAS.
You can also start working in some new options slowly into your rotation utilizing one of my favorite methods.
My 3 x 3 Method for building your own weight loss meal plan
You’ll start by picking three Proteins … three Carbs … and three Veggies to provide the foundation of your meals.
Here are a few examples:
- Salmon -> Broccoli -> Couscous
- Chicken -> Kale -> Brown Rice
- Eggs -> Zucchini -> Oatmeal
Once you get really good at these three options, get creative and mix ’em up a bit.
Then eventually add some more foods to your repertoire and you’ll have your own fat loss cookbook in no time.
The options are almost endless.
Be sure to tackle your cravings on this list, too. Opt for snack choices that provide more bang for your fat loss buck.
Fruit and greek yogurt are perfect.
Sure, you can have some fun snack foods, but try to keep most of those trigger foods to a minimum.
And if you are cooking the majority of your meals, always have some extra help on hand in the form of lower calorie condiments (like hot sauce, non-fat spray, etc.).
Building your list this way ensures protein is playing a large role in your diet, along with nutrients from veggies and tons of fiber.
It’s the perfect way to accompany a solid fat loss program.
Take Action Today and Get in the Kitchen
Being a noob in the kitchen can be an intimidating experience. Especially if you’ve been relying on baby mama to be the MVP of the meal prep.
Start small.
Find a few go-to recipes.
Practice like your getting ready for the Super Bowl.
And you’ll be ready for the primetime slot of family dinner creation in no time.
Let me help you figure how to start cooking healthy meals …
Finding the right time and right workout plan can be incredibly overwhelming. But, I’m here to help you out.
If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “How to start cooking healthy meals” and I’ll answer any questions you have about cooking better.
Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
If you enjoyed this post, maybe you’d like more knowledge bombs from me. I’d be honored if you join my mailing list to get regular updates every time I post something pretty dope.