Cooking for Weight Loss

If there is one thing that most people can agree on when it comes to weight loss in Rochester Hills, MI, it is that eating healthy at a restaurant is hard to do. Fast food restaurants and full service dining establishments alike serve up fried foods and load your plate with so much cheese, butter and other fattening ingredients that before you know it you are over your daily calorie count and it isn’t even time for dinner.

If you want to maintain a healthy lifestyle long after your medical weight loss program draws to an end then it is time that you learn healthy cooking strategies. Eating a home-cooked meal every night is more economical than eating out, and since you control what goes into the dish it can turn out to be a whole lot healthier too.

Learning how to cook healthily can help you improve the health of your entire family as you lose weight. And best of all, many healthy cooking strategies taste just as wonderful as if you were dining out. You may even discover that you prefer the taste of eating in!

Here are a few simple strategies to keep in mind as you are learning to cook:

• Plan meals ahead of time. After a long day at work there is nothing more tiring than figuring out what to cook for dinner. At this point your stomach will already be grumbling and the idea of defrosting meat will sound torturous. Plan your meals at least one day ahead of time so you can get home and know exactly what you are making.
• Use herbs and spices to your advantage. Considers these ingredients to be a form of free flavoring. You will likely find that there is absolutely no need for cheese and buttery sauces when you use items like rosemary, thyme, paprika or lemon zest. Herbs and spices have nutritional benefits of their own and are low in calorie content.
• Plan your meals in sections. The easiest way to put together a meal is to think of your plate. Every meal should have vegetables and protein. Mix up the same old choices by rotating veggies or cooking your meat in different spice selections night after night.
• Take turns. Make cooking a family affair. Everyone develops different cooking styles, so you might find that eating lean protein dishes like chicken three nights in a row isn’t so tiring when it is prepared by three different people. This will also limit the burden placed on one cook preparing food every night.

If you are new to healthy cooking, do yourself a favor and invest in a quality cookbook. There are plenty of cookbooks available that focus on healthy ingredients while tailoring tastes to a certain cultural cuisine.