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8th June 2008
Making Healthy Eating Work -
Food Preparation Strategies
By Dr John M Berardi, CSCS
Most people nowadays know at least the basics of
what they should eat and what they should avoid to improve their
health, their body composition, and their performance. Yet most
people are overweight and/or obese.
So what’s the problem? Where’s the disconnect?
Why is it so hard for them to make the change? Well, unless they
really don’t want to change, the two biggest impediments to their
success are:
1.Their habits — or their ingrained set of
day to day food and activity related actions — remain poor
because they don’t have a conscious, logical plan for
changing them.
2.They aren’t ready for the tough times. Things might be
getting better; then the tough times hit. They "get busy".
Eating well becomes inconvenient. No one else supports their
decision to make a change. When these inevitable
circumstances come up, they bail.
Habits are more powerful than momentary desire.
Habits are more powerful than information. Habits are more
powerful than guilt. And only a concerted, conscious effort to
override habits will lead to success.
So, in some respects, better nutrition is more
about altering lifestyle habits and less about the food. Sure,
you’ve gotta know which foods are good to eat and plan to eat
them. But, as GI Joe once said, knowing is half the battle. Even
if you know what’s good and expect to eat good foods, if the good
foods aren’t around when it’s time to eat, you’re doomed. In
other words, preparation is the other half. Here are my top food
preparation strategies to ensure you win the other half of the
battle – the doing part.
Strategy #1 — The Sunday Ritual
No, no, this ritual doesn’t include lamb’s blood or any special
Kool Aid. The Sunday Ritual is performed by setting aside 3 hours
or so every Sunday (any day of the week will do but Sunday is
easiest for most) to write out your menu for the week, shop for
the week, and prepare your meals for the week.
First, on your Ritual day, sit down and come up with your meal
plan for the week. It should only take a few minutes to lay out 7
different breakfast meals, 7 different lunch meals, 7 different
dinner meals, and 2-3 additional snacks for each day.
Next, once the meal plan is laid out, add up
exactly how much of each food you’ll need over the 7 days and go
pick those foods up at the grocery store.
Finally, once you’ve got all those groceries home, it’s time
to start cooking for the week. Some people choose to prepare all
their meals for the week on Sundays (excluding shakes). Others
prefer to figure out which meals will be easy to cook just prior
to meal time and save them for later, preparing only the meals
that will need to be eaten during work hours or during busy times
of the day when food prep becomes difficult.
For example, some people can easily prepare breakfast meals
and dinner meals on demand by setting aside a few minutes each
day for meal preparation. Others have a significant other who can
prepare these meals for them. Either way, these meals can
probably wait until they are needed. However the lunches, 2-3
daytime snacks, and workout shakes usually present a problem for
the unprepared so they should be made in advance. Sunday is a
good time for most to do this preparation.
So, if it suits your lifestyle, use the Sunday ritual to get
these meals ready for the week. Cook all the meat, chop all the
vegetables, measure out all the yogurt and/or cottage cheese, and
distribute all the powders. Have them ready and set aside so that
you can grab them in the morning and bring them with you
regardless of what your day or your boss holds in store for you.
Strategy #2 — The Breakfast Ritual
Rather than preparing all their food for the week on a single
day, some people prefer to do a little food preparation each day.
That’s what the Breakfast Ritual is for.
Using the Breakfast Ritual, simply perform all your cooking
for the day each morning. Since you’ve gotta prepare breakfast
anyway, make sure you’ve got a couple of meals going while
breakfast is being prepared. Again, this need not be a huge
production. I can prepare all my meals for the day with a max
prep time of 30 minutes.
Of course, as with the Sunday ritual, think about what your
day will hold under both the best conditions (i.e. home from work
early and a relaxing evening ahead) and the worst (i.e.
unexpected deadline, all nighter at work, long day at work and
soccer practice for the kids) and act like a boy scout — be
prepared.
One great strategy for being prepared is to bring both the
meals you expect to eat as well as some "back-up" options, just
in case. So, as discussed earlier, even if you expect to grab
lunch at TGI Fridays and have dinner at home, bring with you both
a lunch alternative and a dinner alternative, just in case
something else comes up. If you don’t need the meals, that’s fine
— just eat them another day. But if you do need them, you can
chow down without skipping a meal or choosing a poor alternative.
Here’s another idea for you. If you don’t want to bring
several full meals that you’re unlikely to eat, another great
option is to bring some homemade snacks with you. Things like
homemade protein/energy bars are a fantastic alternative to the
mostly crappy, store bought, sugar laden, artificial ingredient
containin’, protein bars.
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