Contents
Do I have to cook for myself and my family when I am slimming?
If you already know a bit, you know that we are far from recommending restrictive miracle diets, assuming the resignation of whole groups, often healthy, food products, we also advise against draconian restrictions on the size of meals. What we encourage you to do is a balanced diet: a diet that provides all the necessary nutrients in the right amount.
In one word, we offer you a healthy diet.
One that will provide you with everything your body needs… and your family members 🙂 And this probably answers the question of whether you need to eat meals other than your family members: you don’t have to! However, you may have to make sure that your diet meets the tastes of other household members, but there are ways to do it – we will suggest some of them later in the article 🙂
# stay at home – inconvenience… or facilitation?
The coronavirus has turned our lives upside down for many of us. Troubles with weight loss are the lesser of the problems he brought with him, but they are also worth taking care of.
Less frequent visits to the store (and sometimes also shortages on the shelves in supermarkets) is certainly less availability of ingredients from which you can prepare meals. However, instead of changing your plans and making a completely different dish, you can only replace products that are not on the shelf or are not available in the store. This can be done, and to make it easier for you, we have prepared a list of substitutes for individual products, taking into account their nutritional values. (If you already use diets, possible substitutes for individual products can also be found in our recipes.)
# Staying at home can be a relief to some extent: perhaps you have more time to yourself, and experiments in the kitchen prove to be a great way to kill boredom. Not only yours: you can use the extra time to culinary training for the rest of your family. After all, no one said that cooking is your only responsibility, right? 🙂
Common table challenges
Certainly, the challenges will, of course, remain, especially if your family’s meals have been far from the healthy ideal so far. Persuading kids to give up fries in favor of porridge, or to diversify the monotony of potatoes (a must-see in Polish cuisine!) With rice or whole grain pasta, may not be so easy. Husband grimacing at the excess of “grass” on the plate is also not uncommon if he is a declared carnivore.
But there is a way for everything! Below are some of our ideas – you can use one of them or combine them creatively 🙂
1. The easiest way is to go on compromise. If, for example, your husband likes to eat a lot of meat, there is nothing to prevent him from getting more, even at the expense of salad. If kids like fries, they can get them instead of potatoes or rice: it’s just one of the ingredients for your dinner and just a little extra work (not necessarily yours ;-)), not having to prepare completely different dishes. But remember that this compromise means your family is eating less healthy than you – and we don’t want that. So treat it as a transitional stage rather than a final solution. (Especially the fries! Yes, they’re tasty, but they’re also really unhealthy!)
2. Plan your meals together. Agree, preferably the day before (or even earlier!) What you will eat for the next day. This, too, may require some compromise. However, if you make it clear first that you only prepare healthy meals, it will not be a compromise between unhealthy and healthy eating, but only a compromise between different culinary tastes. And that can be surprisingly easy: if you are following the diet, the food swap function can be a huge help, so you can replace the entire meal with another with similar nutritional value.
3. Each of you can have “your day”, that is, each of you, in turn, will be able to propose a menu for the next day. Here, however, you will have to introduce some restrictions again, so that it does not turn out that on “Children’s Day” you only eat burgers with fries, and on “Father’s Day” – pork chop with knuckle 😉
Although you can also find burgers (no fries, no potato fries) in’s diets. Of course, healthy, unlike those we know from the fast food chain.
| However, you do not have to stick very tightly to healthy food only. After all, what would life be without – for example – pizza? From time to time, you can safely indulge in some culinary debauchery. If it is every two weeks or once a month, it will not really harm your figure or your health in any way. Many people believe that such a cheat meal (as it is called a “controlled”, not very dietary meal) can help maintain dietary restrictions. However, it is important that it is planned in advance and it happens quite rarely. And he was as healthy as possible – although the pizza cannot be disarmed so that it is not a caloric bomb, you can at least add healthy additives to it. And nobody tells you to eat the whole pizza 😉 2 standard pizzas are enough for 3, maybe even 4 people 🙂 |
4. Involve the family in the kitchen! You will see that your unruly bunch will be much more likely to eat whatever lands on their plates if they put some effort into preparing their meals first. With a bit of luck, kids will find cooking is a lot of fun, and husbands will find it a lot of fun! The recipes that you will get from us, if you buy the Tasty Tailored diet, are really simple, so even beginners in the kitchen art will be able to cope with them 🙂
5. Organize a vote for the Best Dish of the Week. And if you manage to involve your family in preparing meals, you can also successfully organize a competition for Best Chef of the Week 😉 Who knows, maybe the competitive spirit will lift your meals to a whole new level and ignite real passions in your family?
Same meals, different number of calories
However, preparing the same, healthy dishes for everyone is only part of the success. Unlike the rest of the household, there is one more task ahead of you: working out a caloric deficit. Exercise will help you in part, but it will certainly not solve the whole problem: you will need to eat far fewer calories than your partner, perhaps even less than your children.
The simplest solution is of course appropriately smaller portions for you, but you should also think about a few other ways:
- You can skip certain meals; of course, it is not about giving up, for example, lunch (remember that too fast weight loss is basically a guarantee of the yo-yo effect), but you can easily replace a fuller tea with an apple or … a quarter of an hour of exercise 😉
- Eat the same products as the rest of the family, only … “lighter”. What this is about? For example, when preparing chicken, choose a lean breast rather than a fatter thigh; You can eat salads without any fatty sauces, eggs without mayonnaise, potatoes without butter, and so on.
- Be careful about trying your meals while cooking. Especially if you are preparing an exceptionally tasty dish, the constant tasting can turn into uncontrolled snacking and turn out to be quite a large injection of calories. So only try when you really need to and really minimal portions. You can also always ask your husband for help! 😉
- Do not eat meals after the children. Sure, food shouldn’t be wasted, but maybe there’s a better way to do that than eating after the kids? If it happens on a regular basis, it could simply mean that children are getting too big.
Of course, the diets at least partially solve these problems for you – meals are based on healthy, low-calorie products, which you do not need to “lose weight”.
Get rid of unhealthy habits: your own and your family
Regular meals, however, are not all we eat. A large proportion of calories (and in addition to the “empty” ones) can be sweet drinks or all kinds of snacks: sweets, bars, chips, popcorn, often bought for or by children.
In some ways, the current situation makes it easier to get rid of such snacks from life: if you do not buy them, the next opportunity will come to you when you visit the store again in a few days. You will find out for yourself that if you strategically “forget” to buy such sweets several times, you will eventually stop missing them.
However, in order not to leave the family without their favorite flavors, make an offer healthy counterparts of unhealthy foods and snacks: carrot or parsley fries – from the oven, not from deep oil; instead of red meat – poultry, fish or legumes, or kale “chips”. Who knows, maybe one of these healthy alternatives will become a family hit and the kids (or husband) will never look at fries, chips or popcorn with such a favorable eye again?
Finally, avoid “ready-made” dishes – whole dishes or individual ingredients. They are usually more caloric than their home-made counterparts. Why? Because manufacturers add a lot of fat or sugar to improve the taste. It’s better not to mention fillers, preservatives or flavor enhancers …
As you can see, there are a lot of ways – maybe you even know better ones yourself? If so, be sure to share them in the comments! In the meantime, let’s get to work! A healthy and balanced diet is not only your ally in the fight for a slim figure, but also a necessary condition for the health of your entire family. Therefore, it is worth taking care to implement it as soon as possible.
If it goes really well, not only will you be slim, but your whole family will be healthier and may even replace you in the kitchen to a large extent. Maybe it will even come to the point that you will be eagerly awaiting “your day in the kitchen”? 😉