Downsides of healthy dinners to lose weight

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I’m sure that any cookbook is a weight reduction book. Because I firmly believe that cooking for yourself at home is the greatest method to slim down. I understand this axiom is not entirely exact (hey, Paula Deen!), but it includes lots of truth. Another reason I like to issue this guidance is that I’ve found weight loss and home cooking targets evaporate in the face of recipes that are engineered to be low-cal, low-fat, and low-sodium. Those healthy dinners to lose weight may also be very low-flavor. No matter how “great” the nutrition facts of a dish are, it does not help your health or your weight loss efforts if you do not eat it. Or if you are noshing an hour afterwards because dinner did not satisfy you.

Making substitutions for healthy dinners to lose weight

There are some good, health-conscious food magazines out there – Eating Well and Cooking Light come to mind. I subscribe to and sometimes cook from these magazines. But I am constantly making substitutions. Whole milk for 1%. Sour cream for fat free sour cream. Coconut milk for light coconut milk. 85% lean ground beef for 90%. I am also typically doubling the quantity of olive oil or butter called for.
Why? Healthy dinner recipes to lose weight can take matters too far. Sure, they shave off several calories or grams of fat, but at what price? It is done at the expense of flavor and the joy of a wonderful, home cooked meal. When you cook something that turns out just OK, that is lean and wan, that doesn’t wow you, you are simply not going to go to the trouble of making it again.

That is why I always suggest that individuals who are attempting to lose weight seek recipes outside from non-diety sources like Epicurious; or food magazines that focus on tasty food and solid cooking techniques like Fine Cooking; or, my personal favorite, Cook’s Illustrated.

Use your common sense

When you go to these sources for recipes while working hard to lose weight it is accurate you should use your common sense. If a recipe calls for a stick of butter, two cups of cream, or a pound of bacon, maybe you should save it for a special occasion. But a large proportion of recipes from trustworthy sources are not like that.

And even when a recipe that appeals to you is quite rich, constraining portion size and serving it with a big salad or platter of roasted vegetables, it can and should fit in to your weight loss plan. I have been eating a bacon-laced pork-and-steak meatloaf weekly while losing weight and it hasn’t hindered my progress; a little piece with a great salad is a satiating pleasure I savor.

Don’t look for healthy recipes

If you are selecting recipes, do not make “healthy dinners to lose weight” your top criteria. Pick the dishes that appeal to your own tastes. Choose the ones that sing to you. The ones that make you excited to both get into the kitchen and make them and then, just as importantly, to eat them. And hopefully make them again.

The reward for cooking at home must be fantastic food you love if you’re to do it consistently. And it is clear you should. Recent research from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins found that those who regularly cook at home eat fewer calories and enjoy better health.

That is cooking at home, period, not cooking healthy meals to lose weight at home.