 | | If you are a very busy person, you might not have time to prepare healthy meals from scratch each day. One solution to this problem is to establish a "cook day" once a week. |
I was reminded of this by SB, who commented on
this post that he now cooks one big meal on Sundays that he divides and eats from all week.
A weekly cooking day is common practice among bodybuilders who are trying to get lean. For example, they will boil a pot-full at a time of chicken breasts which lasts them several days.
Well, we may not all be bodybuilders, but we can take a page from their book when it comes to saving time and losing fat.
Besides chicken breasts, you can prepare whatever healthy meals are appropriate for the diet you are following. The only requirement is to have enough space in your freezer to store a week's worth of meals.
If your freezer space is limited, consider cooking a week's worth of dinners only. That way, when you come home from work during the week, you will already have your dinners prepared and can quickly microwave and eat them.
Here are some tips on how to manage your cook day from Deborah Taylor-Hough, author of the cook book
Frozen Assets:
- Plan your menu
- Write a good shopping list and stick to it
- On cooking day:
- Take frequent breaks
- Wear good shoes
- Chop sitting down
- Chop veggies the day before, or do them first thing
- Do complex meals first, save the easy meals for last
- Make cooking day dinner an easy one: go out, eat something light or give yourself a (healthy) treat.
Cooking once a week greatly increases your efficiency. On a normal day, you get the cooking utensils out, fire up the stove, chop the vegetables, cut the meat, etc. Then, after cooking, you clean the cooking utensils, pots, stovetop, and so on. Then, you repeat this the next day, and the next.
When you cook once a week, you do the prep and clean-up only once. You chop, boil, broil, bake, only one time. You clean it up only once.
It is a bit more intensive to cook all those meals on the same day. But it's a great way to guarantee you have the healthy meals available each day that you need to lose weight.
It may take an hour or two to prepare an entire week's worth of meals. But remember, that will
save you lots of time that you would normally spend cooking during the week.
Not only that, but you will find it easier to avoid binging on unhealhty foods on those nights you don't feel like cooking. The cooking will have already been done!
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