Convenience vs healthy
 

To lazy. To busy. To tired. Not enough time to cook or prep.

I am ALL of these. How do you get past these.

As time goes by, I realize I eat crap food because it’s easy. Convenient. Just stop by the fast food drive through. Or pick up a feprozen dinner at the store with a bag of chips.

I hate myself for what I do and don’t do. And although the majority of my heath issues are due to a doctors screw up in surgery, I know the rest of them are due to my poor eating habits and weight.

How did y’all get to where it became easier?

It doesn't.

I think that the catalyst is this: Where do you want to be in a year? Still complaining about how lazy you are and at roughly the same weight or do you want to be shed of X number of pounds toward your goal and feel better?

It's really up to you to set your priorities.

What do you fill your day up with that cannot spend 20 minutes or so making something to eat?

I also need convenience. You can still do convenience while minimizing the damage.

Most drive-thrus (other than McD's) will do lettuce wrapped burgers. Order two (or double patties) with a diet coke and skip the fries.

Wendy's also does good chicken salads.

There are a few low-carb frozen dinners available. Get those instead.

Supermarket rotisserie chickens are super-easy.

Any breakfast joint will do steak and eggs with salad all day long.

I also have a convenient regular go-to meal of boxed beef broth, 1 chopped vegetable and 1 chopped protein. Add a little Huy Fung chili sauce for the kick.

Also if you have daytime sleepiness get checked for sleep apnea maybe.

Convenience can be do-able.

Bake up 3 # of chicken at once and eat cold. With mayo or season at time of baking.

Eat cheese.

Eat big boxed salads---one $5 box lasts as long as the chicken.

Rethink what is breakfast or lunch. In my house my kids often eat dinner for breakfast or lunch as the SAD breakfast pretty much disappeared YEARS ago.

Coldcuts and sliced cheese with gourmet mustard is pretty awesome.

Lowcarb yogurt. Ready to eat.

Cottage cheese.

Bulk frozen fruits---take just the number your food allotment allows, to add to salad, or to add to yogurt or cottage cheese.

Many foods are ready to eat like cukes, bell pepeprs, mushrooms....

Just need to rethink your options and embrace the new choices.

WHole foods are ready to eat.

Hi Deb. Easiest answer: stop thinking this WOE has to involve all kinds of prep and complicated recipes. This is one of my #1 pieces of advice to newbies. Do NOT get distracted on the blogosphere with recipes. Stick to to the basics.

In about the same amount of time that it takes to pick up that cheap frozen dinner or drive-through, here are just a few ideas that take about the same amount of time for about the same price:
- a grocery store rotisserie chicken, and that’s good for several meals
- smoked sausages or hot dogs on a clamshell grill
- I don’t know what’s available where you are, but I can grab inexpensive meatballs, skewers, burgers, fish, marinated pork chops, etc which don’t take much more time on the clamshell or a fry pan
- If you don’t think you have time to cook eggs, you can probably buy them hard-cooked
- cold cuts, some cheese and pickles
- canned tuna, salmon, chicken, or ham. Mix with mayo.

For veggies:
- Frozen bagged, throw them in a casserole dish with some butter in the microwave.
- Bagged salad and a bottle of dressing.
- An avocado with some salsa or dressing
- Raw veggies - there are lots that are pre-cut at a decent price. Grab some dressing or dip.

I work an exhausting job, so I get it. For much of the year, I don’t even get home until 7:00 pm. A hunk of meat plus a side veggie does not have to take me more than 15 min and makes minimal mess.

Another important part of this to plan ahead, and keep lots of leftovers around. I keep notes on a white board on my fridge to remind me what’s there, what’s going to expire, etc. If anything, I usually have too much food to be used up.

My advice will probably not be welcome. Just let it slide in one ear and out the other, if so. :lol:

I get it. Life is busy. When I was young, I felt the same so I did cooking on my days off so that all I had to do was warm it up throughout the week. But I also had a flaw in my thinking: "This is a diet and after I lose the weight, I'll go back to eating the way everybody else does." So even though I've known about and followed LCHF eating since 1972, I became a long-term yo-yo dieter. I even tried every other diet on the planet so that I wouldn't have to give up carbs.

When I got older, I "suddenly" realized I couldn't do that to my body any more if I wanted to be healthy and not have to ride a scooter in the grocery store.

It's about priorities. How important is your health? It's about choice.

I, too, find preparing ahead of time vital.

Things I like to prepare and have on hand. Good, right out of the fridge:

Pressure-cooked roast beef
Veal burgers
Hard-boiled eggs

I also make yoghurt, and sometimes mascarpone cheese.

Staple foods:
Kerrygold butter
Heavy cream
Half 'n' half
Eggs

Frozen and canned vegs
Frozen berries

Canned fish: tuna, salmon, sardines, mackerel
Canned chicken

I keep ground veal in the freezer. Easy to throw into the skillet w/ butter, salt, pepper, and a bit of onion powder/granules. I cook one pound, put that into two jars. Keep one in the fridge and one in the freezer.

Canned salmon is good in a salad, or with marinated vegs. Or for salmon patties.

I like eggs, esp. yolks, and enjoy how quick and easy they are to cook.

If your food plan includes cheese and nuts, that adds variety.

Coconut butter is popular.

I use whole leaf stevia extract, and make gelatin creams, rennet custards, and gelatins.

Gelatin can be made with almost anything. Tea or coffee, with or without cream.

Having gelatin on hand for a filler is nice, esp. if you are recovering from going off plan.

Beef or chicken broth, esp. bone broth is very satisfying and balancing. I find it helps take away that odd feeling of "wanting something, but what?"

I like marinated vegs at the end of a meal. To me, the vinegar is refreshing and helps take away the desire for eating more, or for eating sweets.

I also find I have to make myself drink water, as it is easy to mistake thirst for hunger. Often, after a glass of water, I realize I was thirsty, not hungry.

As for mind-set, or frame of reference, I agree with the others who have said that we just have to decide we are going to live this way.

Thanks for the very useful thread topic. It always helps me to state again to myself, yes, this is how I live, because I want:

to feel well,
to respect my choices,
to like myself,
to be able to move easily,
to have less pain,
and to look nice, not "dumpy".

I have had seasons of LC being very easy, for years, and some rough patches, too.

For me, reading and understanding more and more of how metabolism works, what helps it, what hinders or disrupts it, makes me want to stay on my food plan.

I like not having to worry about what some food is going to do to me, after I've eaten it.

:)

As hard as it may be to hear, I think this is what I think it ultimately comes down to.

I used to think I was too busy to learn how to navigate a kitchen. Too much time spent doing other things that I simply felt more inclined to want to do. Then one day my circumstances changed in such a way that I couldn't do one of those things anymore that I used to place great value in doing. Then I realised that my sadness at having this thing taken away from me would be mitigated by suddenly having more "free time", time that I could in turn re-allocate to the kitchen.

I'm no expert in that department by any means, but I've learned enough to get by. The things I make contain only a few ingredients each; 5 for example I can manage, but 17 like I see in some cookbooks is getting a bit silly. And while they take time to make at night, it doesn't require my exclusive attention. I don't need to spend an entire hour in front of the news on TV every night, when I can have it on in the background and pick up on just the interesting items as I hear them while cooking.

If you have a dishwasher, you're better than me on that front. My apartment doesn't have one, so that's probably the worst thing about cooking for myself in my experience. But even then when I think about it from a more objective cost-benefit-analysis perspective, I find that a few dishes every couple of nights a week is worth the gains in health that I can enjoy for myself, all day, every day, for the rest of my life.

You've already had good food advice, so adding here a form to take those goals under your signature and keep them in a place you can re-read when you feel too tired. Short article on Why Know your Why is powerful...
https://cookingketowithkristie.com/...1-know-your-why

Kristie does have simple recipes, but if even those are too much trouble, people can be successful with fast food if carbs are kept below 20g, e.g. Double cheeseburgers, mustard only, no bun. I like the Keto Plates on DietDoctor, basically compose plates of purchased proteins and vegetables. https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb...arch=&st=recipe You can get around the time constraints if your goals come first.

There are great food choices out there.
Read lables, Watch those bad carbs[We all know what they are.As we age.We start to look at it more and know what we have done in pass. If we want to change We will.Even if and when we slip. Just get back on track.
Our bodies are a gift and so is health. Find a buddy to talk too.Age is a wonderful thing. and if we change our health and feed those cells right foods to help our bodies.
Each day say you are doing it and head down that road to health and life.
Janet
I also detox{saunas and steam room.
Move that body also.
{'I'm having a hard time loseing also. But 'I'm going to get it moving down again.
when you start likling what you see and how you feel {You will keep at it.

Mark's Daily Apple today focuses on ways to keep on track. Whatever your plan, many of these ideas could be helpful. Just substitute your own plan name for "primal" in the article.

https://www.marksdailyapple.com/10-...estyle-changes/

One step at a time.

:)

The thing about convenience food, though... today I had a pork chop for dinner, right now I'm zero plant, so that and some heavy cream and butter was the meal.

Pan, flip once. Cooked in what? 8 minutes? At any rate, I was online, didn't notice the time. If I was eating plants, I'd microwave some frozen veggies and then quick fry them in the fat left from the pork chop. Hard work? Hardly. But given a similar amount of effort--it will seem like less effort if the food is more tempting. Mice and rats work harder for oreos than for plain chow, I'm pretty much the same.

It is amazing how slight increases in convenience can affect me, though. Cooked patties in the fridge, I'm snacking. Frozen in the freezer, I might find I'm not hungry after all, even though the work/delay involved is minimal.