Quick Weight Loss – When You Don’t Have Enough Time To Cook

by Terry Goodman

   I know how it is when  you’re trying to lose weight fast, but you just don’t seem to have enough free time to make it work.  I mean, after all, it’s more important to eat fresh, whole food than processed food, right?  Absolutely.  But you don’t have enough time to prepare and cook all of the good stuff after working and going to the gym and picking the kids up and, and, and… phew, I’m getting overwhelmed just reading this!

   I understand exactly what you’re going through.  You’re pressed for time so, instead of stopping at the grocery store to buy fresh food, you pick up a bunch of canned and frozen stuff.  You’ve been convinced for years and years that canned and frozen foods are the fastest to prepare and they contain real food.  Sure, real food that’s been through hell!  Just take a look at the laundry list of ingredients for even a ten-ounce frozen dinner.  By the time you get through reading all of the chemicals that are in it, you’ll wonder how they found enough room for the food!

   But you’re hungry and tired and ferrous sulfate or thiamine mononitrate doesn’t look so bad at the moment.  So you grab a frozen dinner and you’re on your way.  It is pretty simple to cook a frozen dinner.  Just a few minutes in the microwave and ‘voila’, you have hot chemicals.  Okay, I don’t want to frighten you to death.  In a pinch, and I do mean a real pinch, these things can come in handy.  But more and more grocery stores have a deli section where they’re actually starting to serve healthy alternatives to fried chicken and potato wedges.  Ask the deli clerk if they make the food fresh on the property and if it has any additives.  Hopefully, he or she will know and tell you the truth.  If no additives, it’s better than canned or frozen food any day.

   Stores are also carrying items that used to take a ton of ‘prep’ time.  For example, it could take quite a while to chop up celery, onions and carrots, or mirepoix, but several of the stores I shop at carry freshly chopped vegetables, including the mirepoix mix.  This is a popular mix for soups, stir fry, stews and so on.  It probably will cost you more to buy your vegetables already cleaned and chopped, but in many recipes, this prep work takes eighty percent of the cooking time.

   Another great alternative to fast and junky food is to have your meals delivered.  The initial knee-jerk reaction to that idea for most people is, “Oh, that’s way too expensive.”  This is not true in the least.  Sure, it’s going to cost more to have a restaurant-quality meal delivered to your door daily, but not as much as you think. There are some very good food delivery services that research and prepare dishes based on dieters needs; delivering nutrients, minerals and energy while hanging back on the fat and sugar.  This is all these businesses do, so they can prepare one serving of the same food you would for much, much less! And it gets delivered right to your door every day.

   So, not only are you saving tons of time by not even thinking about what to make for dinner, but you don’t have to shop for it, and your dirty dishes will be at least cut in half.  You don’t have to be rich to have your meals delivered, but being hungry sure helps!