SUMMARY AND TAKEAWAYS:
- Healthy cooking is not just about the recipes, it’s about the process and attitude as well.
- Food either supports health or it supports disease.
- You can’t be or perform at your best when you are not in optimal health.
- Value your life and you will value food and cooking.
- And 12 other tips.
- Food either supports health or it supports disease.
- You can’t be or perform at your best when you are not in optimal health.
- Value your life and you will value food and cooking.
- And 12 other tips.
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Healthy cooking doesn’t have to be difficult, dreadful or time consuming. Though to reach the point that you actually like or appreciate cooking does take some time practicing and, above all, it requires a change of mindset, which is actually necessary for successful improvement of any lifestyle. Change doesn’t guarantee improvement, but any improvement requires change, and any lasting improvement requires a change of mindset. Healthy cooking is not just about the recipes, it’s about the process and attitude as well. It is moreover not only about what you eat, it is also about why, how and when you eat.
In the past, I hated cooking because I thought it was not worth my time. That was also the time that I did not truly value my health. That was also the time when I ate overly-processed foods, ready-made-meals-for-in-the-microwave-with-too-much-sugar-and-salt-and-chemical-conservatives, and a lot of sugar, wheat products and meat and regularly other junk food (pizza, kebab, hamburgers with fries, etc.) that gives you pain on the chest or stomach problems. And if I prepared something with fresh vegetables, it would always be the same thing like pasta or rice, with non-organic products. Not much diversity. It’s very common nowadays, especially among students. Perhaps you recognize yourself in this as well?
So it is no wonder that I got sicker and sicker. Of course, there were many other reasons, including infections. However, now I understand that it is true that what you eat defines what your body becomes. At that time I didn’t realise yet that food either supports health or it supports disease.
Sugar, overconsumption of carbohydrates and meat, and overly-processed food and junk food all support inflammation and an acidic environment in your body and, hence, disease. Another term we can use for this is “fake foods”. With all the chemical flavours and preservatives used nowadays in the food industry, they could probably even engineer dog poo to taste like a chocolate cake! On the contrary, organic, whole/fresh foods like vegetables, fruits and nuts, with moderate amounts of animal products and healthy fats support health.
And now that I honestly do value my health, I also value my food and way of eating, and I no longer hate cooking because I know it is time well spend. It is an essential part of life in order to be able to perform and be at your best. Of course, sometimes I feel too tired to cook extensively, so I make something quick but still healthy.
Talking about healthy, there are many healthy herbs and spices you can add to your food that improve the flavour, and it doesn’t cost time to ‘randomly’ pick some jars and throw some stuff into your food. In the past, using herbs and spices other than salt and pepper, I considered advanced cooking, thinking you probably would need to be a chef cook or at least years of experience. Turns out that was a wrong assumption. Nowadays, I am at the level where I just randomly make my own recipes with whatever herbs or spices I think will be suitable. As a matter of fact, if you are eating ready-made processed foods, like I used to do, you can’t possibly be that picky about taste anyway. Then it also doesn’t really matter what herbs and spices you throw into your foods. It will still taste better than the processed stuff. To learn how to cook and use herbs and spices, there are plenty of recipes online to get started. I will share some of my favourite easy ones later in another post.
But first, here are several tips that I consider important for appreciating and learning to cook:
1. Value your health
Are you really? This tip is in case you are not yet that far (like my younger me): prioritise your health! Most people when asked if they value their health of course will say they do, however, subconsciously they don’t because it doesn’t show in their actions. Prioritising is not really the right word, because that means you allow other values to be compromised. You actually have to put all your most important values in the “urgent AND important” quadrant of the so-called Eisenhower Matrix, and find solutions that allow all values to be satisfied and do not compromise either one of them. That’s not always easy and it generally means more creative thinking and coming up with more difficult solutions. However, if you are like my former self, you might take your health for granted (as most people actually do; you don't know what you got until you lose it) and it is subconsciously placed in the “not important, not urgent” quadrant. You might think your study or career is the most important thing right now, but you can’t sustain a career when you are sick. You can’t perform or be at your best when you are not in optimal health. I learned this common-sense wisdom the hard way. You don’t live to work, you work to live.
So start living by valuing your life and health (and that of others) and give it both importance and urgency. Doing that will also give you the purpose why you spend time on cooking, and it will reduce the perception of dreadfulness and waste of time, because you will save time when you are able to perform at a higher level when you are in optimal health. However, if you value comfort, convenience and luxury more than your health, it becomes too easy to choose ready-made junk food over cooking healthy food. Of course, you can also satisfy both health and comfort by selecting healthy and fast recipes. You don’t need to be a master chef for that, just allow yourself some time looking up recipes and save them for later.
There is another argument to value your health, and particularly your eating habits. In his book “Game Changers”, Dave Asprey writes that more than 75% of the interviewed high-performance individuals said that their diet was the most crucial factor behind their performance levels and success (and I bet the other 25% also took it seriously). So if you value success and high performance, you are better off when you also put ‘healthy eating’ in the “urgent AND important” quadrant.
2. Change your mindset
Now, you might say that you already do value your health, so #1 isn’t valid for you, because the real problem is that you just can’t find the time. Keep kidding yourself. First of all, saying 'you don’t have time' is just another way of saying you don’t want to put in the effort and you have put health in the “important, but not urgent” quadrant. So you subconsciously do not truly value your health as much as you say you do. If you would, you will make the time no matter what.
Secondly, “I can’t” is a self-limiting false belief and a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you think something can’t be done, you subconsciously won’t put in as much effort as when you think it can be done. When you believe something is possible or you can do something, you will automatically put in much more effort and eventually you will succeed when you also are able to cope with the many failures on the way. There will be many people in a similar situation as you who at first also might have thought it can’t be done, but who have eventually managed because there is always another solution though it might require completely different and more complex perspectives. Thinking like that requires training of your mind. Our ego is typically avoiding to think that hard, and instead looking for the easy solution. When it makes ourselves believe that something can’t be done (especially without giving it proper thinking), this is actually the easiest way out of accepting the shitty situation you are in without doing something about it to improve it. At that moment you already gave up. I have been there many times, and the more sick you become and the less energy you have left, the easier it is to fall into that ego trap.
To counteract this, it requires thinking the way successful people think. I can recommend the books by John C. Maxwell, especially the pocket sized book “How successful people think”.
Furthermore, not having the time for something you (think you) value, like your health, means you still value something else more (like money or career), and it also means you need to apply time management not only to your job but to your whole life, including the way you breath, sleep, exercise, eat and cook, while avoiding decision fatigue by minimizing choices and developing automatic habits. Some of the following tips are also related to that. People continuously prove that it can be done, however, it does take time and a different thinking (mindset) to find your personally suited solution. So for your own sake, please stop saying 'it can’t be done'. No successful person ever said those words, only the sufferers and average status quo with a victim mindset say that. Do you want to be one of them?
Change your mindset from negative thinking to positive thinking while you are cooking. If you think negatively about cooking, your mind builds a resistance against it and you get stressed out merely by the thought of having to cook. You have to consciously counteract that. It boils down again to the fact that we have to overcome our ego that is lazy and prefers the easy option of addicted junk food. Don’t be a slave to your ego. Train yourself to control your thoughts and emotions instead of letting your thoughts and emotions control you.
3. Gratitude
And add appreciation and gratitude for the fact that you are actually able to have food and the ability to cook healthy and not have to starve to death. It’s all about the right perspectives and the bigger picture. Gratitude exercises also are one of the best ways to help build a positive mindset and relax.
4. Overcome emotional eating
In our modern fast-paced and individual-focused society, many of us lack energy, sleep, happiness, love, connection or security that results in psychologically distress with negative feelings like sadness, stress, depression, anger or boredom. The danger is that these feelings are compensated by emotional eating. Instead of addressing the root causes for these deficiencies, we try to fill the emptiness with food, often resulting in overeating. Become aware when you eat and why.
5. Study what it means by healthy eating
Don´t blindly follow any hyped up diet. Most of the time, a decade later they turn out to be doing more harm than good. Unnecessarily avoiding certain foods can result in nutrient depletion. So far, the most studied and proven beneficial diet is the old Mediterranean diet (which is NOT synonymous to pizza and pasta). Eat moderately and balanced. The modern food industry tries to manipulate us into buying (and thus eating) as much as cheap processed junk foods as possible to make more money. They don’t care about our health. They use fake intentions to sell their fake food. Simply the best: add more (organic) vegetables and fruits to your diet.
6. Cook and eat mindfully
Appreciate the flavours of good recipes. Over time, when you reduce your sugar and salt consumption (crucial for good health!), you start to notice that the natural foods have more taste. That is because sugar desensitizes your taste buds, so everything else without sugar will first taste blend. Because I used to be addicted to sugar, I used to find 50% dark chocolate taste horribly bitter and uneatable. Now I find 70% dark chocolate too sweet. To get more flavour, use organic food. I can now definitely tell the difference that most organic food has much more flavour (not all though) than non-organic food. (Of course, it can happen that you made a bad recipe: then go and get distracted by watching a movie so you don’t pay attention to the bad taste ;) ).
7. Make cooking itself more fun
Often I listen to music or a stand-up comedy show while cooking, sometimes even make a few dance moves or throw in some exercise movements when waiting. Use your imagination. I experiment with different ingredients, as if it is a chemistry experiment which I happen to find fun. Or perhaps you can look at it as playing with different Lego blocks to design a colourful house, each ingredient being a different colour. Or as painting with flavours… again, use your imagination to connect cooking to something you are interested in and gives you fun doing.
Invite people. Cooking for others makes the process more rewarding. Cooking with others makes it more fun.
8. Use the time wisely (more on time management)
To make cooking not feel like a waste of time, combine it with something else productive. Sometimes I listen to a podcast while cooking. When a dish is getting ready in the oven, or the soup is softly brewing, I can do any other job, such as work on the laptop or cleaning. To save time, I also don’t separate the preparation and cooking time as often described in online recipes. Instead of first cutting all the vegetables before putting them in the pan one by one, I start with e.g. cutting the onions or vegetables that takes the longest cooking and throw them in the pan first, and while they are getting ready I’m cutting the rest. May sound simple but it saves 5-10 minutes every day. That is a lot of minutes in a year.
Another way of saving time the next day is to make larger portions so you have leftovers. One more thing I do is that when I prepare flour for bread or shred seeds or grains for flour or cereals, I generally make more than I need at that time, so the next time I only have to take the ready grinded flour and don’t need to take out the kitchen tools and clean them afterwards.
Schedule your groceries, or combine it with other meetings. I often have therapies over the border in Germany, and I combine it with doing (cheaper) grocery shopping over there. Or when going for my daily walk through nature, when the fridge is empty, I end up at the shopping center (it’s a 25 minute walk to town for me). That way I also avoid taking the car.
9. Use kitchen tools
In my case, I was dependent on these tools for a while because I had so much pain in my wrists. I couldn’t do anything. Due to Repetitive Strain Injury from too much computer work, Lyme’s disease, fibromyalgia and hypothyroidism, it was even too painful to hold a cup of tea in one hand and I couldn’t cut any vegetables either. But even if you can cut your food, and I can nowadays, using really sharp knives to reduce force makes cutting faster also. But be careful of course. Ironically, I seem to cut myself only with blunt knives, because you have to use more force and then are more likely to make a wrong move and slip and then cut your fingers.
In addition, an easy-to-clean blender or mixer and a coffee bean grinder that works for seeds and nuts as well, are major time savers. The latter also allows you to buy (cheaper) organic whole grains and seeds and shred them when you need them so you save money and avoid oxidation, which acts pro-inflammatory to your body, apparently. When I do make spare portions, I make sure it gets used quickly.
10. Learn from recipes
Now we finally get to recipes. It takes some time to find good recipes, especially if you have a lot of food allergies and intolerances like me. Most of the time, I can’t find a recipe that is suitable, so I have to make adjustments. However, even if you can eat everything, don’t only follow the recipes, but at the same time try to learn why, how and when certain ingredients are used. It’s not rocket science. By consciously paying attention to the process, you will then more quickly get used to making your own recipes on the fly (and save time, and you train your brain which reduces the risk of developing dementia). I approach it from the point of view that cooking is like chemistry (I happen to be interested in that), so I learn and make it fun. That means I also experiment with different combinations, and sometimes it fails, sometimes it works out well. Success is learning from mistakes and never to give up. That also applies to cooking.
11. Diversify
Diversity in your diet is better for your gut microbiome, which is crucial for good health. People with chronic diseases have less different species of micro-organisms in their gut as compared to healthy people. Eating the same foods all the time, narrows down the diversity of your gut microbiome. Even though I am limited in what I can eat due to intolerances and allergies, I found out there are many other food alternatives that I never heard of before I knew that I had these intolerances and basically could have been eating anything. Now, I eat even more diverse than I used to when I was able but I just didn’t. I never had heard of quinoa, millet, spelt, emmer wheat, einkorn, grapeseed flour, sweet lupines, sweet potatoes, celery, kohlrabi, chia, flaxseeds, psyllium or husk, arrowroot starch, capers, moringa, hemp seeds, curcuma, ginger, black cumin, ghee (… the list goes on and on…) or anything else that doesn’t come in a standard boring Dutch, Italian or (Europeanised-)Chinese dish.
12. Stock up
I generally do one or two times a week large quantity shopping for fresh food, but I also have a large stock of (organic) vegetables and other foods in jars or frozen as a backup for quick and easy cooking or healthy snacking.
13. Steaming and use the right Oils when stir-frying
Steaming is the healthiest way to prepare vegetables. Extra virgin (cold-pressed) olive oil has the most recorded health benefits and is good to put on salads or on the food after cooking, When stir-frying, I use coconut oil most of the time, and now and then ghee.
Well, that's it, my unusual tips to make healthy cooking and eating easier and more fun. All our experiences are a perception. If you don't like cooking, that's all in your mind. Change your mind to change your life.
Success and have fun implementing these tips. If you need help breaking habits and transforming your mindset, consider getting a coach. Be healthy with love, peace and joy.