Cooking is a hurdle

Cooking has to be the hardest part of transitioning to a new diet plan. Not because it's difficult to do, but because it is so time consuming. It takes real talent to fit cooking time into a busy schedule when you are trying to cook all your meals from scratch. This is true regardless of whether you are changing to any whole foods diet whether it is primal, vegetarian, vegan, or standard. I could go out to eat for every meal, but that is far more expensive than fixing everything at home and doesn't always save time. I could by prepackaged meals, but that would only increase my intake of preservatives which are abundant in any preprocessed food.

I love the food I cook. The effort I put into cooking makes every bite taste sublime. Occasionally, my appetite gets ahead of my food prep and I go hungry for a few hours while I find and prepare more food. I've heard that if you want to loose weight, you should buy groceries only when you are full. Weight is not my issue. I do better when I shop on an empty stomach sometimes. As I browse fresh produce and meat, new meal ideas start spinning in my head. I try to get a variety of fruit and vegetables throughout the week so I don't get bored of one flavor. I have chicken or eggs as the default meat option for most meals, but when I shop hungry, I can almost taste other meat options just by looking at it. I am often tempted to just buy a pizza for dinner, but I'm honestly trying to give the Primal Blueprint a fair test. I can delay pizza until I feel it would be nutritionally advantageous (i.e. indefinitely). The temporary nature of this primal trial is really helping me to stay focused on the changes I am trying to make.

I don't have much time for cooking in the morning when I make both my breakfast and lunch. This morning I did that and loaded the dishwasher, something I have been putting off for most of the week. I feel like one of those chefs on Chopped or Iron Chef when I start running around the kitchen throwing food in pans, washing dishes, chopping more food, steaming, sautéing, and generally playing with food. Today I figured out I have to really pack lettuce into a container to have enough to satisfy my appetite.

I don't make everything from scratch. I like prepackaged salad greens because it saves me time on food prep and it's prewashed. I also like salad dressing because making condiments from scratch is a level of cooking I have not reached yet. If I want my olives or mushrooms to be sliced, I buy them presliced just to save a few minutes of work. Sure I could save a bit by slicing them myself, but my willpower is more focused on diet changes right now than extreme frugality.