Drop the Weight with EJ: How Can You Eat Healthy When Cooking for & Eating with Your Family?

holiday tastes to satisfy. But this challenge
applies to everyday living as well because
regardless of how responsible you about the
types of food you eat, your family will influence
how you eat.
If you enjoy mealtimes with them and cook for
them on a regular basis, you’ve likely had to deal
with resistance to some of the healthier recipes
that you’ve tried or that you’d like to try. Today’s
post will begin to help you come up with
strategies to navigate this resistance so that you
don’t have to choose between winning hearts
through tummies or flattening yours.
Resistance-free healthy eating starts even before
you cook your meals. It starts with the
ingredients that go in them. A lot of us have
established routines with our families on the
types of ingredients make up our means and
these routines can be threatened when you decide
to adopt a healthier – but different – way of
eating. Here’s one strategy to help ease this
transition:
Start with Simple Modifications
As much as we would like to think otherwise,
we’re creatures of habit with how and what we
eat. For instance we might ignore the dining table
and eat in front of the TV or we might cook the
same thing for breakfast during the week and
switch it up only on weekends.
This strategy is all about making your current
eating patterns and habits work in your favor. It
requires you to make a list of the meals that you
regularly make and come up with options to make
them healthier or “healthify” them. Here’s an
example of what this can look like:
Breakfast
Bread with Butter and Jam with Eggs
Measure out the jam, 1 tsp of jam is usually
enough for one sandwich and this comes out to
about 10 calories. You can also replace the butter
for peanut butter – which has a similar calorie
profile but contains more of the good-for-you
unsaturated fats. Finally, going for boiled eggs
over fried will allow you to enjoy your eggs
without worrying about the oil.
Akara or Moin Moin with Pap
If they insist, you can serve your family the pap
but have oatmeal yourself. Pap might have fewer
calories initially, but by the time you add the milk
and sugar for flavor, you’ll probably be neck-in-
neck with oatmeal. As a plus, oatmeal has more
fiber that makes hunger management easy.
Finally consider keeping the skin on the beans for
your akara or Moin Moin. I’ve tried some of the
great recipes on 9ja Foodie’s blog and they
haven’t disappointed. Peeling the beans like we
normally do might make your Moin Moin look
pretty, but it gets rid of vital fiber and other
nutrients. If you’re ready to experiment further
you can pan fry your own akara instead of deep
frying to save calories. Plus it makes less of a
mess and your people might get curious enough
eventually to join you.
Lunch
Lunch is a unique meal because most of the time
you alone control your lunch. If you’re a stay at
home mom, your husband and kids would be Out
of the house at some point. And if you work, you
can pack your own lunches or take control of the
food you buy.
Rice and Stew
Do this one in serious moderation because it’s
really hard to eat only a little of it. When you take
lunch to work, use a small lunchblox plate as it
makes portion controlling this easier and combine
it with high fiber foods like chickpeas and
steamed spinach so you feel full without having
to eat as much rice
Soup and Swallow
Choose high fiber swallow options like oatmeal
fufu or wheat and make your own soup where
possible. When cooking soup, make it as healthy
as possible while preserving taste using some of
the strategies I shared in“how to make your
favorite Nigerian foods healthier.” And exercise
portion control, think more vegetables and a little
swallow.
Dinner
This is the trickiest mealtime of all because
you’re likely to defer to your family’s wishes, but
remember one thing:
You’re still the one doing the cooking so you are
in control of what goes into the meals and what
ends up on your plate
Make their Meals as Healthy as Yours
When cooking for your family, you’re more likely
to let things slide especially when you’re not
trying to use food to improve their health. But you
shouldn’t. Letting things slide sends the message
to yourself that the way you should be cooking
for you and your family to have optimal health is
the exception not the rule. It’s telling yourself
that choosing whole wheat flour instead of
refined flour is a temporary thing and putting
vegetables on half the plate next to the rice and
stew would soon be a thing of the past.
This doesn’t mean that you’ll force these healthy
choices on them. You can ease it in and the fact
that you’re making these healthy choices for the
most important people in your life increases the
chance that you’ll make such healthy choices for
yourself too. Think this is impossible? Well here’s
a personal case study:
When I first started making breakfast pancakes
regularly, my husband – Sunday – rolled his eyes
when he found out that it was made with whole
wheat flour. Now, he expects that meals include
whole wheat flour, brown rice, or whatever the
healthy alternative is. And when I do choose to
go refined, it’s the exception and he’s pleasantly
surprised.
Always Have Veggies
It’s going to take some time for your family to
get to the point where not so healthy ingredients
become the exception, so to tide you over pile on
the vegetables. If they insist that you keep
cooking the way you always have, veggies can
help you manage your portion of high calorie
foods and here’s how:
Draw an imaginary line down the middle of your
plate
Fill one side with steamed, non-starchy
vegetables like greens, carrots, or green beans
Be stingy with putting your normal high calorie
fare
Drink a lot of water after dinner and don’t go for
seconds
This technique allows you to still have a full plate
at dinner without all the calories that you
normally would eat.
Make Portion Control Your Beat Friend
There are many more ways to manage portions
than using the veggie technique that I just shared
above. For example you could:
Use a salad plate to eat your dinner and skip the
seconds. This allows you to fill your plate with
less food without feeling like it because it still
looks like a full plate.
Serve yourself your normal portion and then take
¼ off the plate and set it aside and put it in the
fridge. This way you consistently eat slightly less
than you normally would without cutting out too
much or compromising your tastes.
Managing portions is just half the battle because
you do need to eat healthier to move the needle
on the scale. But you can take one thing at a time
by starting here and then slowly getting you and
your family accustomed to eating healthier.
Doing all this gives both of you and your family
ownership of mealtime so that they don’t feel
your lifestyle is taking over
Over to You:
Today, you have two options of actions to take.
Pick one that applies to your life situation the
most and test it out to see how it will improve
how you eat and help you trim your tummy even
as you lose weight. Here are the options:
Make a list of the meals that are in your regular
family meal rotation and come up with ideas to
make them healthier. If you’re having trouble with
this, you’ll want to tune in next time when I share
a handy
Pick your strategy for handling dinner time