We are often asked what is the best diet? How do I lose weight and get healthy? Should I eat Paleo, Vegan, Vegetarian, Keto, Low Carb?????
The diet we most often recommend is the “Cook at Home Diet”.
What is this radical new diet all about? It’s about getting healthy, saving money, and taking control of your nutrition.
So, with the Cook at Home Diet, you do not have any food restrictions, you just focus on preparing the highest quality food you can get, you control your portion size (no more Cheesecake Factory type portions made for 300 lb. football players), and you control your budget. Win Win Win.
How do you improve the quality of the food you eat? You start with baby steps. Here is a list of ideas, you don’t need to incorporate them all, pick one or two and get started:
- Avoid processed, packaged foods with multiple, unrecognizable ingredients, such as hamburger helper, packaged gravies and sauces,
- Start incorporating some organic fruits and veggies. Check out the EWG Dirty Dozen List that identifies the most contaminated fruits and veggies in the US, and switch one or two of your favorites out for organic varieties.
- Start incorporating meats from grass fed sources, organic free range poultry, sustainably harvested wild fish, organic free range eggs, you get the idea.
- Select full fat dairy, organic sources are best
- For cooking oils, select avocado, olive, coconut, ghee
- Avoid sugary or artificially sweetened drinks
- Avoid sugary baked goods
What does it cost to eat out on a regular basis? The data varies, but the average is at least $13 per person per meal. How does this compare to eating at home? You can feed a family of four for as little as $10 per meal. But let’s assume you want to splurge on ingredients sometimes, and allow for an average cost of $5 per person per meal. For a family of 4, if you ate all your meals out, the cost at $13 per meal ends up with a total of $56,940 per year. If that same family ate all their meals at home, the cost is $21,900.
Our suggestion, is to cook some meals at home, and go out and enjoy yourself once or twice a week. If you did that, you would still save over $25,000 per year over eating out every day!!
Take care and enjoy eating at home.
Ann & Emily
