Be your own food company

How many of us used to go "grocery shopping" and filled the cart with frozen, single serving meals? (Raises hand.)

A big problem of swimming against the cultural tide with Low Carb is to wish we had the ease-of-use that co-workers on Lean Cuisine seem to have. So many are hesitant about (gasp!) cooking, because it seems so daunting.

Once upon a time, you had to use the oven!

The good news is that WE CAN have all those things. And it's much better, tastier, and more satisfying than those teeny tiny portions of rubber meat and heaven-knows-what's-in-that sauce over the spoonful of vegetables that we were used to having, back in the day. Did that meal out of the microwave ever look like the picture on the front?

So take one of the best "paths to happiness" on low carb. Do you have a skillet with a lid? You're in business!

Throw a spoonful of butter or coconut oil or olive oil in a pan, medium heat. (That's the middle of your dial. See how easy?) Set the kitchen timer to 3 minutes. Now sprinkle on some seasoning... they have it labeled CHICKEN, people. You can't mess that up. My favorites are the Montreal Seasonings, but that grocery store has a whole aisle to choose from!

Then put in chicken breasts, chicken thighs, buffalo medallions, those pre-sliced steak strips, pork chops, lamb chops... whatever appeals to you. Put the cover on, set the timer for ten minutes, and see what frozen vegetables you have in the freezer. Don't take them out yet!

When the timer goes off, take off the lid, inhale (mmmmmmmmmmmmm!) and turn them over. You've got something to turn them over, don't you? Even a fork, works. Set the timer for another 10 minutes.

When that dings (you had time to check your email and tell your mom that You're Cooking!) take one out and cut it in half. Is it done? If yes, take the rest out and let them cool on a plate. Open that designated bag of frozen veg and put a serving into the pan. Turn the heat down a quarter turn, put the lid on, and set the timer for 10 minutes. (See how much of a friend we have in our kitchen timer? Mine is built into the stove so I can't lose it.)

While that is happening, you can divvy up the rest of the frozen vegetables among your single serve freezer containers. We can use any containers, but what really helped my husband Get Into It was a few packs of those single serving freezer to microwave food containers.

Timer ding! Now (test the tougher vegetables with that fork) we have OUR meal for the evening, AND we have delightful leftovers! (If we have pan drippings use those over the meat.) After our meal, we can finish our "frozen meal" assembly, snap the lid on, put them in the freezer.

Now we have meals to pull out of the freezer, microwave, and enjoy! Stash a bunch of those in the freezer in just one afternoon or evening, and you're good all week. If we are math-minded, we can add up the cost of the ingredients, and compare to the cost of the same numbers of frozen meals. Bet we are saving money and getting more food for it.

Now we have discovered that cooking a big batch of something takes no more time than cooking a small batch. That's the key to better meals... and better health.

Change does not have a masking function

In graphics work, it's valuable to work with a "mask." That's why masking tape has that name; we use it to protect the woodwork from the wall color when we are painting a room.

Does the butterfly complain it is not
a caterpillar any more?

But it does not work that way with our bodies and our psyches. When we embark upon a change in our eating, it's going to change more than our pant size.

It's normal to think losing weight is only a matter of changing our physical shape. But we also hope for more, don't we? We hope it will let us be more active, more attractive, more outgoing and confident and assertive.

And yet... should our usual routines and meals become too different, then we sabotage ourselves with:

This is too much change.

Other people don't eat this way.

I miss that thing too much!

Until we are right back where we started, or even, worse off. If we regard our food changes as temporary, our results will be, too.

But sometimes we panic because we are changing too much. Who are we now? Well, we've changed. Isn't that what we wanted?

That is what change IS. It changes everything. But we are still ourselves; we just have the tools to be more ourselves.

That's our goal, isn't it? To be different from the way we are now? That will not happen unless we embrace it.

Because none of us gets to pick and choose all the ways we become different.

How calories count

Gary Taubes, author of Why We Get Fat, likes to point out, "When you are cutting calories, you are also cutting carbs."

I was reading this article in the NY Times where he discussed a recent study. People ate the same number of calories; only it was three different compositions. One was low fat/high carb, one was low glycemic, and one was low carb/high fat.

All lost weight. They were lowering their calories, after all, and that generally works for anyone... at first.

Calorie comparisons miss an important point.

But the low carb folks lost the most weight. They had their metabolisms slow down the least from the loss of weight. And they had the greatest lost of actual fat tissue; not lean mass.

The participants reported that low carb was the easiest to stick to because they weren't hungry; the only one of the three diets tested to work this magic.

From my perspective, the Way of Eating that allows a person better health, better body composition, and not suffer from hunger... has to be the way we are supposed to eat. Don't you think?