Get Organized, Eat Better

Two of the most com­mon New Year’s res­o­lu­tions are to lose weight and to get orga­nized. The good news is that it’s eas­i­er to do both if you do them togeth­er. If you have reg­u­lar meals of healthy food, you’ll be less like­ly to fill up on junk.

To do my meal plan­ning and make up my shop­ping lists, I use the sys­tem that Pam Young and Peg­gy Jones intro­duced in their book The Side­tracked Sis­ters Catch Up on the Kitchen. Pam and Peg­gy have writ­ten a series of very fun­ny books packed with prac­ti­cal advice to enable the con­gen­i­tal­ly dis­or­ga­nized to get con­trol of their homes and their lives. Their meal plan­ning sys­tem involves index cards, one card for each menu.

Each of my menu cards rep­re­sents an entire meal. It includes the names of the dish­es, along with where I can find the recipe, and a list of all the ingre­di­ents. I also include spe­cial instruc­tions, such as if I have to start soak­ing beans the day before. When I plan my meals, I try to include a vari­ety of tastes and tex­tures. If a main dish requires bak­ing, I’ll include a dessert that has to be baked at the same tem­per­a­ture. I even indi­cate whether the recipe is sea­son­al. For exam­ple, I’ll have recipes for aspara­gus in the spring, and pump­kin in the fall.

To do my meal plan­ning, I just select some of my cards. The cards tell me all the ingre­di­ents I’ll need. While I’m mak­ing one day’s meal, I’ll check the fol­low­ing day’s card, to see if I have to soak any beans or do any oth­er kind of advanced prepa­ra­tion.

Of course, that’s not the only way to switch to a healthy low-fat, plant-based diet. Karen Bar­row achieved it with­out com­pli­cat­ed recipes.

Just cook the food ahead on the day that you have off and you can have your whole thing stream­lined and orga­nized for the whole week. Just have your boiled pota­toes, have your cooked grains. We make these things we call “veg­gie tubs” where we put a mix­ture of raw veg­eta­bles in indi­vid­ual lit­tle con­tain­ers so that they’re grab and go. You can make it as stream­lined as you want it to be…. Just make a deci­sion that you’re going to try it for a giv­en amount of time, and if you do that your tastes will change, and you’ll have the results you want, and you’ll have them quick­ly.

https://www.drmcdougall.com/health/education/health-science/stars/stars-video/karen-barrow/


Update: Try the mobile cook­book app from John and Mary McDougall!