How Can You Motivate Yourself to Cook Dinner When You Live Alone?
Linda knows that cooking dinner more often would make her healthier and happier. But it feels like so much work for her to make the effort since she lives alone.
Sometimes she manages to throw something healthy together, but other nights she just sits down with a bag of potato chips and calls it a night.
For Linda one of the big obstacles is that when she does make the effort to cook one of her favorite recipes she ends up with way too many leftovers and gets tired of eating the same thing. Often it ends up going to waste.
To solve this Linda has to reexamine her beliefs about what dinner is supposed to look like so that it is less daunting and easier to do on a regular basis.
Related Links:
The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
Foodist Kitchen: Learn to Cook Without Recipes in 30 Days
Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.
Listen:
If you’d like to be a guest on the show, please fill out the form here and tell us your story.
I personally wait for stimulus from other people on what to cook, then donate the leftovers to them and freeze the rest. It helps with the motivation.
For me, it helps a lot to have a variety of healthy foods on hand that are easy to assemble into a sandwich, salad, omelette or plowman’s lunch. One of my favorite dinners is a chunk of fresh, whole-grain bread, fresh fruit, good cheese, olives, pickles and sliced roasted meat or lunchmeat. No cooking needed!
Another easy thing to do is keep fresh, pre-washed greens on hand. Spinach is great because it’s good both fresh or cooked. If I’m having soup, I’ll top it with the spinach and it will sort of wilt into the soup in a delicious way. If I’m having a sandwich or quesadilla, I’ll throw some fresh spinach in. Instant nutrition upgrade! Same for eggs – which are so fast to make, anyway. Just toss in a handful of spinach and your scrambled eggs/omelette is now a power dinner.