Health
Habits
Food
Weight 
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After successfully losing over seventy pounds on a meal replacement diet Cara has reached her ideal weight and is feeling great. But now she faces a new challenge: weight maintenance.
Knowing that diets rarely work long-term and that she needs a more sustainable approach to her healthstyle she is ready to tackle the hard work. In Cara’s case, that means getting over one of her biggest fears.
Cara hates cooking, but knows that learning how to prepare her own food is necessary in order for her to maintain her weight loss. After putting it off her entire life, she says she is now “trying to focus on how to make the hard work doable.”
Together we explore the story Cara has built up in her mind over the years regarding food preparation. Having struggled with this topic myself, I share how I got over my own fear of cooking and suggest ways she can approach it in a much less intimidating way, find inspiration and even get excited about it.
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.
Related links:
How To Overcome Your Fear of Cooking
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Great show with Cara – I too felt like cooking was overwhelming and grew up with a lot of tension in the kitchen. Some things I’m doing to make it more fun (very specific to my personality, but just in case they are helpful.) Geek out on great containers that make my fridge neat, which makes meal prep much easier. (love sterilite). If I do a big shop, and am tired, I put all food in fridge but when I feel more energetic I put music or podcast on in the kitchen and geek out on packing the food into the neat containers….gives me a huge sense of control. Totally agree that you have to be prepared to fail (hate to tell you what my first bean dish tasted like) but if you think of it all as an experiment, it really helps. Also geek out on really nice dish soap and dishes – anything that makes me want to be in the kitchen. Hope that helps, and thanks for your great work!
Great information. Maintaining your lost weight after dieting is the most hardest part.
It sounds like Cara’s greatest hurdle is her mindset, which is a very common challenge. Mindset seems to be where most of change happens because if you make up your mind that you want to cook, and if you can sustain that mindset, you can and will do it. The only thing stopping you is you, but sustaining the mindset is a formidable challenge.
So, I think the core question is, how does a person go about changing their mindset? If someone can answer that it could really change lives. For me, I’ve found that daily meditation helps. I start my day reminding myself of what’s important and envisioning what I want to achieve. Without that, it’s easy to get lost on auto-pilot. But it’s important to realize that building up the ability to self-communicate is a habit in and of itself that takes time to develop.
Also, I’ve recently started believing and experiencing the value of keeping a routine. There’s a set (but somewhat flexible) time for everything I want to achieve. Getting into a rhythm can go a long way.
I hope Cara opens the Foodist Kitchen emails! Darya has a real knack for breaking things down.