You have information about diabetes care and have blood glucose testing down. You have information about good food choices and a restocked pantry. Unfortunately, cooking still takes time and energy, especially if you don't start with boxed something. Very often I'm happy to order takeout even though I actually like cooking because I am too tired or too lazy or too unmotivated to do all of the food prep and cleanup that happens when cooking. I get it.
Imagine trying to install a fence when the only tool you have for sinking the posts is a garden spade. Sure, it would get the job done...eventually. But it would also be tedious and shoddy and I hope you would abandon the job pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you have PHD, the useful kind, (not the type I'm working on, as you've pointed out), those posts will go in much faster. Having the right tools for food prep and storage makes a huge difference in the time it takes to prep meals and in practicing good portion control--and they don't have to be expensive. Let's get you better food tools.
So I went to a dollar store and a large discount store to collect quite a haul. What's here:
- Baking sheets (because you'll be baking more of your foods)
- A composition book and sticky notes (to write down notes about things you do and don't like, ideas you have for foods to try, nutritional information you figure out with a nutrition counter book, and to add notes to pages of your cookbooks)
- Plastic shoeboxes and small tubs (for keeping your tools, spices, snack packs, etc. neat and easily accessible)
- Cutting boards (it helps to have at least two when you are prepping food for more than one meal at a time)
- Measuring cups
- Food thermometer
- Small kitchen gadgets (tongs, lettuce knife, basting brush, egg slicer, small grater, strainer)
- Food storage bags and containers
- Portioned spill-proof, microwave safe bowls
- Digital food scale (for portioning)
The majority of these items costs $1-3. The food thermometer and covered sectioned bowls were a little more. The only splurge item here was the digital food scale and you can get those for about $20 if you poke around online. You can use an analog scale, but it is way, way easier to do this with a digital scale that you can reset (tare) with the push of a button. Here's a good review of an analog vs. digital scale that also shows you how to use them.
So now what do you do with all this crap? This is going to sound like a lot of trouble, but I promise it will save you time and energy in the long run.
First, measure your food. It's amazing how much we underestimate how much we eat when we aren't accustomed to measuring it. To keep measuring from becoming tedious, I highly recommend writing down portion weights and using the scale to make portioning easier in the future.
Pre-portion snacks and meals that you can make ahead of time. If you measure out the portion by following the food label (How many grams are in one serving?), then you can weigh it. If there isn't a weight on the label, just a volume, measure out the volume and then put it on the scale to see what it weighs (subtract the container). Write down that weight in the composition book so that you don't have to do it again. Now when you go to portion your snacks out, just put the container on the scale, reset it to 0, and then fill up the container until you get to the weight you are looking for for the portion. It's cheaper to get a large bag of baby carrots than to buy packs of the small bags, so if you do it this way you can make several little packs using snack size bags and the scale to measure. If you portion out snacks so that each pack has 15g of carbs, it's a lot easier to count the carbs.
When it comes to controlling portions at dinner, put your plate on the scale, reset it, and then portion foods out by weight if you can. If it's a liquid and you don't yet know the weight, then use measuring cups and spoons (and write the weight down on a sticky note on the recipe!). If you made enough for leftovers, portion them out into food storage containers while you plate your dinner. This way it's more difficult to get seconds since you've already put the food away and you will know how many carbs are in tomorrow's lunch or dinner because you already did the math.
Finally, if you know you are going to need to chop vegetables to make 3 recipes over the next few days, it's a lot easier to do all of the peeling and chopping in one longer food prep session than to have to do it every time you want to cook. Use the bigger food containers to hold the vegetables you pre-chopped. Doing it this way also means kitchen cleanup will be easier since you already did the messy vegetable prep part days ago.
I hope that between these tools and making some new routines around food prep this will get easier and less time consuming for you. It's a drag to have to measure food and to have to think about it so much, but if you're using the right tools for the job, you'll spend a lot less time having to do it. After all, it's not like you would use a spade instead of a PHD because you really enjoy the process of digging holes for fence posts. The point is to get through the tedious part so you can get to the stuff you enjoy faster.
Now, please go play with your new tools.
Love,
Mel
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