Live Healthier: Commit to Cooking

In my Prevention's Total-Body Shape Up magazine, February’s focus is to Commit to Cooking.  Ugh.  Have you ever consistently cooked for one?  If you make something like a casserole you eat it every day for a week and toss the second half.  I could make something and then give half away, but I still have to eat the leftovers.  Basically, it may be more work to cook for many people, but the food is much better! Still, there is something to be said about fast food.  It’s fast, easy clean up, fattening, and contains no nutritional value. 

I’m late in posting, but I hereby commit to a Fast Food Free February.  There's twelve days left in the month.  I think I can.  I think I can. I think I can. 

Prevention makes three suggestions:

• Plan Ahead. Spend a half-hour on Saturday or Sunday mapping out your meals for the week—both what you’re going to make and what nights you’re going to cook.
• Become a Prep Cook. On the weekend, tackle time-consuming prep work: cook meats, prep salad dressings, cut fruits and vegetables.
• Rethink Your Idea of a Home Cooked Meal. “A hot, freshly prepared meal is great , but in a pinch, a PB&J sandwich, some baby carrots, and a glass of milk is much better than going out,” says Cassie Dimmick, MS, RD, a sports dietician in Springfield, Missouri.

So I’d like to pick your mind for a moment and wonder if anyone has some low-calorie non-cooking no-leftovers snack/meal ideas?

Walking Program Update:  My goal this year is to walk a 5K on July 12^th, so I’m trying to exercise regularly.  To date, I've gone to the gym 18 times.  Not the 5 days a week the walking program suggests, but it’s a start.  And I found I don’t totally hate exercising.  I really love checking it off when it’s done and knowing that each step takes me closer to a healthier me!