Outstanding performance is one of the keys to career and life success that I discuss in Straight Talk for Success and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success. If you want to become an outstanding performer you need to do three things. First, stay on top of your game by becoming a lifelong learner. Second, set high goals. Do whatever it takes to achieve them. Third, get organized. Manage your time, life and stress well.
Your diet is an important part of life and stress management. It’s easier to perform at a high level when you eat well and exercise regularly.
If you’ve been paying attention recently, you’ve probably seen the news reports about the high caloric content of a lot of restaurant meals. Apparently a lot of restaurant food (Chili’s Southwestern Eggrolls have really received a lot of bad press) is engineered to contain large amounts of fat, sugar and salt, which release the chemical dopamine, which in turn stimulates your desire to consume more foods high in fat, sugar and salt – an unhealthy combination. If you’re interested in learning more about this, I suggest you read The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, by David Kessler
Eating at home is one way to eat a more healthy diet. But eating at home can be a bit of a chore. Clint Bounds has created a meal planning website, www.plantoeat.com that will not only help you plan healthy nutritious meals, it will help you plan your shopping. Here’s what he has to say…
Eating at home should be easier.
If you are anything like our family, you often find your fridge either too full of food you can’t use or practically empty. You can’t decide what to eat throughout the day so you end up spending more money eating out. You’re frustrated with grocery shopping because you buy what you don’t need and forget the stuff you do. You’re tired of reinventing the wheel every meal!
Meal planning to the rescue.
Over the years, meal planning has been the most successful process that has helped our family consistently eat at home. When you have a plan, you know what you are eating in advance, have the ingredients and can start cooking before you are hungry. This saves money, time and your sanity. But even if you don’t eat out often, you will still save money with meal planning because you will buy less of what you don’t need and waste less food. You will also eat healthier meals with ingredients you can pronounce (and digest), spend more time with your family and friends, and relieve the stress of not knowing what to eat at the worst times (when you are already hungry, or worse, when your kids are).
So how do you meal plan?
First, plan to meal plan. Set aside time each week to plan your meals for the week or just the next few days. Then create your family menu so you can quickly make a meal selection, just as you would at a restaurant. Then plan your meals using your menu and event calendar, and create your shopping list from the planned recipes. To help with this process and eliminate the redundancy, such as continually recreating your shopping list, we have built a meal planning website called Plan to Eat. Plan to Eat is a simple to use tool that allows you to permanently store all of your favorite recipes in one place. No more fumbling through multiple recipe books, magazines and websites. You can either import recipes from popular recipe websites or easily input them by hand. Once you have your menu, you can search for your recipes by ingredients, cuisines, etc. Then drag-and-drop your recipes to your weekly meal plan and Plan to Eat automatically creates the shopping list for you, sorted by grocery store categories. It’s really easy. You can also share your recipes with your friends. They can see your recipes and you can see theirs. We have a virtual “Pantry” that includes many popular staple items (like milk, napkins, soap, etc.) that help remind you what staple items you need before going shopping. And you can add them to your shopping list with only a few clicks. Then print out your shopping list and go shopping with confidence that you have a plan that includes eating great food at home, and not wasting time and money in the process.
Clint makes some great points here – and his Plan to Eat website makes it easy to plan for and cook delicious, healthy meals at home. Check it out.
The common sense point here is simple. Successful people are outstanding performers. Outstanding performers manage their time, life and stress well. You will eat better, more healthy meals if you cook at home. To take full advantage of the health benefits of eating at home, you need to do a good job of meal planning. Clint Bounds’Plan to Eat website is an excellent resource for planning your meals – and for eating a more healthy diet – and for saving money on your food cost. It’s a win/win/win.
That’s my take on healthy eating for success. What’s yours? Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us. And don’t forget to check out www.plantoeat.com. As always, thanks for reading.
Bud
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