Home Cooking for Weight Loss: What to Focus On for Success

Lean protein sources like chicken breast, turkey, fish, and eggs should be the foundation of your meals. Whole grains and plenty of vegetables provide necessary fiber and nutrients while offering long-lasting satiety. Avoid sugary sauces and excessive oil during cooking, instead add flavor with spices and lemon. Fresh or frozen vegetables are often better choices than preserved versions because they contain less salt and additives. If you use dairy products, choose light or low-fat versions.

A kitchen scale is the most accurate tool for tracking portions, especially for cooked pasta, rice, and meat. A good alternative is the plate rule: half should be vegetables, a quarter lean protein, a quarter complex carbohydrates. Your hand can also help: an average meal contains a palm-sized portion of meat, a fist-sized portion of carbs, and a thumb-sized portion of fat. Don't eat directly from the pot or large bowl because you can't see how much you're consuming. If you're tracking macros, a simple app, like ours, the GetFIT App, can be a huge help for accurate monitoring.

Cooking to support weight loss doesn't mean hours in the kitchen if you plan smartly. A simple meal like roasted vegetables with chicken breast takes 20-30 minutes to prepare. With meal prep techniques, you can cook larger batches once a week and use them for days. One-pot meals like chili or stew require minimal work and are perfect for advance cooking. If you're really pressed for time, the GetFIT App offers hundreds of simple recipes that are quick to prepare and can be accurately tracked with the built-in macro tracker.

Keep simple 3-5 ingredient recipes on hand that don't require serious cooking skills. Frozen vegetables and pre-cooked brown rice or quinoa can be heated in minutes with a protein source. Prepare healthy snacks and semi-prepared ingredients on the weekend so you just need to assemble them on weekdays. Cold meals like salads with protein toppings or yogurt bowls are also quick solutions. Don't let one bad day ruin your week: a simple omelet or quickly pan-seared fish with vegetables can be a perfect solution too.

Switch to non-stick or ceramic pans that require minimal fat for cooking. Using a spray bottle for oil helps you use much less than pouring. Baking, grilling, or steaming are often better choices than traditional pan frying. Use vegetable broth, water, or meat stock to steam food instead of oil. If you do need fat, measure with a kitchen spoon or measuring tool because "eyeballing" it can easily add 200-300 extra calories to your meal.