Setting Up our Goals

To begin with, we got honest about our goals, which was an outcome of reviewing our habits. After some conversations and ideating, we made a list of our 3 to 6-month goals with attainable outcomes. Achievable and actionable goals are key to driving real, attainable outcomes. These items went into a spreadsheet. It wasn’t easy because we had to be honest about trade-offs and priorities.

In that process, we found that there are things we think we want to do and things we will do. Many of us have things we say we want but will never achieve because we cannot take action or are unwilling to suffer for them. We may want to be rock stars or master gardeners, which takes time and energy. 

If we pursue those goals, we must trade off other things we want to expend energy on. By focusing on what we wish to in a measurable and actionable way, we make sure we focus our energy on things we won’t simply drop just because something got ‘hard’. Unfortunately, growth isn’t easy, but by focusing on actionable items, you can prove that you are progressing due to your effort.

Buckets of Hours for Balance

We assigned each goal a bucket of hours each week. Those buckets of hours allow us to stay balanced and manage multiple goals simultaneously. We are rarely engaged in one single goal at a time. There will usually be an attempt to attain various goals simultaneously. 

Even if you want to be an Olympic athlete, you will not be training every minute of the day. You will also need to build your brand, do interviews, and find a way to earn income later. The sport may be the primary focus, but it can’t always be the only thing you can focus on. 

Before the week starts, we put what we will work on on the sheet and tie those items to the larger goals. We then estimate each item to make sure it can make it happen. Further, we make sure the goals are attainable that week. We can’t plant a garden if the weather isn’t expected to cooperate. This work creates an actionable weekly plan with no foreseeable blocking dependencies.

Logging our Time

Every day, we ‘bill’ our time against the tasks we have for that week, just like any other project. We log this for every day we work on one of the tasks. To be realistic, we also bill our daily duties, such as making dinner, doing dishes, or even going to the gym. Let’s face it: those things also take time and limit our capacity for the bigger goals.

As the week goes on, we add notes about wins, losses, and learnings as things progress. These become items to review every Friday to gauge how the week went. Our time logging creates a data-based way of determining how things are proceeding. 

 If something happens and we can’t get through an item, we want to ensure it doesn’t keep recurring. If it happens repeatedly, it is feedback that it is not actionable or can’t be done right now due to some dependency.

Celebrate the Wins

We have learned that we must also celebrate our wins if something has gone well. If we have made a huge gain or overcome a hurdle, we want to recognize and reward ourselves; otherwise, working towards long-term goals can feel like an overwhelming slog. If you’re going to become a great baker, you want to make sure you recognize when you have made something great so you know how to repeat it. 

The point here is that we want to remove the stigma of failure. By documenting learnings, we see how we are growing, while celebrating wins, we see our progress. This helps us through positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement, which can lead to cognitive biases like Survivor’s Bias that block our growth.

This approach has made us feel more productive and focused. This isn’t a new concept per se. We do Scrum events in software engineering to help teams build their products. Initially, that is where the idea of our personal time card started, but it is not what it has become.

An Actionable Feedback Loop

Our timecard has become a constant feedback loop that helps us address the question, ‘Am I doing everything possible to achieve what I want and what is truly important to me?’ That question can be tricky to answer when we are the judge and jury looking at our performance. It always feels like more must be done, which isn’t always actionable or possible.

A timesheet that tracks progress toward our personal goals gives us a practical gut check and a way to examine our approach to goals and the trade-offs between them. We have real numbers to look at when we ask ourselves if I am doing enough about <x> or should focus more on <y> this week. It then becomes much more about data than about emotional context or mood.

What, No Example?

No, we are not going to give an example. Why? We don’t want to focus on the tools. You can take notes on a whiteboard, a Google calendar, an Excel spreadsheet, or even sticky notes. The point is that the tools don’t matter, but the process does. All you need to do to succeed is:

• Create a set of actionable goals you want to work towards.
• Create a bucket of hours for each.
• Log your time daily.
• Have a win, a learning, or a failure? Take a note!
• Review once a week to celebrate what got done and learn from what went wrong.

Wrapping Up

We know punching a clock can feel tedious. However, we have found this approach a huge help. While your mileage may vary, it has been beneficial for us in balancing our march toward multiple goals. It has helped us realize where we want to be and, more importantly, how to estimate our progress.

The post How To Be Successful Via A Time Card first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

The Numbers

Based on EPA data, 66 million tons of consumable food were wasted in the US in 2019, a staggering 133 billion pounds of food. Those numbers say we waste roughly 30-40% of the US food supply, and 60% of the wasted food goes into landfills. The amount of land wasted growing and getting rid of that food due to loss is roughly the size of California and New York combined. 

Further, a 2010 USDA study put a price tag on that loss of $162 billion in food. The average US consumer creates 218.9 lbs of food waste to another EPA source for 2010. That statement is not about being preachy but about recognising that we all have an impact on the larger picture.

At that level of food waste, we get large-scale wastes of other resources such as energy. The whole supply chain from creation to clean-up of that wasted food uses enough energy to power 50 million US homes, about the same carbon footprint as 42 coal-fired electrical plants. In addition to the energy impact, decaying food waste produces byproducts such as methane gas. The combined total of greenhouse gasses that wasted food creates is 8-10% of our total greenhouse gasses. 

Why Do You Care?

You are paying for it with your cash. This problem impacts your budget. How? The most obvious answer is that if you spend money on something you don’t use and have to throw away, you threw money away. Let’s add a bit more to that. Think about an average family of four who wastes 219 lbs of food per person per year. Based on those statistics, the math says a family of four throws away 876 lbs of things they paid for but didn’t consume. 

To have a tasty beverage or meal, food needs to arrive at your home or favorite eatery and find a new home when you get rid of it. The supply chain responsible for making that happen is where the real impact and cost of wasting food are hidden. Remember, for food to arrive, it has to be picked, shipped, made, etc. To make that happen, you need fuel to truck food to processing plants, which use energy to make your favorite ice cream, deli meat, cheese, etc. 

All those processes consume resources, some of which, like roads, most of us pay taxes to upkeep. They also produce pollutants that harm the air and water. As you would imagine, when we throw food away, we get similar problems. 60% of all wasted food goes to a landfill in garbage trucks. Those sites and the people that run them come out of your taxes and even increase the cost of goods and services for the foods you throw away.

The Bigger Picture

As a consumer at the end of a supply line, you are the apex consumer of the entire process of farm to market. This supply chain isn’t local; it’s global. For example, we know pineapples and bananas are not grown in the US in most states. If you have a fresh strawberry-pineapple smoothie in the middle of winter in Chicago, even the strawberries aren’t from a local market. This means you are paying a premium for products out of season to be shipped to you, which raises costs.

What also isn’t apparent is that to make displays and have enough food on hand, a store or restaurant will have waste. Why? Not every strawberry or pound of ground beef will be sold before it goes bad. There isn’t a perfect system to match all food with all consumers. Unlike other products, food can’t just sit on the shelf forever like a pair of pants. This is the primary reason you will see discounted prices for food close to their sell-by date.

Premium or Loss Leader?

For example, ham can be a seasonal premium product or a loss leader. Since it is in high demand before a holiday, it may be sold at a premium. Retailers will take on extra stock so they don’t run out. Wait one week after, and it will be on sale to draw shoppers in. What isn’t sold will eventually find its way to local landfills. Your taxes pay for those landfills, so whether you buy the ham or not, you will pay for it in some small way to be in your local grocery store.

As a consumer of this global system, you pay a premium for these products due to shipping. The cost is built into the operating cost of every step of the supply chain. That is part of why prices change seasonally for specific items. That global impact is all part of what we throw away when we throw away some mushy bananas or don’t finish our pineapple and guava smoothie. 

Awareness Over Stumping for Change

Food waste doesn’t help anyone. We wanted to put some numbers behind it to show that even at a basic level. The reasons we don’t want to soapbox about this are numerous but revolve around these ideas:

• We don’t want to advocate putting people out of jobs by not eating out.
• Not everyone has time to use everything from snout to tail.
• Food is about being social and providing entertainment. 
• Not everyone lives on land they can do things like compost on.
• Not everyone has the time or space to reduce their food waste footprint.

With awareness, you can help and create a positive impact. The impact you can have isn’t strictly as simple as saving money. Money savings are the most tangible issue to address. The reality is that there is more that you are helping with, like reducing landfills, greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel use, and many more less concrete things. 

Some Quick Wins

If you want to reduce waste, here are some ideas. These can help your financial bottom line and the rest of us. 

• Have a leftover mindset. Whether you are cooking at home or eating out, have a plan for using leftovers. 
• Be a seasonal eater. Buying foods in season reduces the amount of non-local food, such as imported strawberries, consumed in the off-season.
• Be aware that use-by and best-buy are guidelines, not rules, so you don’t need to throw out some items you may think you do. 
• Patronize restaurants that serve portions that match your calorie budget and needs. 
• Create a meal plan so that you know just how much you need and no more.  

Wrapping Up

 In this post, we have shown how big a problem food waste is. It impacts everything from money to employment to natural resources. With a bit of awareness, it doesn’t take much to influence how you address you in this area. Little changes can help save you money while creating a positive impact on a global scale. 

The post Food Waste Costs All Of Us Big Money first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Spoilers and TL;DR;

This post is longer than we like. Why? Because to understand an economy such as convenience, you have to set some context. If you are looking for the takeaway and how to save on costs, skip down to Our Learnings. If you want to understand how we unpack on this topic, read on. 

Opposing Forces

There’s a saying, “You can have it quick, cheap or done right. Pick any two”. Why do folks say that? Because it is true! Those are three opposing forces all of us consumers face. By consumers I mean any person or thing doing trading goods and services with another person or thing. That is what an economy is; barter of time and materials with another person or business. 

The balance of these three forces is how we determine personal value. If you break your leg, done right and quick, will take precedence over cheap. You will go to the ER, get pain medication, have the leg set correctly, and you are willing to pay a premium for it. Because you are willing to pay almost anything to stop the pain and fix the leg, it is a perfect example of an inelastic demand curve.

In another example, your vehicle may need an oil change. That is not extremely hard to do, but it is time consuming if you include buying parts and getting rid of the waste oil. In this case, it may be cheaper than going to the dealer, and you can do this as well as a technician. Still, there is a tradeoff of your time to do the work. 

Where It Becomes Gray

Let’s face it, sometimes, you just get hungry and want a burger. You absolutely must have one before you become hangry. That makes your overriding priority. Still, you have a choice to make; cheap or right. Ok, that is admittedly, a strange thought. What is ‘right’ when it comes to a burger? Does it need to be wagyu beef on a toasted brioche bun with micro-greens and bacon jam? Or can it be something out of a gas station hot case?

Let’s go back to our oil change example. We can go out, buy factory parts, tools, and spend our time changing our oil. We will need to run the errands of getting those items first, then do the work, then do the clean up. Finally, we take the used oil and hopefully recycle it. That is a lot of trouble, time, and money for one oil change. If we have our vehicle for 5 years, and have only invested in tools once, buy supplies once, in bulk, then it might be more viable. 

Ah, but yes, other places can change the oil in your vehicle as well. They use dealer grade parts and have lower labor rates. But if we chose that option, will it be done right? That depends on how you define being right. Do they save more time? That depends on your schedule and how urgent you need that oil changed. 

The Chains 

First, let’s eliminate the idea of bartering from our conversation. That is a complete economy of its own that needs its post. For our purposes, when we purchase something, we will use money. The work and/or goods we produce determine our income and money. When we pay someone, that is for them, or more importantly, the chain of people and value they add to the thing we are buying. 

Chain of value-adding people is key to the high cost of buying items of convenience. Durable goods such as cars and washing machines are good examples of value adding chains. The goods we buy are sourced from all over the world. At each step, each piece adds cost to the final product. For example, if someone produces the tires for a vehicle, they need to be paid, as do their sources. Every step, every part, has to be made and shipped and assembled. That’s a lot of folks with hands out. 

 Now, let’s pick one that is not so obvious. What about a McDonald’s Big Mac? No, we aren’t picking on them exclusively, but they are so ubiquitous they are relatable for most people. When we buy a Big Mac, we are paying multiple premiums on that food. There is a large chain of people involved in making sure you get your tasty Big Mac promptly. Those toasted sesame seeds on that bun didn’t toast themselves. 

The Obvious

 Every time we make a purchase decision, we are deciding what amount of right and how quickly we are willing to pay for it. We all make those decisions every day. In general, we probably don’t think about them. Many of us don’t think along these lines actively, but we all do process the data we are given as a set of trade-offs. 

When we are in the store, we may choose a high-end brand name product or a less expensive generic. In each case we are actually making a choice of what ‘done right’  is from a product pov. We place a monetary value on that choice.  The monetary decision is based on how much we value something versus how much the rest of society is willing to pay for something. 

Enter Convenience

We are often willing to pay a premium for a quicker reward. The same goes for buying time back. If you are working 45 hours a week, have a couple kids, and hobbies, time is a precious commodity. Time is finite and the demand curve we have for it can be very inelastic. Doing some research yields that an average person splits between 80-90% of their time between work, household work, and human needs, that doesn’t leave a lot of free time.  

A callout on that data. That sample feels skewed but as with all things health related, it is a best guess based on a series of polls. The group sampled was between ages 15 and 64 and may or may not be employed. There is enough common knowledge around sleep, and work life balance, to contradict some of this. That being said, the trade, in many cases, would be an increase in work and commuting at a loss of sleep instead of additional free time, which would lead to the same problem of limited time.

With so little time, many are willing to pay for services that can’t perform or simply don’t have time for. Don’t have time for dinner? Order out! Don’t have time to clean? Hire a cleaning service! Want a date night alone for two? Hire a nanny! But what are the actual trade offs?

Time vs Money Pitfalls 

When we pay money for goods, many times, we are expecting to get time back. That doesn’t always happen. Why? Consider this:

• Our money supply is generated through us spending time earning. 
• Because society considers some skills more valuable than others, we earn different amounts based on our work.
• When we purchase an item, it usually comes with a chain of value adders that drive up its price, making it a premium product relative to what we may be able to do on our own.

Why do these items matter? Because your money is directly tied to your time. That is what money is exchanged for. You have knowledge, goods, or other items you have invested your time in. Sometimes the trade offs work, and sometimes they don’t.

Examples In Numbers

Let’s do some math. Doug makes $40 an hour. Doug has two kids and a domestic partner. We will say if Doug chooses, he can make dinner for 4 in 45 minutes with $15 of ingredients.  The other choice is that Doug picks up food on his way home, which costs him 15 minutes of time and $10 per person plus a $5 tip. 

The cost of each meal is not only in the dollar cost but the time cost. Doug values his time at $40 an hour.  That means if Doug spends 45 minutes making dinner, his time value is equivalent to $30. When you add $15 of ingredients to that cost, you get the meal for 4 being $45 of his time. 

Conversely, if Doug opts to pick up food, it is more expensive. Fifteen minutes is equivalent to $10. That means the meal cost him $55 of his time.  In this case, what looks like a time buy back costs someone more than they value their time at.

Now we look at Ann. Ann has a similar domestic arrangement. She makes $80, which is double the value of time when compared to Doug. That makes the meal made at home worth $75 worth of her time. The meal out would equate to $65 worth of her time. In Ann’s case, she is buying back her time, but really, only $10 worth. If she were to make enough for leftovers, it might still be worth her time to make the meal at home.  

Our Learnings

As we started to re-evaluate many things in our life, we built out a calorie budget. The first outcome from that was we had to stop eating out. We had used restaurants for convenience, thinking they were saving time.  At our cabin, we had to start cooking more as well. We decided to use some discount grocers as they were a one-stop shop in those less urban areas. At the same time, we were tracking our budget looking for what we need for retirement. A funny serendipitous thing happened.

Both the amount we were spending on going out and our groceries went down significantly. By being calorie conscious, we cut our eating out, which led to eating in. Looking at future retirement needs made us look at being more price conscious. This led to a further reduction in cost. Interestingly enough, we didn’t lose time waiting in lines or for someone to prepare a meal for us. Finally, it made us look at other areas where we were paying for convenience. 

Tips And Traps

Finally, we come to some tips and traps from our learnings. Hopefully they will be food for thought for others.

Tips:

• In terms of ‘Done Right’, premium products may not be worth it. Most products have generic or house brands that are just as good or close enough.
• Before making a purchase choice, think about your time and what it is worth. If something is going to be 8 hours of your time, you are saying it is worth a day working to have it.
• By planning, you can cut down the need for urgency, which usually comes with a trade-off of a higher price.
• Look around your home and ask yourself if every product is needed. Many home products are easy to make with items we have on hand, are just as effective as store-bought.
• Block out time to make a menu or craft items on your calendar so you can stay ahead of needs
• Be intentional in how you spend money, meaning know what your time is truly worth. 

Traps:

• What we perceive as time saving may not be when weighed against other trade-offs once we think about the total cost of that item.. 
• Commit to doing things more than once if they require an investment in tools and supplies.  If you don’t, those tools and supplies will make the initial time you do something more expensive than it is probably worth. 
• Not defining ‘good enough’ before we start a project or even eating out can lead us to overspending. 
• Prioritizing ‘Cheap’ for items when we should prioritize ‘Done Right’ can cause us to re-spend the same time and money over and over. 

One Last Musing

One outcome for us from our learnings was in how we approached a more intentional form of spending our time and money. We came to look at some items as challenges to be solved through hobbies. For us, we decided to make things like making hot sauce, beer, sausage, and jerky part of our things that were fun to do. When we do this, the time cost is reduced for both the hobby and what it produces. For example, if you fish, and you eat fish, while not a convenient thing to do, you help fund your meals while enriching your life via those hobbies. 

Wrapping Up

If you are still with us, we thank you for your patience. This is not a simple topic. The takeaway is there is a cost for convenience. There are times that cost makes sense and there are times it does not. By learning to value your time, and understand what is ‘good enough’, you can better address your budgeting. Further, if you can use your hobbies as a way to cut down the need for convenience items, you can reduce your overall spend of both time and money.

The post The True Cost Of The Easy Way first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

There’s No Accounting for Taste

Before we start, let’s recognize and acknowledge ‘There’s no accounting for taste’. It has been a mission of ours for over a year to understand how to be frugal with food without compromising quality. Taste, and quality, are different for different folks. That being said, we have found what works for us and a level of quality of food that we are comfortable with. To produce it, in general, we don’t rely on premium products with a few exceptions. 

Definitions

We will start by giving some definitions for context. These are our definitions and how we approach the tradeoffs we see between money, time, and waste. Waste is an important concept in economies. We will touch on that after we give some definitions.

• The Economics of Scale are places where you can lower costs by buying more. We often see this in membership warehouse stores such as Costco or large-scale retailers such as Walmart. In their cases the volume of buying power allows them to negotiate lower prices.
• The Economics of Time ( also considered Convenience) is how much time a person invests to use, make, or do something. These are usually things like trade-offs between making food and eating out where we weigh the amount of our time to something against the purchase cost.
• The Economics of Zero Waste (or simply Waste) comes from the idea of zero-waste living. For economies of scale and time to be optimized we want to limit waste. If we don’t limit waste, we are losing money and time for items that add no value which negatively impacts economies of scale and time. 

Do You Care?

Maybe? Maybe Not? We found these three concepts are a guiding rubric for balancing budget and life. They lead to feeling better about how we spend our time and money by providing a logical way to gauge purchases. There are times when we have more money than time and vice versa. Everyone has their value systems, and they change over time as our lives change. 

By being conscious of what is important to you, you can save time, money, and waste so they are good to know. That may sound obvious but know it is easy to lose track of goals and focus when life is busy. We will look next at how these three themes affect our personal home economics. 

The Big Three

Scale 

If you choose to make more food at home, you can leverage the economics of scale to your advantage. Many people may know this coming from large families but in general the more you buy, the cheaper the price. In essence, you are mimicking the same idea of purchasing power as any large retailer would but on a personal level.

We are all used to seeing sales where we get 3 steaks for the price of 2 or buy one get one for a dollar more. That is simply marketing to average out a value that entices us to buy more than we usually would. Due to that, you may choose to cook steaks over pork chops that night. Getting a deal is great but buying cooking staples in bulk usually is not the same concept. You may choose to buy 

You can spend less money by weight for items like oil, flour, spices, etc. as you increase the quantity of your purchase. Those are the economies of scale we are discussing.  As the weight increases from say a quart to a gallon, your price will go down per oz.  In many cases, the prices will go down even more. Spices also follow this model. I have paid the same or more for 1.5 ozs of the same spice in a jar as I have for a 14 oz large plastic restaurant container. 

Time and Convenience 

Time, and its partner, convenience is also a critical cost measurement. As in any economy, we are trading specialization and using money as a common way to value our time. The more money we make, the more time we can free up through purchasing time through convenience. This is exactly what happens when we order food regularly. Sometimes makes perfect sense to order out to save some time or as a treat. Ordering out isn’t the only time and convenience vs money trade-off. 

Some recipes are multi-step, and labor-intensive food to produce like lasagna. It is here that we need to start thinking about our time and the outcome of it on a per portion time cost. We can buy a lasagna we like, that is about 85% as good as homemade, and that saves us 2 hours in a kitchen, for about the same cost as homemade for 10 portions. That is not the same as when we make a soup or bread in which we get better quality for 30-60 minutes of active involvement. 

That being said, we struggle when it comes to going out for a sandwich, hamburger, or tacos. Making them at home gives us the ability to control our portions, use items on hand, and have roughly the same outcome as dining out quality-wise. Further, we can make them cheaper and in roughly the same amount of time, we would take to eat out.

Waste

Waste is where the idea of saving time and money can become casualties. The idea behind economies of zero waste is to reuse, re-purpose, and not throw out anything salvageable. In terms of food, this means when eating out or in. Where this resonates with us is the idea of not wasting just food but time and money. 

When you choose to go out, you are paying a premium in money for your food as it has been created through others’ work. You are usually paying a premium time-wise for those portions. For events, celebrations, etc. that may be the intent. If you then have leftovers and don’t take them home, you are creating additional waste which doubles the effective cost in time and money.

This also occurs in home cooking. If you buy ingredients that are one-off or go bad before you can use them you are creating waste. It means you spent a premium for one meal. Why? If you buy say, fish sauce for $10, use two tablespoons, then let it go bad after a lack of use, you spent $10 on a single part of a single meal. 

Putting It Together 

Let’s try and talk through how this works in practice from what we did. We decided to cook at home more than eat out to control our calorie budget. This initially meant spending more time and was less convenient than eating out. In essence, at first, we lost time however, we immediately saw a decrease in monetary cost and waste. 

We then found portion control to be problematic and stored too much food. This created a different set of wastes for us through freezer burn. The lack of variety also made us stumble and go back to eating out more again which was more wasted time not only in going out but time sunk into making things we didn’t eat. 

Where we landed was understanding, for us, what we did well at home. For example, we will go out for Thai or Chinese as we don’t want to store what are one-off items and ingredients. Further, because we specialize in certain areas, we know what we can buy in bulk.  This has led to optimizing through getting good at a wide variety of things we can produce quickly. It has also kept the cost down as we buy things such as flour, cheese, butter, etc. in quantities that allow us to buy cheaper.

We Aren’t Anti-Local

There is a perception that large retailers such as Walmart, Amazon, etc. destroy local community stores. There are tradeoffs to having them for sure. Our point in this post is not to guide you to them instead of other options. It is the opposite. We use both types of retailers as needed and use them for what they each excel at. 

We see each as a specialist in an area. I see no reason to spend a premium on bulk canola oil at a local grocery store. It’s cooking oil, nothing more and nothing less. Conversely, for example, in our small-town Walmart, there aren’t any specialty meats or local flavors. In those cases, we are always willing to pay the premium to a local business. It’s your conscience and value system so you should do you. That is an economy that deals in personal beliefs we don’t dare touch it.

Wrapping Up

We have discussed several economies and rubrics around their use. By learning what is important for you, you can reduce costs in both time and money while reducing waste. This is only an initial post on this subject. We will tie this into how having chosen to keep items on hand and investing in learning opens more options for cost reductions. 

The post How To Make Your Home Economy Work first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Portions Vs Meals

In another post, we discussed the difference between portions and meals. We also discussed what a serving size is and isn’t. Since we know a serving size is something based on what others eat, we want to define a portion as the amount of something you eat based on your calorie budget. For example, you may order a pizza but may only eat two slices of an extra-large pie. Was that a portion or a serving of that pizza?

We are calling that out intentionally as we know there is confusion around the definitions of portions vs servings. This becomes a bit more problematic to talk about in multi-course meals where we have proteins, starches, and usually a vegetable as a main entree plus sides. 

This gets more problematic because when building an a la carte meal, you will need portions that make up all three. When you take home leftovers from a restaurant, you may see all three as one portion of a meal. This portion thing begins to sound a little weird but, no worries, we will clear it up a bit later. 

Portion Planning 

To plan for a month of meals we need to extend the number of items we need to have on hand.  Don’t worry, they don’t necessarily add to our work. Remember we can gain portions from simply cooking a little more or taking home leftovers from a restaurant. Before we get to that, let’s give ourselves a definition and again a little harmless math.

• Number of Diners per Meal (NDpM) which is, you guessed it, the number of people you need to feed.
• A complete Meal we define as a meal that approximates proteins, starches, and vegetables to approximate the USDA MyPlate standard.

Let’s also use the table and definitions we had in the previous post to work through our math.

Running Total of Meals Worksheet

The Math

Let’s assume 4 diners for our NdpM. What we then have for the total number of portions we need to make or have on hand for four weeks is 4 x 84  or 336 individual portions correct? That is not exactly the right number as we had defined a complete meal as containing 3 items. This means our Made To Order, A La Carte, and Snack-style meals all may be constructed of individual items such as a portion of chicken, rice, and say roasted corn. The Made To Order may also be complete as is such as fried rice with pork and vegetables. 

That leaves us with roughly a need for the following minimum and maximum items for a meal. 

Min and Max Items per Meal Worksheet

Putting this all together we would need a minimum and maximum number of meal portions, as shown below.

Combined Totals Worksheet

When we multiply those totals by our NDpM of 4 you will notice that we get absurd numbers of between 352 and 672 portions of food to feed a group of 4 for a month. In our case, we are only two so we get between 176 to 336 portions of food. 

They Are Real Numbers

They are real but not scary. Remember that is how much you need for 4 people for a month. We also need to realize that If you buy a 2lb bag of corn, depending on your and your diner’s calorie budgets, you may get eight 4-ounce portions of vegetables from it. When you cook a 3lb roast, after water loss, you may get ten 4-ounce portions from it. What happens if you throw in some mashed potatoes which are just as easy to create twelve 4-ounce portions?

What happens is that you have just covered a Made To Order meal that covers creating up to two complete meals for four plus extra portions left over to use for another meal. You just knocked out 20 portions in one meal. Wait, it gets better. What about pre-made or takeout? In each of these cases, you may end up with more food than can be eaten in one sitting. Those extra portions can be used to make meals later as well.

Well Duh! 

We spent a lot of time telling you something you already knew….maybe? We all inherently do this type of planning from week to week but maybe not month to month. By being cognizant of how we can plan longer term, and reduce food making to portions we need rather than having not enough or too much. 

As we started to cook at home more, we thought we needed a lot more than we did. We found ourselves cooking and storing too much. We arrived at thinking about portions over serving size or complete meals to help us plan. We also focused on a calorie budget to make sure our meals were appropriately sized. This began to save us time and money over the aggregate. 

This is also a rolling plan meaning after a while, the meals you make help support the extra portions. This happens more naturally as you learn to think about the trade-offs of say doing individual items such as a roast vs a casserole. It also eventually leads to having a larger mix of items you want to eat at home which can reduce dependency on eating out. 

Wrapping Up

In this post, we have discussed the nuances of planning with portions over just meals. At first glance the numbers are scary however they are simply numbers. Once you understand this is a month of food numbers aren’t that absurd.

Further with some lifestyle tweaks, we found we could quickly fill them with very little effort. They do give us an approach to managing our food, shopping, and eating out with a goal of efficiency and reduced waste. Lastly, this approach helps us keep an eye on our calorie budgets whether we want to slim down, maintain, or bulk up. 

The post How To Make Meal Plans With Portions first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

To start thinking about a plan, we needed to break down our meals into some taxonomy so we could talk about how many of each type we would want. As discussed previously in our budget post, this will give us a rough idea of how many of each we want and the trade-offs of making them.  Here is our meal taxonomy:

• Made To Order: Any meal we are preparing to eat when done cooking
• Homemade One Dish: Any meal containing protein, starch, and vegetables in one dish such as Beef Stew.
• Pre-made One Dish: Any meal such as frozen store-bought lasagna or burritos purchased to be cooked by us that contained protein, carbohydrates, and vegetables.
• A La Carte: Individual portions of protein, starch, or vegetable such as roast turkey, mashed potatoes, or corn but not mixed.
• Snack Style: Any meal that is composed of items we think of as snacks like crackers, cheese, smoked fish, etc. 
• Restaurant: Any meal where we plan to go out to eat which can run the gamut from a 3-star Michelin restaurant to the local convenience store hot case.

Why do we need a taxonomy to plan? Because we want to define what we need to store in our fridge, freezer, and pantry in some manner so we can have a known number of things. This classification allowed us to plan how we would use what was stored when we stored it. This eventually led to understanding how much time and money we needed to spend to keep us fully stocked. More on that later.

A La Carte Further Defined

We defined this as a specific way to think about how we stored parts of meals that were interchangeable. The point of a la carte is to have multiple ways to address both our Daily Required Intake (DRI) while attempting to handle ideas covered by MyPlate. Let’s work through an example.

If we have roasted corn as a vegetable side frozen, we can use that corn with many different things. The same for store-bought frozen carrots. We can have them with turkey, steak, or pork tenderloin. They also pair well with starch such as rice, mashed potatoes, and a dinner roll. Due to this mix-and-match form, we stuck to calling it a la carte as each was an individual item to be eaten on its own.

Doing Some math

Okay, we have to do some math here. If that’s not your cup of tea, that’s fine, you can skip ahead to the table. For those feeling a need to understand how we got there, here is the skinny. Also, note we are discussing meal plans first and leave total portions for another part of the post. First some definitions:

• The number of Meals per Day (MpD) and Total Days to budget for (TD) should be self-explanatory. To develop our plan, we will assume most people eat 2-3 meals daily and consider a week 7 days. 
• The Total number of Meals (TnM) is MpD x TD so if you have 3 meals a day for 7 days you will have 3 x 7 =21 meals to plan. 
• Weeks to Plan (WtP) is how many weeks we will be planning for.

Let’s do some math now. We want to plan for 4 weeks of eating 3 meals a day. Based on our math TnM = MpD x TD x WtP. We then get 3 x 7 x 4 = 84 meals. That means from our taxonomy of different meal types we need to decide how to fulfill 84 meals over four weeks. Let’s not let the numbers scare us yet. We will prove that creating that amount of food is easier than it sounds. 

We Figure You Already Know This

There is nothing rocket science here in the math we have discussed so far but we feel we need to start here. Anyone can come up with the above in some shape or form. We started here to set a baseline. As planning grows in complexity, with the number of dinners, calorie budgets, portion planning, etc. we wanted to have some set of initial kick-offs to ground us. Those nuances will follow in additional posts.

Breaking It Down

Let’s put that into a table spread across our meal types. This is our ‘plan’ for what we need. We did this with a spreadsheet but you can visualize this any way you like. This is an example as you may choose different combinations for your needs based on calorie, time, and financial cost of meals.

In this table above, the keywords are running the total needed and we can dig in there a bit harder to explain. 

The running total means the total number of meals we must have in stock for the next four weeks. It doesn’t mean the number of meals we must make for the next four weeks. What this gives us is an idea of how much we need to buy, make, or eat out to satisfy our calorie budget goals for the next month. It is also a predictor of how much we can use in the next four weeks. 

Part of the challenge we faced was overstocking. We want to keep enough meals around to fit our needs without making so many we need a large amount of space to keep them. We found ourselves having too much at times which took forever to use up. Also, we found we would become unbalanced which caused us to spend more time making one-offs than we wanted. 

The totals are not related to the number of meals we have to make from scratch. We can get economies of scale here by making extra portions for a meal, buying multi-portion meals like frozen pizza, or even taking home some leftovers from say our favorite Thai takeout. 

Portions vs Meals 

What we have intentionally avoided discussing portions in this post. We will follow up in another post on how portions play into planning. It is in the portion sizes that the economies of scale start working for us. Since the number of portions needed is a function of how much we make, which style of meals, our calorie budgets, and the number of diners we have, it is best to have it in another post. 

Wrapping Up

In this post, we have discussed how to make a basic plan for the amount of meals you need. This planning helps budget food, storage space, time,e and turnover of items. By doing a little math based on a loose taxonomy of meal types, we can define our needs more accurately. Once this plan is understood, we can look next to how to use it to fulfill our meal and portion needs. 

The post How To Make Usable Meal Plans first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Back to the Beginning

Going back in time, we ate out a lot. It was fun to try new things. Over time, we started to see patterns. It wasn’t just local food patterns. The more we traveled, the more we saw the same patterns repeated. It wasn’t just the food we ate out. If you stop by a country or farmers market, you see many of the same things as great ideas spread quickly even when those items are artisan-made.

As the internet has spread knowledge and people have moved around the US we assert cooking has become less regional. For example, we have had some great New England Clam Chowder in Newport, Oregon which is, was, and remains absolutely nowhere near New England. If we are going to eat the same everywhere, why not just make it ourselves? Ironically, this consistency was born out of the Fast Food Industry however that is another post.

Fries are Potatoes, That is all they Are.

Fried or baked potatoes are fries. Sure, fries vary by name and process but they are still just cooked potato starches. We jazz them up with names like steak, hand cut, double fried, or crinkle cut. The particular type of fry may or may not have some seasoning and is generally served with ketchup, fry sauce, or other condiments. Regardless of the process, spice, flavoring, or final textures, all fries are just cooked potatoes.

You don’t have to agree and maybe it is a huge generalization to say that. Why say it? Because in the most basic sense, it isn’t the fry itself that is where the flavor is. We started to look at this and recognized we ate a lot of basic fries when eating out. It was rarely the fry itself that stuck out as great. The real flavor of a fry came from how they were seasoned and what they were served with.

The A-Ha Moment

While deep frying can be problematic due to cleanup, crinkle, and steak fries became part of our new at-home cooking repertoire. It was also about calories. To fit our calorie budget and health goals we stuck to baked fries such as crinkle cut and steak. We were walking through our local grocery store and saw certain chicken restaurants’ versions of fry sauce in a bottle. I was about to grab it and then decided there was no way we would use 16 ounces (which is 24 servings) of fry sauce at 160 calories a serving. 

This now became a search of what could I make if we had basic ingredients on hand. The basic sauces we bought or wanted were Honey Mustard, Sriracha-Ranch, Fry Sauce, Tartar, and Curry Ketchup. Our pantry had all the raw ingredients on hand because all of these were built out of basics. The basic condiments (Ketchup, Mayonnaise, Mustard),  and spices (Onion, Garlic, and Curry Powder) with a couple of other basic items we used all the time (Ranch Dressing, Honey,  and Sriracha). 

They also took all of 5 minutes to make, didn’t take up any more room in the kitchen, or produce any more waste. Buying them seemed counter-productive when we could make them ourselves in very little time with the ingredients we already had. Let’s shift to the hard ones, which aren’t easy and do take up time. 

If We Could Make Some, Could We Make All?

Making your own bread, hot sauce, crackers, pickles, candy, and even beer doesn’t make sense from a financial or time point of view for too many of us at first glance. That is to say, you can buy all of these items at a low price with no time investment other than driving to your local grocer. Why bother then? Most people will say it is to produce a higher quality item with fewer additives. That is part of the reasoning. For us, it was three simple things.

• It was a way to have hobbies that had outcomes that were things we needed.
• We knew exactly what went into what we made.
• We controlled our portion sizes and limited our waste.

The third bullet point is where the economies of scale kicked in for us. First, let’s talk about hobbies and knowing what we made. 

We Could But Why?

We wanted some of our hobbies, that we paid money to do, to produce value-added items to our life. It is fine to have hobbies that simply are fun to do. When writing out a budget, we took that into account. We realized we could offset some of our non-disposable income from groceries to fun money if the outcome from our hobbies helped produce the groceries we needed. This helped us justify some of our trips and hobbies such as fishing and gardening.   

While we did want to know what went into what we made, it wasn’t as key to us in making things ourselves. The reality for us is reading the back of the package, and the artificial ingredients in store-bought food were not scary. Why? Because to make some of the items we make we had to learn about them by doing our research. This took the fear out of many additives for us though we still did limit as much adulteration of food as we could. 

It’s About Both Reuse and Portion Size

The economies of scale are where things kicked off but not in the way we initially think of saving money. While some of the equipment was an investment, over time, it gets cheaper and cheaper to create the same items. You may need to buy a fermenter to make pickles or hot sauce. That is a one-time investment. After that, the same fermenter can be used over and over again. Same with a dehydrator for jerky which is another post.

What we found was that items lasted longer with less waste. By making our own we could tailor the size of the portions to our calorie budget needs. A store-bought item such as sliced bread has a pre-determined portion size. That is the same with bagels, crackers, cookies, candies, etc. If you want that portion size that is great. We didn’t which either led to wasted food and money or over-eating. It is in the customizable size for each item which makes it worth the time to make it ourselves.

Dollars and Sense

In complete honesty, whether or not it is cheaper to create items at home can be debated. Empirically we see a cost savings for us. The reality is that may not be the case for everyone. Just because the ingredients are cheaper, it doesn’t mean there aren’t additional hidden costs. Gas and power for cooking aren’t free. Your time isn’t free. We believe you will feel more rewarded and have better food and lower costs however, it may not be large financial savings. This is exactly why we consider it part of our hobbies and lifestyle choice over cost savings.

Where We Win

We get to eat the things most people can’t keep in their diet because we:

• Have control of the portion size to fit our budgets
• Know the ingredients so we can make it on a smaller budget.
• We re-use all the equipment we bought for multiple purposes.

After reading this post we hope you agree that learning to make many things yourself helps manage finances, waste, and calories. We assert we all buy convenience items that can be made cheaply and be of just as high or better quality. It also helps divert funds from things like eating out to creating better meals through your means. This frees up more budget for other pursuits and hobbies. 

The post Learn How To Make Versus Buy first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Why We ended up Wasting so Much

We needed to have a diverse menu stored at home to stop using restaurants. This created many challenges. We had always done some level of home cooking. It has changed over the years. It started with basics then became creating dishes from magazines like Bon Appétit, Cook’s Illustrated, or Food & Wine.

As we tried cooking different dishes, we realized that when the ingredients in recipes hit 4 or 5 ‘exotic’ ingredients we had a lot of wasted food. These ingredients may be everyday items to some people and cultures. What we found there was only so much fish sauce or garbanzo bean flour we could put to use day to day.  This resulted in a routine purge of our cupboards, pantry, and fridge every 6 months. If it was past the use-by date, it went out through the disposal or garbage.

The Labels Don’t Mean It’s Bad

This was absolutely an incorrect use of that label. In our case, we were doubling our waste. We had a recreational property that we wanted to keep food in stock as well. If we didn’t cook ourselves we were relying on a couple of local restaurants and eating from the local gas station hot case. Based on our calorie budget, we wanted better options. We decided to do our research.

The USDA provides the following information:

• A “Best, if Used By/Before” date, indicates when a product will be of the best flavor or quality.  It is not a purchase or safety date.
• A “Sell-By” date tells the store how long to display the product for sale for inventory management.  It is not a safety date. 
• A “Use-By” date is the last date recommended for the use of the product while at peak quality. It is not a safety date except for when used on infant formula as described below.
• A “Freeze-By” date indicates when a product should be frozen to maintain peak quality. It is not a purchase or safety date.

The USDA also makes two specific callouts around eggs and infant formula. These are nuanced regulations that don’t apply to the bulk of the foods we eat. In terms of baby formula, the Use-By date indicates that it still contains the nutrients it should.  As an FYI, there are also non-federal requirements by some states on labeling eggs ‘Sell-By’ or ‘Expiration’. Neither are pertinent to the discussion of food waste in our bigger picture.

Misunderstanding Leads to Waste

Retail and consumer waste is a real issue in the US. The number is a staggering 30-40% between retail and consumer. The entire distribution chain from source to consumer contributes to the waste. The factors that contribute to the waste include everything from spoilage to culling of blemished items. Let’s spin this another way.

Let’s say we consumers waste 10% of our food. That means we are throwing away 10% of the money we have spent on it. At the time of writing this, the average consumer spend on groceries was above $250 a week which is over $13,000 a year. If we waste 10% of what we buy we are effectively throwing away $1,300 a year in groceries alone because the number doesn’t include eating out. The true cost of the waste is more than financial. The true cost includes environmental costs such as transportation, water, feed, and processing along with animals (if in your diet) are wasted. That is a huge issue for a population as large as the US.

We Went Old School

This learning led us to change our food habits. We learned to perform a visual and sniff test rather before we pitch it in the trash as recommended by the USDA. There are some things I don’t trust like milk but most foods will let you know they are on the downward slide. Commercially canned foods such as say, Baked Beans, may be fine well past their best-by date. Cuts of beef may be aged for up to 4 weeks which is a longer time than your typical use-by date.

For home-produced foods, such as canning or fermenting, it becomes more complicated. Some items will not put off any sign they are dangerous. That we will address in another post. We will also discuss how we learned to maximize storage and efficiently use it in another post as well.

Your Money, Your Safety Choice

The takeaway here is that the US does not regulate food through these labels. Labeling provides no real safety nets for our food. By making informed decisions, and using basic sensory information (Does it smell bad?) you can cut your waste which leads to decreased spending.  

People want hard and fast safety rules but the USDA and others simply don’t provide them.  If you are in an ‘at risk’ group such as very young or old, you may not feel like taking the chance. With what we have learned, we will take our chances by using our senses instead of dates.

The post The Simple Truth Of Best And Use By first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Weight Loss is a Lucrative Industry

The weight loss industry was worth roughly $90 billion in 2023 according to Market Research. This is just the drugs, programs, and pills. The fitness industry adds another roughly $22.4 billion to that according to Health & Fitness. The sports nutrition market was worth about $44 billion in 2023 based on data from Allied Market Research. Dietary supplements are another huge industry weighing in at $183 billion based on research by Garage Gym Review.

Why is this industry making so much money? Everyone knows meeting your calorie and nutrition intake needs for your goals is not easy. All of us would love it if someone had a pill for that, or a program, or a supplement that made it so much easier right? If someone can give you something simple, for a fee, to help you meet your goals, why wouldn’t we? Well, we chose not to due to sustainability.

Some Things are Legit and Necessary

Let’s also qualify some things. There are legitimate medical drugs and supplements for weight loss/gain. These come from medical and healthcare professionals. For someone who has specific medical needs, some things can be prescribed. There are also nutritional substitutes recommended by your care providers when you are sick. In my case, it was to add mass after a month-long bout of mono left me 20 lbs lighter than I should have been. 

In these cases, the items prescribed or recommended don’t always come without a cost or risk. Some are meant to be used for a limited time. The insurance you have may not cover them which leaves you paying for them out of pocket. You may have adverse reactions to them. Having had reactions with medications I can say first hand it wasn’t a joy ride I wanted to take again unless my doctor told me to.

Some Things are Gray Areas

In our case, we wanted to be ahead of needing such drastic measures. We also looked into some of the more natural supplemental management tools such as Apple Cider Vinegar. With no real scientific evidence to back up the claims, we didn’t trust it (or any of them). It felt like we were being sold snake oil in the Old West. Again, it was another thing that just didn’t seem sustainable to use. The whole area of these types of supplements is worthy of an entire blog post at another time.

We know that programs and diets do work for some people. We began to question the long-term sustainability of the programs and diets. Programs and diets that create a permanent behavior change can create sustainable lifestyles. This was our takeaway from the initial research we did for ourselves.  All of them seemed to point directly back to what we were already learning. At their core, they were a series of goals to meet using controlled portion sizes and nutritional makeup.

Let’s Talk About Two Examples

The Basic: Here’s Your Program Plan

Let’s talk about an example. Weight Watchers has been around for a long time. It has changed and adapted and grown. The medical community supports it. Their big selling point is you can eat any food you like. They have apps, plans, nutritionists, and other professionals on their payroll to help you.  If it fits your points based on your profile, you can make and eat it. 

Will it help you? The answer is maybe. For us, we asked the question of whether it was sustainable long term. The answer for us was only if we were able to learn from it. We decided we didn’t want to invest our time or money in something we could learn ourselves.

For some, the idea of community, gamifying your weight goals, nutritional analysis, and other perks may help. A lot of what they offer is psychological support and mechanisms to keep you on track. At the time of writing this that was $23 a month. Cheap by most standards but couldn’t we do that ourselves?

A Bit More: We’re Your Personal Chef

We also looked at meal replacement programs like Jenny Craig. They have also been around for a long time. For a fee, you create a menu of items from their program, and they ship it to you. It would cut down our grocery bills and make life a lot easier to plan food and nutrition-wise. We travel so our menu had to be portable. The price tag was also around $150 a week per person at the time of writing this. For two people, for 52 weeks, that is $15,600 a year. 

Not Good, Not Bad, Not Sustainable

We realized that these types of diets, programs, and pills weren’t sustainable for us. Are you going to spend that money or stick to a menu someone else creates for the rest of your life to keep your goals? We weren’t.

It isn’t that Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, or any type of plan is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The issue is that if you aren’t learning how it manages your weight goals, it won’t become part of your habits and lifestyle. That means the gains we would make were tied to something we couldn’t sustain.

For us, this is why we invested in understanding these things the hard way. With all the apps, data, and information out there, we could do it ourselves. By taking the time to invest in ourselves we learned how to have healthier habits. More importantly, we learned how to handle situations the programs didn’t cover like when we were on vacation or traveling. 

We have talked about why many aspects of weight management such as diets, supplements, and pills can work in the short term but not the long. At the end of this post hopefully, you start to realize how an entire industry is trying to sell you many things you can do yourself. Not only can you do them yourself, you can change your life habits in the process. The win here is that you also don’t need to spend money to do it.

The post It’s About Goals Not Quick Fixes first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Cooking Only Once in a While was Wastefull

We have always cooked our meals in some fashion or another. When younger it was simply a necessity. As time went by, it was more about food as fun. This change led us to attempt impractical recipes and to a lot of waste of ingredients. Even using one of my favorite magazines, Cooks Illustrated, we had a lot of wasted ingredients. We started to find we had a ¼ jar of this and ½ a jar of that left over from recipes. The more we saw of this, the less practical cooking ourselves became. As a result, if we wanted something special we went out. 

Both wastefully cooking at home and eating out had the same effects on us. They both blew up our calorie budget. Each was also costing us a lot of money. The latter one we will dig into more in another post. As I said in the earlier post the portion problem was such an epiphany, this is why. 

Cooking a Few more Portions Saves Time and Money

We decided to re-learn how to cook and plan. Why? We realized it takes roughly the same time to produce 10 servings of something as it does two. It’s that simple. We would go on to realize once we got good at it, it took about the same time to go out for a meal.

Don’t think it was easy giving up eating at restaurants. Eating out was another dopamine hit for us. It is for many people. Most people will also feel that they can’t cook or make restaurant-quality food. We learned the opposite. I can make a decent bowl of ramen and also can make some mean corn dogs. It took a while to get there but, hopefully, we can shorten the journey for some.

Would You Pay for a Horse You Can’t Ride?

We also started to look at this through a completely different lens. In our case, we were paying for calories we didn’t want. Most of us realize there is a cost to calories. We associate that cost with weight gain or loss. What most don’t equate is the cost of those calories you pay for but don’t eat. 

When you buy food at a restaurant you are paying a premium for the calories. The reason it is a premium is that the food is created for you by others. Would you pay for someone to paint your house and your deck if you didn’t have a deck? Of course not! Then why pay for food you aren’t going to eat?

At the Core of the Issue was Waste

We started to identify both of these issues. Ultimately our calorie budget made us use restaurants as little as possible. We recognized that the cost of the calories we were wasting was very high. As a result, we started to think we should invest our money in ourselves. We decided to get some decent kitchen equipment and start to cook at home more consistently.

Truth be told, it wasn’t just the calories or unpredictable portion sizes of restaurants. We learned quickly that counting calories was a pain. What made it worse was never knowing what was in the food. How much butter was in those mashed potatoes? Was that 4 or 5 ounces of fries? Not only was counting calories becoming more tedious, but it was also becoming completely unreliable.

Our Solution Was Imitating MREs and TV Dinners…Sort Of

Loving or hating the military is up to you. We feel we can learn from anyone. The one thing the military knows is logistics and the importance of food. The MRE or Meal Ready to Eat was the US evolution of food rations. It is designed to be stored for a long time and then used in the field. It has a description of everything in it nutrition-wise. What a brilliant idea for counting calories! Supposedly not too bad tasting as well? You know what, they weren’t too far from a civilian TV dinner either.

Now I’ve never had an MRE but I will make a huge assumption my food was better than a standard MRE. I know what I cook is way better than the TV dinners. We know the idea of an MRE doesn’t sound great to some. To be clear, we weren’t out to re-create them, we only wanted to use the concept.

We started creating our meals and storing them. This was a great way for us to create portions we wanted. We froze most things. The microwave was elevated in importance in our daily routine. They were easy to take to work. We also could put the dish in an app and not have to enter a guess for what we were eating. Because we made it ourselves, we could create it as a meal in our apps, and calorie counting became as easy as selecting it.

Wrapping Up

We had begun solving the problems of waste, and portion size, and making counting calories easier. This led to performing meal planning and learning a system for it. We will discuss how we worked through that in a post that follows.

Hopefully, at the end of this post, you can understand some of the challenges of eating out. It becomes an issue of control of calories and waste. While our previous post details come of the ways to work in eating out, overall, it wasn’t sustainable on a daily or even a few times a week. By re-learning to cook and package our meals we gained back money, time, and predictability. All of this helped us stay on track for our goals.

The post Cooking Simple For Better Control first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.