When I was 22, I did Weight Watchers for a few months. Weight Watchers is painful for a variety of reasons (counting points is very tedious) but those AWFUL meetings were the worst! Imagine a group of women your mom’s age all sitting around talking about recipes and sharing recipes. Since I didn’t cook at the time, the whole recipe thing bored me and I didn’t really see the importance of cooking when it comes to weight loss.

A few months ago, I decided to try getting more serious about cooking. I bought a couple of healthy/low-fat cookbooks and started experimenting. Learning how to cook has been fantastic. Since I’m preparing my own meals, I get to eat tasty, satisfying, healthy food that isn’t boring or bland. I find the actual process of cooking to be really fun and most of my meals have turned out pretty well. In some weird way, the food that I cook seems to be more dignified and hence more satisfying.

I have also figured out that if I cook something over the weekend, my cooking experience is a lot more fun and much less stressful. Trying to cook (and having to cleanup) after a full day of work (and while starving) is just no fun. The best part about cooking on a Saturday or Sunday is that I usually have enough leftovers to serve as my dinners for the rest of the week.

I’m actually really amazed at how much of a difference cooking and preparing my own food has made in my satisfaction with my weight loss efforts. I think it is yet another way where this whole process is becoming more of a lifestyle change than a “diet.” Between preparing my own lunch and having leftovers for dinner, I’d estimate that well over 90% of my meals have been prepared at home. I actually don’t enjoy dining out as much as I used to, mostly because the food tends to be much much heavier than what I’m used to.