Weight Loss for Food-Lovers with Molly Zemek
Episode- The Pleasure in Cooking When Trying to Lose Weight (ep. 47)
Summary
In this episode of Weight Loss for Food-Lovers, Molly Zemek describes and explains how to find pleasure in cooking when trying to lose weight. She starts by explaining some misconceptions and unhelpful thoughts about cooking and weight loss. Then, Molly asks listeners to consider what their thoughts are around cooking. The first thought she addresses, is that you will snack too much while cooking. Molly reminds us that this habit can be changed by deconditioning the desire and allowing those urges, without acting on them.
Another way Molly has personally handled this challenge, is by thinking of cooking as showing love. While cooking, instead of thinking about the food or the temptation to eat the food, Molly thinks about who she is cooking the food for, and how much they are going to enjoy eating it. She chooses to focus on the gratitude she feels for being able to cook for others.
Molly also finds pleasure in cooking by being fully present and enjoying the complete sensory experience. She focuses on the tactile aspect of cooking, how the different ingredients feel and how it feels to work with them. In regard to smell, she encourages the listener to fully engage in this sense because so much pleasure can come from the smell of cooking, without ever tasting the food. She also listens to all the sounds of cooking, such as chopping and sizzling. She strives to appreciate the way the ingredients look. She encourages listeners that slow tastes of the food as your cooking, as long as you focus on the flavor of the food, is beneficial for a full sensory experience of cooking.
After addressing these thoughts around cooking and losing weight, Molly addresses the thoughts some people who don’t enjoy cooking may struggle with. One example is the thought that it will take too much time to cook. She encourages us that taking time to meal plan and meal prep, as well as focusing on using the right, high quality ingredients, are great ways to make cooking more manageable and to reframe our thoughts around cooking. She shares that compiling a portfolio of ingredients that fit into you plan and knowing how to prepare them, can make a big difference in how much time you spend in the kitchen.
Finally, Molly shares some final tips with listeners. First, she cautions against cooking when you are super hungry, and to instead try to cook ahead of becoming really hungry. She then encourages cooking from a place of gratitude, not from a place of resentment. Remember how important cooking is in your journey to well-being, and therefore, your overall improvement as a person.
Topics Covered
· Misconceptions About Cooking and Losing Weight
· Deconditioning Desires and Allowing Urges
· Cooking Out of Love
· The Sensory Experience of Cooking
· When Cooking Feels Like a Chore
Key Quotes
“You can still make cooking work for you, regardless of how you feel about it, if you are trying to lose weight.”
“The way that you change that habit [of snacking while cooking], and you create a new habit, is by allowing urges and deconditioning that desire.”
“I really focus on the people that I’m cooking for. I really just experience gratitude that I can create food like that as a gift for someone else.”
“[If you] really learn to just delight in the way something smells, you can appreciate and actually feel a certain level of satisfaction and fulfillment, just enjoying that sense of smell.”
“When you focus on just using the right ingredients, you don’t need to use a lot, and the cooking doesn’t need to be complicated.”
“The time that you’re devoting to cooking, is time that you are committing to your well=being, to evolving into a better version of yourself.”
Resources
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