Louisa's Weight Loss Blog

Google can find some great healthy recipes for you

Making your own food is always the healthier option as you know exactly what’s being put into it.  Packaged food can contain a surprising amount of sugar, salt, fat and chemicals, always check the label before you buy!

But what if you have no idea what to cook with your ingredients?

Cooking healthily can lead to some very boring meals, I mean who wants to eat plain salad for lunch and rivita biscuits for a snack everyday?

You can use Google to find interesting recipes for whatever you have lying around the kitchen!

Let’s have an example:

After routing through the fridge and cupboards I’ve spotted these healthy ingredients that will go well together:

• Chicken Breast (with no skin)
• Pasta
• Fresh Tomatoes
• Garlic

Type all the ingredients into a Google search and add in speech marks ‘healthy recipe’ at the end:

Google all your main ingredients and add "healthy recipe" on the end

The top result in Google produced a wonderful meal, thanks to foodnetwork.com this time round.

I guarantee you’ll find a suitable recipe in the top 5 search results; most of the sites will have user comments on the food’s taste and perhaps a star rating.  You may need herbs or other seasoning to enhance the flavour so it’s always handy to stock up on these at home.

Good luck on your cooking and remember cooking your own food is not only healthier, it’s another little exercise you can do (along with the washing up afterwards, hehe!)

I read an awful lot of weight loss blogs in my evenings. You could say I am hungry for knowledge because I want to lose wight and I want to create a comprehensive website packed full of useful diet tips, product reviews and general information for dieters over the world to use. I want to hear other people’s stories because this is a community.

However, I get incredibly angry when I see rubbish like this published online. I do wonder if the moderator approved my comment, I wasn’t rude but I made my feelings clear, “advice” like this is of no use to the normal man or woman at home just trying to lose a few lbs. In this blog post, the writer says that we have the ‘hot’ part of our brains, the part that acts on instinct and then the ‘cold’ logical part. We can resist chocolate cake apparently, if we count to 10 and access the ‘cold’ part of our brain.

Could you resist chocolate cake by simply asking yourself if you need this when you really, really want it? Didn't think so!

I’ve not heard such rubbish in a long time as cravings can last hours and hours. It is irresponsible to suggest to people that it is as simple as counting to ten to avoid eating chocolate cake. ‘Information’ like this is bandied around by people with very little weight loss knowledge purely trying to increase their website’s content so they can rank in Google. Writers like this know absolutely nothing of value to the weight loss community and clog Google with rubbish so the most useful stuff doesn’t actually appear on the first page.

Ignorant posters like this simply end up contributing to obliterating self-esteem in the long term as people feel weak for giving in and bumpf like this generally creates the idea among the weight loss newbies that ignoring cravings is easy. IT IS NOT! Weight loss is hard work, remember what your mum always said: “Nothing worth having ever comes easily.”

The author clearly does not understand how strong cravings for particular foods can be. I’ve heard of people driving miles and miles just to buy a particular kind of cake! If I told someone willing to drive 10 miles for cake to count to 10, close their eyes and breathe deeply or ask themselves if they really want the cake and I would fully expect a slap in the face and I would feel it was richly deserved too!

By the way, I’ve driven for 8 miles to a specific bakery for a particular kind of cake and another 12 miles back home after I found out they were closed and stopped to my 2nd choice on the way home. I know that telling people to access the ‘cold’ part of their brain is b*****ks!