How to stop eating out?
January 29, 2021
It started when I was looking at some numbers and realized in 2019 my family and I spent more than $500/months on eating out for a total of more than $6000 for the year. This includes restaurants, snacks, coffees etc. We would tell ourselves we’d limit going out to once a week but sometimes in the week if we were running late, we’d eat out or if we were celebrating anything, or simply too tired to cook, or when we think we run out of food. Basically I dont think there was a single week where we actually stuck to once a week. To give you a more accurate picture of us in 2019. Amongst my friends, I was often the person that chose where we go or people often asked me for recommendations. My husband nicknamed me the concierge. Even if I haven’t been to a place, I knew about it. I even stopped posting on my instagram stories because I was self conscious of how often we’d go out because I would get DMs and comments from my friends and followers about how often we go out. It was pretty bad. So a few things and events led to us being able to completely change our habits, which I will talk about as I share my tips.
Tip #1: Know Your Why
I think one of the biggest reasons why we never succeeded before is because we didn’t have a clear why. Not having that clear why made it easy to make different choices. One of my clients actually really inspired me. I was working with this really lovely family in 2019 and while we tidied up the kitchen and fridge, I found out this family hardly ever ate meals out. We’re talking once every 6 months. I said to my client, wow, you must really love cooking. She said, no, I don’t. What I love is keeping my family healthy and feeding them healthy and nourishing food. You can totally see this in their pantry and fridge - it was packed full of organic produce and super foods. As a foodie, I hardly ever looked at food as fuel. I look at it as a pleasure thing. Whenever I think about eating out vs eating at home, I mostly considered the savings but my husband and I are not particularly motivated by money. I mean, we see that obviously as a benefit but it’s not enough to drive us to change. In that moment when you’re like, should we go home and make lunch or just grab some beyond burgers at A&W, you don’t think that $30 will make a big difference in your finances anyway. After my client said this to me, I couldn’t stopped thinking about it. Health - of course! I mean, my husband had many health challenges which led to limiting certain foods, I was so overweight, my son was a super picky eater. We were not healthy. Towards the end of 2019 around November/December was when I decided I wanted to make a change - I wanted to be healthier, have more energy, and I wanted to lose weight. I still had what my client said in my head and I quickly realized it would be so much easier to eat healthier if I was actually in control of my food. Because even when my husband and I would sometimes go out and choose a healthier option, like salads or poke bowls, you still can’t control exactly what’s in all the different sauces or the seasoning they used etc.
Tip #2: Always Have a Back Up
I think it was around the same time I decided to be healthier, I went to this intuitive eating workshop. There were many takeaways but the one thing that stuck out to me was one of the hosts said, if you always have a jar of organic tomato sauce and pasta in the pantry, then you always have a healthy meal as backup. Even if you don’t eat regular pasta, you can get gluten free ones or ones made with beans etc. For me, I think having this back up is so key. Of course some might argue it’s not THE healthiest meal but this is a back up and much healthier than most restaurant meals. Often When we’re on our way home and my husband and I would talk about what we could make for lunch or dinner and we’re not sure what we have in the fridge we know, we can always make pasta with sauce! This made it easy to choose to go home and cook instead of grabbing a meal while we’re out. Once we go home, sometimes we do have this pasta and sauce but often we end up finding something else. When we do have the pasta, Depending on what we have in the fridge, we always end up adding some veggies or frozen veggies, one of our family favourites is pasta, tomato sauce, frozen spinach and canned tuna (the kind in olive oil).
Tip #3: Try Different Cuisines
One of the appealing things about going out to eat is I love to try different foods and there is no reasons why you can’t do that at home. When we really missed going out for sushi, we started making it at home. We have also tried to make Okonomiyaki, which I’ve never had in a restaurant before but I found a recipe when I was looking up Japanese recipes. It was delicious so we now make it all the time. I’ve also been making more Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Italian food. It’s been a lot of fun to try all these different foods. So you never know when you’ll discover a new recipe that will be come a new family staple.
Tip #4: Have At Least 1 Theme Night
Choose something that everyone enjoys so everyone can look forward to it. We used to go out for pizza a lot and we decided to start making pizza every Friday at home. It’s great to have something to look forward to and honestly, even just taking away one decision to make each week for dinner feels great. We only do 1 theme night a week because I like variety but some people take it to the next level and have a theme for every night of the week. Like meatless Monday, taco Tuesday etc but I am happy with pizza Fridays and sometimes soup Sundays which brings me to my final tip which is to
Tip #5: Use Up What You Have
In fact, make it a game and challenge yourself to be creative. I know a lot of people do meal prep or meal plans to eat at home, I just can’t do that - like I think there are 2 types of people, one type doesn’t mind eating the same food everyday and one type that wants something different everyday. I am definitely that second type. Even when we eat leftovers, I often would make it into something different. I don’t even plan ahead because if I buy something for a specific recipe, I might change my mind and want to make something else by the time I get home. I am however, a pretty good cook and most of the time, I dont cook with recipes. I look at the ingredients in my fridge and pantry and I make something with it. It’s like a game. Even if you don’t think you’re capable, I want to challenge you to think differently.