My love for cooking is gone...

kshay89

Anyone else feel this way? I have loved to cook for several years now -- I love to experiment in the kitchen and throw things together, usually with successful results. I even have a food blog and people come to me with questions regarding food and recipes. It's one of my only hobbies and I love learning everything I can about it.

I've used MyFitnessPal with great success in the past, but due to some medical conditions, I'm essentially starting over. However, this time my passion for cooking is gone. It's not fun to cook when I'm having to measure and calculate everything I do. (I'm not a recipe follower.)

Anyone else struggle with this? What have you found helpful?

Michael190lbs

I love cooking and prepare food every wed and Sunday for the week. Life is to short to be unhappy I would get use to the size of stuff and then throw the measuring out the door. I use containers to measure food and Must be really close to my guestimates because its working for me..

Need2Exerc1se

Oh yes indeed. I love to cook! I found measuring everything and logging it and trying to determine serving sizes of recipes all that just WAY too much work because I cook most everything from scratch and rarely use recipes.

So, I stopped doing it. And you know what, I'm still losing weight. I do weigh and lookup some things occasionally, but for the most part I'm just losing weight the way I've always lost weight. By eating less than I was eating when gaining. And I still love to cook. In fact, looking for way to cut the calories without cutting the taste from some of my old favorites has become a fun new challenge in the kitchen for me.

shadowfax_c11

I think it helps that I spent over 10 years working in restaurants where everything had to be weighed and measured. When I started the CICO I was sure that it was going to really be a pain but I am not finding it to be too bad. And seeing the weight come off steadily just gives me more incentive on those days when I don't want to take the time.

Lizzy622

I agree with Need2. I take it as a challenge to make my old favorites but cut the calories and still have them taste great. I did start driving myself crazy with measuring every little thing including spices(which are usually only 5 to 30 calories). I only really measure the higher calorie stuff (fats,meats, nuts) and use a guesstimate for the lower calorie stuff (leafy greens, root vegetables and spices).

fitfabforties

I agree with the OP....food no longer holds much appeal for me....I live alone (with my daughter not with me all the time), so I don't cook much anymore either....and certainly nothing that has to all go together, i.e. chili, spaghetti....I cook things that I weigh and measure separately....

justcat206

Yup. I eyeball things and find equivalents in the MFP database - I'm sure I'm off by several hundred calories per day, but I make sure not to eat back exercise calories and that apparently makes up the difference because I'm maintaining pretty well. Every now and then I'll be sure to measure something (like peanut butter, oil, a chicken breast) to make sure I still have a decent visual idea of quantities, but I refuse to measure and weigh every single thing, esp as I'm cooking for a whole family - it was too complicated and time consuming and I agree, it sucked all the joy out of cooking. So long as I choose healthy recipes and keep a general idea of calories it seems to be just fine.

Akimajuktuq

It's the FOOD. I promise there is a way to enjoy cooking without being obsessive about numbers. But the "it's only calories in and calories out" people won't agree. Strangely, humans have only been counting calories since about the 1970s and yet obesity has only gone up and up. Even with people avoiding meat and fat and filling up on huge amounts of grains, vegetables, fruit and processed low fat dairy... Hmmm methinks something might be wrong with all the status quo "healthy diet" advice. But that's just me.

kommodevaran

I started to enjoy cooking when I realized I could and should use "real" ingredients instead of dry lowfat "foods". The food started to taste better all of a sudden and I was satisfied with less. I win

rockmama72

I know what you mean. When you're inventing a dish from scratch, part of the fun is throwing in a little of this, a little of that... And it slows it all down and makes it less natural. I rarely use recipes unless I'm counting calories.

What's saving me is that it is somewhat fun and quite rewarding to make a really good meal that's easy on the calorie budget. Especially if it's something I make a lot and I've trimmed it down by being creative.

zyxst

I used to bake a lot and I don't anymore. I thought it was having to measure out everything, write down the nutritional info, plug it into MFP's recipe builder (and hope to gods the food entry I needed was already in the database, otherwise, oopsie start over), and figure out how much each serving was (before MFP showed nutritional per serving). I realized it was because I couldn't eat the things as much as I wanted and still lose weight. I did all this work to make my fave oatmeal cookies and I can't have one today. It sucks, so I don't do it. For other things, it's inputting it into the database/recipe builder. I get slightly sick of doing the math.

mathandcats

Lizzy622 wrote: »

I only really measure the higher calorie stuff (fats,meats, nuts) and use a guesstimate for the lower calorie stuff (leafy greens, root vegetables and spices).

Yeah, I take this approach. I'm pretty careful about measuring the calorie dense ingredients, but I don't worry about precisely weighing how much carrot or cumin I put in.

jgnatca

I lost interest for many years. It's revived now. If it's a chore it's no fun.