Any Serious Cooks Who Have Lost Weight?

Count me in. I find the passion for cooking works well for me at home - always want to try new things and have the tools (digital scale) to make it work for me. The problem for me is wanting to try every new restaurant and tasting menu my eyes behold...but the thread is about cooking, so I won't dwell on my issues outside my own kitchen.

Great tips in here, thanks for starting the thread!

I love cooking and use it to my advantage to prepare healthier versions.

I like to cook and consider myself a foodie. I count calories and I have never had a problem. If I make something that is a rich and fattening, I will have a small portion and will usually pair it with a lot of vegetables. I pretty much only make everything from scratch since I'm in school full time. I almost never eat fast food or take out. But I count calories everyday and even if I don't log them, I will write it on a piece of paper. I eat anything that I want and nothing is off limits. I just made blackberry crisp this weekend and homemade bread.

My partner lost a ridiculous amount of weight...while in culinary school.
I'm a ridiculous foodie as well (didn't have the dosh for said culinary school) and we both see it as a challenge and a necessity.

Cook the way you normally do, and work out the calorie counts for your recipes (I assume you are using a digital kitchen scale and the Recipes function in the food section of MFP). Then you can make judgments about what is worth using in a recipe and what isn't. Oils, mayo, and beef are the first things to go for me when I am working with a small calorie budget. Spices go up because, well, flavor--and they add micronutrients such as potassium and vitamins, which I like to keep an eye on. Fiber-rich foods and bulky veggies go up.

And of course weigh your portions once you have a prepared recipe.

Anyway, if you know how to cook, cutting calories should be easy. It's the people who are used to eating fast food and things with barcodes that I feel sorry for, to be honest

My mom's co-worker once said, "If it's not amazing, it's not going in my mouth, because the calories need to be worth it."

That totally works with a foodie / gourmand / gourmet version of MFP, I think.

This ^^^^^^ My new motto, thanks!

I also like " I never eat at McDonalds in case I get run over by a bus, I don't want that to be my last meal" :laugh:

I am a serious foodie, I love to travel, eat, and drink good wines. I also love to cook and have been doing so since I was 4 yrs. old.
I am a yoyoer, I can gain weight but I have also been able to drop it. I just never did tracking, I am loving MFP because with tracking my portion/cals, I think I can enjoyably take off the weight and keep from regaining it. I just always resisted tracking wanting to eat what I wanted when I wanted. Thus the yoyoing and the miracle is I am not morbidly obese all the time. :devil:

I read recipes for ideas, my husband swears he has not seen me follow one to the letter in all our years together. Probably true, I cut back on this, add that, and might even roast something that is supposed to be sauted or vis versa. I love books by Michael Ruhlman, Julia Childs, Rick Bayless, Madhur Jaffrey, and The Escoffier Cookbook is my idea of a fun read. I'm not a fan of the Food Network, I do like most of the PBS chefs. I also love the blogs that are now available for foodies. I have recently decided to restrict wheat, because it causes my joints to hurt when I eat too much of it, so the gluten free blogs have been very helpful to give me new ideas. There are some good blogs for every eating type, style, ethnicity, etc.

I keep a kitchen garden, herbs, shallots, and garlic so I have lots of flavors to play around with, makes it so much easier and cheaper to get creative.

I certainly wouldn't consider myself a serious cook, though I do enjoy cooking and expanding my cooking knowledge. I like to try at least one new recipe each week.

Living a healthy lifestyle is what got me in the kitchen in the first place. At the time I was eating a lot of Lean Cuisines and the like, and I was always frustrated by the small amounts of vegetables or the low quality of the ingredients, so I decided to start making my own.

The recipe builder on this site is a really fantastic tool for the home cook! Between that, my digital food scale, and the bar code scanner on my phone, figuring the nutritional info for a given dish I create is pretty simple.

Serious foodie as well as frequent hostess to small and large dinner parties, open houses, etc. I refuse to use non-fat or skim anything, but I weigh the cheese, portion everything out, and account for the calories accordingly. The best thing I am doing now is buying cookbooks with delicious healthy recipes in them from people who also refuse to use inferior products. The only way I would make a turkey meatloaf is if I roasted a heritage bird and ground the leftovers myself. I have found enough similar minded cooks willing to share recipes out there that I am fulfilled. I have made a few recipes featuring a lot of heavy cream and butter that I used to adore, but now am not as in love with; a pasta w/simple grated zucchini and a touch of real butter, great parmesan, garlic and chili flakes is more enjoyable than a homemade alfredo made from a pound of butter and a pound of parmesan. I still want roasted veal marrow bones as my last meal, w/a bit of the best baguette on the planet, but tastes do evolve and the body sort of rejects previous loves!