Ahhh, the joys and perils of eating alone.
I have written about excuses that keep us from taking care of our health. Eating, what we eat and when we eat is a part of taking care of your health. My patients have a lot of excuses as to why they can’t eat healthy. One of their excuses is they don’t like eating alone.
How you deal with it depends on your point of view, your habits, your likes and dislikes, your health and your financial situation. Let’s look at some of these excuses and ways to get over them.
What are your thoughts about eating alone?
- Do you have negative thoughts about eating alone? If so, explore what these thoughts tell you. For example, if you equate eating with a time to visit with others, change that thought. Tell yourself that eating is to sustain yourself. There’s nothing wrong with eating with others, but when others aren’t with you, eat anyway…it keeps you alive.
- When eating out you don’t want people looking at you? Remind yourself that people have more to do than be thinking about you and the reason you are eating is not to make a statement, but to eat. Bring something to read, or if you really hate eating alone, your earplugs and cell phone. Call someone. Speak softly so as not to distract and disturb your dining neighbors.
Don’t know what to eat or how much to make?
- Planning and preparing are a must for healthy eating. Perhaps you had a large family and now it’s just you. You may not want to eat alone or think you don’t know how to cook for one person. Plan your meals. Purchase prepared (not processed) meals and the tools you need to go with them. For example, at home have a can opener, refrigerator, freezer, microwave, small oven, and cookware that works in all of these. Plan for three meals a day. Record this in your calendar, then shop. When shopping, shop mainly in the perimeter of the grocery store. Here you can buy foods that need very little preparing, such as vegetables or bags of prepared vegetables, fruit, dairy, eggs, store prepared food such as rotisserie chicken, soups, lasagne and bakery goods. Visit the frozen aisle for frozen meals. Check the label for single serving meals and nutritional facts. Heat one up with a side salad, microwave veggies, add slice of yummy bread…you have a meal! Also stop in the aisle where there are cans of salmon, tuna, chili and other soups. A simple lunch can be some salmon, homemade cole slaw (chopped cabbage and mayonnaise) and a whole grain roll. If you have more than you can eat at a meal, eat leftovers at the next meal or freeze what you don’t eat for a later time.
Do you think it’s too expensive to eat alone?
- If eating out, get two for one. If you’ve got some self-control, visit restaurants that have large serving sizes. Eat half and take the other half home for leftovers.
- Don’t buy too much. For example, you may see a bargain or have coupons for larger sizes of food than you will eat. If you buy these and they go bad, it’s no bargain at all. Buy small amounts and shop often to keep things fresh.
- Freeze! If you are used to cooking for a large family, cook it up as you used to, but then divide this into single sized servings, freeze them and eat at another time when you just don’t know what to eat.
This should get you started…next month I’ll offer more suggestions on what to eat when you are eating alone.
Enjoy!
Joy Pape MSN RN FNP-C CDE WOCN CFCN FAADE
phone and fax 212.933.1756
mobile 917-806-1945
web http://www.joypape.com .
