How to ACTUALLY start cooking Healthy Food – 5 habits

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In this video, I want to show you 5 healthy cooking lifestyle concepts that I‘ve been using over the past decade that have completely changed my life.

🍴 Recipes seen in this video ➡ https://www.cookwell.com/discover/collection/start-cooking-healthy
😋 Lower Calorie videos ➡ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-tYKWQOe4YMZLkm-jCiQKlm8QFB1uRYM

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📚 Videos & Sources mentioned:
▪ Understanding Healthy Eating: A Science-Based Guide to How Your Diet Affects Your Health https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Healthy-Eating-Science-Based-Affects-ebook/dp/B07YN576KX

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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Intro
1:23 What are the fundamentals of “healthy” eating?
7:03 1) Recreate your favorite food
10:43 2) Learn how to season lean proteins
12:19 3) Control your carbs
14:04 4) Become a king of low-calorie condiments
15:29 5) Evaluate, integrate & enjoy yourself

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Music: Provided by Epidemic Sound
Filmed on: Sony a6600 & Sony A7C
Voice recorded on Shure MV7
Edited in: Premiere Pro

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I absolutely detest the taste of protein shakes I hate meal prepping and get really bored making the same exact high protein meals over and over while I’m on a diet however even though I don’t like doing those things in the past 10 years I’ve lost over 70 lbs from my heaviest

Weight at 240 lb all while cooking a variety of delicious tasty meals so in this video I want to show you five healthy cooking lifestyle Concepts that I’ve been using over the past decade and we’ll have an entire collection of recipes linked below we you can actually

Put these Concepts to practice but first I feel like we have to cover what does eating or cooking healthy food even mean or else this video is kind of pointless and in the age of short form videos and tweets I’ve been feeling that it’s done

A huge disservice when it comes to a lot of health and fitness content I mean you can pick any food and almost guarantee that someone has made a video telling you not to eat it when the reality is people with completely different diets and Lifestyles can all be in very good

Health so before we jump in let’s explain the fundamentals of healthy eating because while we are all bound by the mechanics of losing weight and getting in shape it’s a on to many relationship with a range of outcomes and by understanding the fundamentals it’s completely changed my life and

Explains why these five Concepts have worked so well for me and maybe you too I think the best non-nonsense resource book I’ve read is understanding healthy eating a science-based guide to how your diet affects your health and I would highly recommend reading the whole thing but here are a couple of the key

Concepts first there are six principles of your diet that affect Health in order of total effect and as you can see by far the biggest Factor here is calorie balance or calories in and calories out and they use these principles to create a healthy eating pyramid that’s a great

Mental model so let’s touch on the first three because these are mostly what’s at play in the concepts that we’ll go through first why is C calor balance so important well there’s that famous example where a professor used the twinkie diet which is high in fat and

High in sugar but he controlled the total calories of Twinkies he was eating and was still able to lose over 27 lbs in 10 weeks because he burned more calories than he was consuming and this is true in all diets vegan versus carnivore versus keto versus vegetarian

To control weight is primarily a product of calories in and calories out so why is weight so important well we tend to equate weight to good health because there’s a lot of evidence that shows being overweight or obese can lead to all sorts of negative outcomes the CDC

Page has a bulleted list of all sorts of diseases complications and overall even just list a low quality of life so in the cooking Concepts and recipes we’ll be going through this is by far the most important principle that you can play with when it comes to eating and cooking

Healthy foods you enjoy however just because you can lose weight eating only Twinkies principle number two food composition matters a lot too here’s a quote from the book in simple terms while the number of calories you eat per day is by far the biggest determent of your diet mediated Health

There is such a concept as healthy food and in most times in cases for best health outcomes it pays to consume more of these kinds of food as a fraction of your total calories and food composition is really where all that common advice we’ve heard comes in you want to eat a

Very diet with vegetables fruits lean proteins whole grains and healthy fats but why exactly well there are plenty of reasons here but from a fundamental standpoint I think there are two main ones first these foods help us meet our minimal nutrient needs as it relates to vitamins minerals fibers phytochemicals

Protein and essential fats and secondly these foods are typically more satiating all foods can be ranked on a satiety index and this just means that for equal calorie portions of different foods some of those foods will keep you Fuller for longer for example 1,000 calories of lean proteins and potatoes will satiate

You much longer than 1,000 calories of candy bars and donuts and this rolls back into principle number one because it’s easier to consume more calories of lower satiety Foods compared to foods with a higher satiety index now food composition also closely ties in with number three macronutrient amounts so

Macronutrients are what make up food and calories one gram of carbs equals four calories one gram of protein is also four calories and one gram of fat is nine calories and macronutrients seems to be where a lot of that seemingly contradictory advice comes out a keto diet will focus on getting calories from

High fat adequate protein and very low carbohydrates a vegetarian or vegan diet is likely to get more calories from carbohydrates and thus lower in proteins and fat and a bodybuilder diet is likely going to prioritize a high amount of protein however assuming the same total calories and you’re meeting the minimum

Needed amounts while all three diets may look completely different in the types of food you were eating on a day-to-day basis these can all be perfectly healthy and this is where I wish more people would reflect on their goals and experiment with different macronutrient amounts and I’ll give you an example in

My case a few years ago I wanted to try to get as lean and muscular as possible so an offs sited number for that type of goal is to eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight I was shooting for 160 lbs so for me that meant 160 G or

640 calories worth of protein but guess what I found this too restrictive and it wasn’t enjoyable because I couldn’t make the types of food that I wanted without going over my total calorie balance remember how the food you were eating affects your physical health is just a single aspect here mental and social

Health are another important part of healthy eating that I feel like is never talked about and we need to figure out how they fit in for my mental health on the cut I dropped the protein to 120 gram per day and bumped up the amount of

Carbs which made my life so much easier to eat a variety of foods I really loved like sandwiches pastas and rice based dishes a less restrictive diet that focuses on the fundamental of calorie balance could also help social health when you cook for or go out to eat with

A family and friends for example when I was in Consulting we would go out to amazing restaurants all the time so on those days I would intermittent fast and then eat a high protein low calorie lunch so that I could pick whatever I wanted to off of that menu that looked

Really good to me rather than trying to find some healthy option there’s a ton more information we could go into but I think it becomes diminishing returns fairly quickly most studies or citations are typically looking at specific test or highly optimal results which may matter if you were after a specific

Outcome however I would argue that most people can massively change their life through non-optimal diets and non-optimal fitness regimens that could be stuck to over several decades that’s exactly why these five healthy cooking Concepts have truly changed my life and you’ll need to figure out how they fit into

Yours if you were in the Rut of constantly going out to restaurants grabbing takeout or ordering Uber Eats the first place where I like to start is just pick one of my favorite foods and make it at home but I would say there are kind of three different levels to

This that you’ll need to figure out which works best level one is restaurant Recreation level two is macro conscious Recreation and level three is a very low calorie alternative for example imagine fried rice is your favorite takeout dish we’ll use this as an example and take it through the three levels when a

Restaurant is making your food all they really care about is making it taste as good as possible and make sure you have a big enough portion so in level one all you are doing is literally recreating the dish to match the restaurant which may make you wonder how is this any

Healthier or helping me consume lower calories well I’ve got two reasons first you likely are using much less fat and thus less calories overall now for something deep fried like chicken or french fries it’s going to be basically the exact same but for common takeout dishes from Chinese Thai Indian pizza or

Deli places in most cases you’re probably using less oil than they would because you’re thinking about it and second and probably more importantly is portion control when you order from a restaurant they control the portion size and thus the total calories if you dump that fried rice onto your plate you may

Realize this is one 1.5 or two times the amount you would actually serve yourself at home thus it’s 1.5 to 2 times the amount of calories so level one is really dealing with portion control but level two is where we make some changes and this is where I live most of the

Time I’ve made so many videos over the past several years showcasing how to do this with dishes like fried rice butter chicken pizza chop cheeses Chipotle bowls or In-N-Out and really all I’m doing is playing with the total calories and macronutrient amounts and it’s all dependent on the recipe sometimes I’ll

Use less fat sometimes less carbs sometimes more protein and in this Fried Rice video from a couple years ago I made three main substitutions number one I overcooked my rice on purpose so it absorbed more water water has no calories but it does have weight and

Volume so this led to two plates of rice one with 853 calories and one with 533 calories because it had more water in it now this is not something a Chinese Chef would recommend but we have different goals here my second substitution I used about 5 G of cooking spray instead of 20

G of liquid oil and my third substitution I use shrimp instead of chicken thighs Which is higher in protein and lower in total calories and in the side by-side bowls I was able to make the same amount of food at a drastically lower total calorie count and different macronutrient amounts so

What about level three well this is where you take that same food but significantly change a key ingredient in the recipe to make a much lower calorie alternative an example of this would be using cauliflower rice instead of white rice this is much much lower calorie but it kind of also fundamentally changes

The dish it’s no longer fried rice other examples of this would be using pizza with a cauliflower crust or making an egg sandwich with egg whites only and if you want a bunch of options to choose from using this concept we’re going to make an updated collection on my new

Website called cook well that you can choose from and they will all be linked below but now let’s move on to the next three concepts and instead of recreating your favorite foods these three concepts will show you how to start creating your own healthy recipes at

Home like we touched on earlier in food composition lean proteins are high in protein low in calories and will keep you full for a long time but they can be pretty bland and boring if you don’t know how to prepare them this is why learning how to a season lean proteins

Is so important because you can completely transform boring lean proteins into countless different dishes I made a whole video on this concept in how to cook healthy meals without ever running out of ideas but here’s the cliffnotes version I broke down a seasoning framework where one you learn

A seasoning technique two you apply it to a lean protein three choose a form factor to serve it on and fourth add condiments and toppings and if you follow this framework you end up with an unlimited supply of ideas for for example black and chicken can be done

With any spice combination first thin out the chicken breast which will help it cook evenly secondly sprinkle salt over both sides to internally season it and third add the spice rub and here are three of my favorite spice rubs for chicken breast one is garlic powder red

Pepper and oregano I’ll use this for hogis or pasta salads second is cumin chili powder and garlic powder I’ll use this for fajitas tacos or maybe some Mexican inspired dishes and third is sumach cumin seed and garam masala this is a new one I’ve been trying out that I

Use in these Middle Eastern inspired yellow rice bowls with pomegranate seeds nuts and pickled onions and they are the perfect accompaniment and I’ll leave a recipe for this one specifically because this is just one you have to try anyway though once you have your seasoned proteins down next you’ve got to figure

Out your carbs now we learned from earlier carbs fats and proteins none of them are the enemy here I’m looking at controlling carbs as a product of calories balance and I’ll do this in my cooking in two different ways first I’ll replace them so I do this all the time with mac and

Cheese or pasta salads so instead of just eating a bunch of pasta I’ll substitute some of the pasta with lean proteins and different vegetables one of my other favorite recipes of mine is this green chili chicken white cheddar mac and cheese where I did this by adding pablanos and Chicken in place of

Just all pasta and cheese the second way I control my carbs is using a lower calorie carbohydrate alternative for example this could be using lower calorie corn tortillas for your tacos or quesadillas in place of flour ones another example of this that I always have in my pantry are high protein ramen

Noodles that are from today’s sponsor V Ramen so I’ve been using these for the past 3 years and you guys have seen them on the channel before with my spicy garlicky noodle recipe and they have a whole assortment of individual instant Ramen flavors where one package is

Around 500 calories and 28 gram of protein or I really like having a couple packages of the naked nudes one brick is 400 calories and 23 g of protein so this is a great starting point for adding a sauce and lean protein and again you’re shifting around the macronutrient

Amounts leading to more satiating and enjoyable food Vite Ramen is all made in the USA by a small family-owned business who’s committed to people over profits I would rather get extra protein and micronutrients from whole food items that I can be creative and make fun dishes with so head to the link below

And use code Ethan for 10% off your order with $25 in value of free Chopsticks spoons and stickers and fourth having a variety of low calorie condiment and garnishes in the fridge is one of the easiest ways to start making healthy food taste so much better and I have two subcategories here

First are naturally low calorie condiments and garnishes and these include fresh herbs pickled stuff hot sauces vinegar Salsas mustard Citrus juice and Greek yogurt so why are condiments garnishes so good well simply put they make our food more interesting fresh herbs have strong Aromas pickled items taste sour and in the case of

Pickled onions they have a nice color contrast hot sauces and Salsas can be spicy mustard and Greek yogurt are Tangy and creamy and citrus juice and vinegars are salour and all of these are naturally low occurring calorie ingredients that I always have on hand the second category is low calorie

Condiment creation now these can be store bought or homemade I know there are a lot of options now out there like low calorie salad dressings syrups or sauces that you can buy at the store and if any of you have favorite store-bought sauces let us know down in the comments

And help all of us out for me on the channel I’ve made a number of low calorie condiments such as the jalapeno Ranch I made with less mayo and more sour cream in this video or the yogurt lime dressing I’ve used in my pasta salad video and if you simply learn to

Upgrade your condiment and garnish game you can make healthy food taste incredible evaluate integrate and enjoy yourself this last concept might be the most important and the hardest to figure out there are so many ways you can cook healthy foods and have fun doing it and ultimately figuring out routines and

Protocols you can actually stick to long term is probably what’s going to make the biggest difference meal prepping a bunch of food never worked for me but that doesn’t mean it could be exactly what someone else needs which is why you need to evaluate and integrate these

Concepts to fit your needs for example here’s a list of tiny cooking tasks that I’ll do throughout the week on busy days if I have 3 minutes in the morning I’ll salt my lean protein and pop it in the fridge then I’ve already completed step one of seasoning lean proteins if I need

Some inspiration I’ll just try out a new spice rub that seems interesting like in that chicken recipe from earlier on Sunday mornings I like to start a brace and go about my day and 6 hours later I just need to figure out a carb source to

Serve it over like a bond me I’ll keep frozen vegetables in the freezer that I can whip up on a week night I’ll keep the naked nudes in the pant to just pair with a sauce and when I have trouble snacking I’ll make some high protein

Snack wraps that I can freeze in reheat so where should you start today well you can use these Concepts to come up with your own recipe or we’ll have the whole collection on our new website cookwell for you to get inspired but anyway that’s going to wrap it up for me in

This one and like I mentioned earlier health and fitness discourse is it’s a tricky subject I get frustrated seeing people kind of just arguing and seemingly contradicting each other just throwing out talking points over and over when I feel like more people should be focusing on a wider broader picture

And really figuring out how people can use their individual Lifestyles with the fundamentals of healthy eating or Fitness and these things but anyway so hopefully you guys enjoyed this kind of look I’m happy to do more in the future I’m on a little bit of a cut right now

Myself so maybe I’ll give an update in a couple months to see how that is going but anyway that will wrap it up for me in this one I will catch you all in the next one peace y’all