Dieting can be boring. Bland chicken breast and steamed broccoli. No one wants that. While end stages of your dieting plan can look like this, there’s no reason why you can’t eat delicious meals almost every day and still achieve your body composition goals.
Here are our top tips:
Herbs and Spices
The right (or wrong) spice can either make or break your dish. Before scientists created chemical agents to enhance our foods (flavour enhancers), we would rely on herbs and spices to flavour our foods. There's no reason why we can't go back to that!
Try pairing chicken with basil and garlic, or some pan-fried steak with rosemary and thyme. Lemon, salt and pepper go great with fish, and a whole lot of garlic and chilli is essential for prawns. Play around with what you like. Use fresh herbs as much as you can and single ingredient spices. You can buy some glass jars and make up your own mixes once you’ve found your perfect flavour blend.
Mingle is a great brand for premade herb and spice blends. They have a range of options with all of them being gluten and dairy-free.
Marinades
Marinating your proteins can change their taste and texture completely. You can marinate for a few hours or overnight for maximum flavour.
Use extra virgin olive oil if you are going to opt for an oil-based marinade, keep in mind that you will need to add this into your macros if you are tracking. A simple go-to recipe for chicken is extra virgin olive oil, lemon zest, dried oregano and fresh garlic.
Vary your cooking methods
Grill, bake, boil, steam, stir fry, slow cook… the list goes on and on and on. Even the same ingredients can taste different depending on how they are prepared and cooked. Each time you have a protein choose a different cooking method. For example, have grilled chicken one day and then baked the next.
Food presentation – we eat with our eyes first. If your food looks bland and boring, then that’s what your brain perceives it as even before you’ve tasted it. You don’t need to go all ‘Master Chef’ but just do your best to make your food look appetizing and appealing. Something as simple as putting your chicken mince in a lettuce cup rather than just adding it all to a bowl of lettuce can make a huge difference. Adding some fresh herbs to your bolognese and spiralling some zucchini into noodles is another game-changer.