Why Eating In Is the Productive Choice...

You can move toward achieving many of your goals by Eating In rather than Eating Out! Last post we listed why Eating Out Is Counter Productive. This week let's look at why Eating In is the productive choice. This all starts with your goals and defining being productive as progressing in the direction of those goals. The most frequently seen personal goals related to this article are:

1. Lose Weight
2. Get Out of Debt
3. Save for something
4. Get in Shape
5. Reduce Stress
6. Eat Well

When eating in you have a much better chance of losing weight because you can make choices on what you ingest rather than eating what others put in the food that is put in front of you at a restaurant. Eating in and grabbing convenience foods or take out (for those of you defining eating in as eating anything at home) are bad choices. Having an abundance of healthy food is a good choice and easy at home. For those who don't have time to go shopping – you don't have to. Many grocery stores across the nation will deliver groceries including fresh produce right to your door.

In this era of shopping online it's a natural process. So, order your veggies, lean meats or fresh seafood, pasta, bread and fruit and eat well by Eating In.

Note: Beyond the convenience factor of having your groceries delivered to your home you avoid one of the biggest fat traps in the grocery store – the impulse buy. You eliminate the opportunity to buy that bag of fried food that is a great price and on the end cap attracting your appetite and wallet because you don't see it when you shop online.

Getting out of debt and save for something is also supported by Eating In. Eating In is far less expensive than eating out and the money you don't spend on eating out could go right into paying down your debt. Let's look at a bowl of soup for an example. Ordering a bowl of homemade-style split pea soup at a restaurant is going to cost you typically $4.50 plus a 15% tip results in a $5.17 bowl of soup. When you make a big batch of real homemade split pea soup at home, 6 servings will cost you somewhere near $8 ($1.25 per serving) to make. Savings: $3.93. Multiply that times just one meal per week and you're keeping $204.10 per year in your pocket.

You will create time to get in better shape by staying out of restaurants. Typical meals served by a waitress take an hour at least and up toward two hours for a leisurely meal. Eating in could take less than 30 minutes from prep to clean up. In our soup example that would be a meal where you made the soup on another day and heated it up today, sliced some wonderful crust bread that was delivered by your grocery store this morning, and throw the dirty dishes in the dishwasher when you're done. That time not spent in the restaurant could now be spent in the gym, on a walk, or other activity that keeps you moving.

Stress reduction from eating in could be the result of you not having to block such a big amount of time away from doing your other priorities. That is to say you will have more time to spend with your kids doing homework, taking care of yourself, getting a pet project completed, and doing something you enjoy like getting a massage to literally reduce your stress. As your humble author, I engage in stress reduction activities from biking to cooking rather than eating out often.