Reddit reviews 6 Ingredient Solution: How to Coax More Flavor from Fewer Ingredients

At one point in my life my diet was approximately 60% burritos and 40% mountain dew. I'd not eat until I was starving then go to the taco truck, get a huge burrito and sometimes two. Then I'd stop at 7-11 and get a refill on a 64oz mountain dew because I figured out that was the cheapest way to get it. My only healthy meals were when I went to my parents' house maybe once every other week.

That happened to overlap with an mmo addiction and lack of sleep and no exercise.

I was very skinny at the time because I'd only go to get food when I was starving and I'm quite tall so I can hide it so I figured no big deal. Anyway health issues caught up with me and I decided I had to do something.

It's about 12ish years later now and I cook 95% of my own meals. The remainder are when I go out with my girlfriend or there's free food at work and I make a bad decision. I also exercise roughly every third day depending on schedule.

Here's the basic process I followed over the course of multiple years to attempt to get healthy.

1. Stopped drinking soda with sugar in it and switched to diet. (Think progress here and not perfect)
   
2. Started trying to cook. Initially I would mimic pre packaged foods I liked because I had no idea how to cook. Things like homemade hamburger helper without the box ingredients for example.
   
3. This led to a casserole era which is easy and tastes good but almost always has way too much cheese and pasta to be considered healthy.
   
4. At this stage I moved out of my apartment and into a rental house that had a yard and I began my grilling phase. I'd get a big piece of meat and throw it on the grill. Then I'd get a big bag of potatoes, cut them up, and put one of those French onion soup packets on it, mix it around with some oil, and toss it in the oven. I ate that a lot. Still not that healthy but it's progress.
   
5. Around this time I began venturing into the gym. I got a personal trainer to write me some programming (it was a basic bodybuilder split initially). This went along with protein powder and lots of tuna sandwiches and chicken breast. Mmmm so tasty. I eventually stopped doing that but it was a start.
   
6. As I became tired of the gym routine that was making me stronger but not eliminating things like back pain I started to read more about fitness. I also started to get tired of eating the same thing every day so I took a bunch of William Sonoma cookbooks from my mom because they have big pictures.
   
7. This triggered the experimentation stage. I found bloggers like Mark's Daily Apple and that led to the world of Crossfit. I thought I had to be super hardcore 24/7 so I went deep into the paleo world and threw out all the grains and sugar in my house. This is when I finally started to eat significant quantities of vegetables. It's also when I really started to learn how to cook because when you take away grains and cheese the food is so much harder to make it taste good.
   
8. Crossfit wore off after a couple years and I lapsed into laziness as I got a much more demanding job. Luckily I was also getting paid nothing and completely broke so I had more motivation to start cooking all my food. This is the cheap and healthy period I'm currently in. I have a gym membership at a huge gym that's near my work and I'm continually trying to find new recipes and ways to eat large quantities of vegetables. I've found that for me I can eat some garbage food from time to time and not have much to worry about so long as I have a very nutrient packed meal as my normal diet. I'm aiming for about 3lb of vegetables a day with some cooked and some raw. I try and go vegetarian a few days a week because Arnold told me to and then have much less meat than I used to eat. I fill in the rest with beans, lentils, some grains, and some fruits. Cheese and sugar are the cheat foods which I minimize in my house but I don't worry about if it's at a party or restaurant. Essentially I'm trying to pull from a wide variety of foods with an emphasis on lots of nutrients.
   
   The important thing for me has always been the experimentation of how to make myself feel good. My motivation is about 50% wanting to feel great and 50% wanting to look good naked. Occasionally I'll start training for something specific like a long backpacking trip but most of the year I'm not thinking about that.
   
   If any of that sounds good to you here's some recommendations.
   
   

• buy a cook's illustrated (or America's test kitchen, they're the same thing) book that looks good to you. I'd recommend something like the 6 ingredient book http://www.amazon.com/Six-Ingredient-Solution-Americas-Test-Kitchen/dp/1936493446 I don't have that but I've looked at it in the grocery store. I'm assuming you don't know how to cook. Apologies if that's a bad assumption. Also check out the Serious Eats blog. It's my favorite source for recipes and they give amazing instructions. They also have a huge library of vegetarian meals which I've always struggled with.
  
• I'd hesitantly recommend the r/fitness faq. Don't take what they say too seriously as it's tailored to young men trying to get big and strong. If you want to get big and strong that's great and you should do it. If you don't then feel free to ignore the dogma over there. There's many ways to stay in good shape. Pick something that sounds somewhat interesting to you.
  
• this subreddit and r/MealPrepSunday are good to follow for ideas. I think people on both eat way too much cheese and burritos but there are good recipe and ideas that come through.
  
• find some sort of role model blogger. I find it helpful to follow a blog that keeps a steady healthy message. I used to spend a lot of time at Mark's Daily Apple and I was into Robb Wolf for a long time. Lately I've been listening to Rhonda Patrick at Found My Fitness. She's pretty intense with the science though if that's not your thing. Check some out and follow some rabbit holes until you find something that sounds good.
  
• keep experimenting and don't try to be perfect. Aim for progress of any kind. The goal is to be better than you were last year and never stop.

Big fan of Seriouseats.com and I have The Test Lab cookbook but haven't cooked anything out of it yet :(. I also checkout http://www.budgetbytes.com/, http://www.thekitchn.com/, http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/ and Alton Brown recipes.

We have 3 (boy was I wrong) 5 America's Test Kitchen cookbooks:

• The Make Ahead Cook
  
• Cooking School
  
• Slow Cooker Revolution
  
• Slow Cooker Revolution 2
  
• Six-Ingredient Solution
  
  These get used frequently.

I make a menu at the beginning of every week. Then I figure out exactly what ingredients I will need for breakfast lunch and dinner for that week, create a list, and shop.

I usually do this Saturday morning . I then "prep" all my food on Saturday. I do this by cooking all the meats, and storing them in the fridge, so all that is required for my meals is assembly, and searing/reheating. I make all my major lunch components at this time (like chili mac and cheese, or pita sandwiches or couscous salad).

I also always have a ball of pizza dough in the freezer, a can of tomatoes and some extra mozzarella, because pizza is a life saver if people come over/I don't feel like cooking and I pawn it off on my husband.

My goal at the end of the week is to have nothing left over in my fridge. So I try not to buy many things in bulk that I don't use regularly. I try to minimize the storage component. I think that is the real key.

Two great books are the The six ingredient solution and Complete Cooking for Two(assuming you're not feeding a family).

Six Ingredient Solutions is one of my favorite cookbooks. I love the coconut curry chicken. One of the ingredients is a lime, both the juice and zest, they really stretch every ingredient.