Hi there, my name is Anthony
and welcome to Break the Twitch.
Today I'm gonna be talking about minimalism and food,
more specifically how our minimalist lifestyle
has affected how we eat.
Break the Twitch
Over the last few years,
my wife Amy and I have seen so many benefits
from decluttering our home.
From more time, space, energy,
and all the things that come with
just kind of having more time to work on things
that really matter to us,
we've been able to develop so many cool things.
So we started thinking about the way that we eat.
We figured if decluttering stuff
around our home could be really
effective and a good way to live,
that applying some of those same theories to food
might be really helpful as well.
I want to be explicit in saying that I'm
absolutely not a registered dietitian
nor a food or diet professional
in any way, shape, or form.
These philosophies that I'm going to be
talking about today
simply are our beliefs on what we should be eating,
the kinds of things that make sense for us to eat, and
how we should be treating food in our home.
At a high level, there are four general things that
we keep in mind when thinking about food.
We want it to be healthy, easy to make,
enjoyable, and unwasteful.
So, with that in mind,
here are six philosophies that we have
that really help us accomplish that.
Number One:
we like to grocery shop about once per week.
Going more frequently and buying less food in each trip
allows us to get fresher fruits and vegetables,
and also properly budget our food
so that we don't have a ton left over that gets wasted.
Number Two:
we like to focus on buying less, but higher quality meat.
Whatever type of protein it is,
we like to make sure that it's grass-fed (if possible),
organic, and sustainably-produced meat.
Essentially, you don't need meat in every single meal
so we like to focus on getting really high-quality meat
to ensure that the animals were likely
well-taken care of and sustainably raised.
Number Three:
we eat as minimally-processed food as possible.
That means eating whole foods like broccoli,
vegetables, sweet potatoes, and meats
that essentially have not been processed,
or stored, or preserved,
and put into a box
that sits on a shelf for 90- to 180-days.
It's not like you have to dig it out of the ground,
but try to get something in its purest form possible.
Number Four:
we like to minimize the amount of sugar in our diet.
Sugar has been shown to have addictive properties
and for me personally,
it really makes me hungry all the time
and constantly crave more sugar.
It took me several days to really break the habit
of constantly eating sugary things
and it's pretty miserable while you're in that process.
Now that it's been about thirty days
since I stopped eating it,
I've been feeling way better
and I'm not hungry all the time anymore.
It's made a huge difference.
Number Five: we like to keep the ingredients required
for each meal to a minimum.
Each of those things is a complete food on its own,
just requires a little bit of seasoning
and a little bit of cooking to get it all done.
It's delicious and it doesn't take a ton of time to prepare.
Finally, Number Six:
we like to try to minimize the amount of
time we spend preparing
and cleaning up after each meal.
You can do this by trying to focus on using just
one or two pans while you cook
and also just kind of cleaning up as you cook.
It can help to start the process and have things moving
while the cooking process is still going on.
It makes cleanup much faster after the fact.
In fact,
we've been enjoying this book by the Minimalist Baker.
It's called "Everyday Cooking"
and it focuses on recipes that are
thirty minutes or less,
ten items or less in terms of ingredients,
and one pot or pan to prepare.
You can check the link in my description of this video
to see this book, which they released very recently.
I'm not being paid to promote this book, by the way,
but I did get this copy for free from my friends.
By taking a minimalist approach to food,
it's allowed us to save a lot of time
preparing and cleaning up,
eat fresher, healthier foods,
and waste a lot less food as well.
It's just easier to budget food
for shorter periods of time.
So I hope that this has been really helpful
and I'd love to hear in the comments section below
what kinds of things you do to eat in a minimalist way.
