Reclaiming Joy in the Kitchen: Empowering Midlife Women to Transform Cooking into Self-Care and Nourishment

Are you tired of feeling like cooking is just another chore on your never-ending to-do list? Join Heather Carey in this enlightening episode of Real Food Stories as she dives deep into the common struggles many face with cooking, particularly during midlife. As a culinary nutritionist and advocate for women’s health, Heather shares her own journey through cooking burnout, offering you a fresh perspective on how to transform your relationship with food and cooking into something joyful and nourishing.

Cooking doesn’t have to be a burden. Instead, it can be an act of self-love and a means of nourishing your body, especially during significant life transitions like menopause. Heather introduces five practical strategies designed to rekindle your passion for cooking: 1) Change the narrative from obligation to self-care, 2) Simplify meals to reduce stress, 3) Create a pleasant cooking environment, 4) Release the pressure of perfection and rigid meal plans, and 5) Embrace seasonal ingredients to inspire creativity in the kitchen. With these tips, you’ll learn how to make cooking a joyful part of your healthy lifestyle choices.

Throughout the episode, Heather emphasizes the importance of viewing cooking as a form of mindful eating and a way to connect with yourself and your family food traditions. She also invites you to join her Summer Inspired Recipe Club, a fantastic initiative that aims to make cooking fun and stress-free, guiding you to utilize fresh seasonal produce for delightful meals. This club serves as a community where you can explore healthy eating tips and cooking techniques that resonate with your personal food journey.

By the end of this episode, you’ll be empowered to reclaim your relationship with food and cooking, transforming it into a source of joy and nourishment. Heather’s insights on midlife nutrition and food beliefs will help you navigate the complexities of cooking during this transformative phase of life. Whether you’re dealing with hormonal changes, weight management, or simply looking to embrace a healthier lifestyle, this episode is packed with nutrition advice and personal food stories that will inspire you.

Join us for a conversation that not only celebrates food and culture but also empowers women to embrace their midlife changes with positivity and resilience. Let’s ditch the diet culture and explore how cooking can be a joyful, sustainable practice that nourishes both body and soul. Tune in now to start your journey towards a more fulfilling cooking experience!

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome back. And if you are just tuning in with me for the very first time, it’s so nice to meet you. And I’m really glad you’re here with me today. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relation to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you eat. Hey everybody, before we jump into today’s episode, I wanted to tell you about something I created that I think you’re going to love, especially if cooking has been feeling like a chore lately. It’s called the Summer Inspired Recipe Club, and it’s all about bringing back the fun to your kitchen. This was inspired by what I know so many of us are feeling right now, midlife burnout around food. decision fatigue, and just wanting something that feels doable and delicious. So I thought, what if we made this really easy? And what if we let the season lead us? What if we got back to enjoying simple meals, the kind that actually taste amazing and make you feel good? So that is what the Summer Inspired Recipe Club is all about. Now, here’s a couple details. Starting on June 21st, you will get Eight weeks of five fresh nourishing recipes each week, totally inspired by the summer produce that is in season right then. So you can go to your farmer’s market, find that produce, and cook with it all week long. You will also get real time with me in my private community where I answer questions about food, cooking, ingredients. No question is off the table in this community. Simple steps that support your energy, your hormones, and your health. We’ll definitely talk about that when we’re cooking our new recipes. Gentle reflection prompts if you want them to help you reconnect with your plate and get mindful about eating and what you’re eating. And the joy of knowing you don’t have to figure this out alone. So there’s zero pressure. It’s just ideas, inspiration, and a little weekly nudge to remind you. that cooking can feel good again. So come join us. You can sign up. The link will be in my show notes and you can grab all the details then. Okay. So welcome back to the Real Food Stories podcast. As you know, I am Heather Carey, culinary nutritionist, healthy food chef, and midlife woman right there with you. And today we are talking about something that comes up all the time with the women I work with. And the question is, why does cooking feel like such a chore and how do we stop dreading it? Now, if you’re nodding along with me already, trust me, you are not alone, especially in midlife. Because the truth is many of us are carrying years, sometimes decades of burnout around food. We’ve been cooking, shopping, we’ve been meal planning, We’ve been serving. thinking about everyone else’s food preferences and making other people happy for what feels like might be forever. And now we’re here in midlife. Kids might be gone or they’re just more independent. I know that my kids are definitely out of the house. And maybe it’s just you and your partner at the table, or maybe it’s just you. And cooking, something that used to feel like love, or creativity now might feel like one more thing that you have to get through in the day. Now, listen, I love cooking. Okay, cooking is what I do for a living. But I have absolutely felt that burnout too. I mean, for years, I cooked for five people every single day. I had a sense of purpose in that. I was nourishing other people, and I loved it. I felt needed. I was appreciated, mostly. But Now, it’s just me and my husband most nights, and I’ll be honest, there are days when I stare at the refrigerator and think, why bother? Or I’m too tired, or I’m just not feeling inspired. But here’s what I’ve come to believe and what I want to talk to you about today. Cooking for yourself in midlife isn’t a chore. It’s an act of self-love and self-care. It’s an act of self-respect and kind of a reclaiming. Now, let’s talk about why cooking sometimes just feels so hard. So let’s name it and say it out loud. We are burned out, not just from cooking itself, but from the mental load, the pressure to do it right, the Pinterest boards, the health trends, the overwhelm of information. There are too many ideas out there right now. You don’t need to know 500 ways to blend and bake cottage cheese. You don’t need to learn how to make a viral butter board or a three-hour meal prep system that makes you feel like a failure if you don’t follow it. What we need right now in midlife are healthy, simple meals that taste really good. Food that feels like it fits into your life, not someone else’s. Instagram grid. But most of us are stuck in kind of a weird place. We’ve lost the routine of cooking for a busy family. We feel very out of ideas. We’re tired of making decisions about what to eat for dinner every single night. And we don’t feel the same sense of purpose around food anymore. So instead of cooking being an expression of love for others, as most women are hardwired to do, do, now it needs to become an expression of love for yourself. And that shift takes a lot of practice, right? To practice the self-care that we need to give ourselves. So let’s talk about five ways that we can fall back in love with cooking. And maybe it’s not going to be in love for many of you. Maybe it’d just be like, how about that? So let’s talk about how to actually do this. No fluff, no guilt, no perfection. Here’s… Five ways to rekindle your relationship with cooking in midlife. Number one, let’s shift the story. Instead of thinking, what do I have to make for dinner tonight? Ask yourself, how can I care for myself with food today? How do I want to feel with food today? Those questions can change everything because cooking isn’t about performance anymore. It’s about nourishment for yourself. And Nourishment isn’t just nutrients, right? It’s not just making sure you get enough of your protein allotment every single day or your fiber. I mean, those things obviously are very important, but it’s also about comfort. It’s about connection, pleasure. It’s about self-respect and self-care. So give that some thoughts when you’re thinking, I don’t have anything to make for dinner tonight. Think about how can I care for myself with my food today? All right. Number two on the five ways to fall back in love with cooking. Keep it so simple that it’s almost ridiculous. Okay, you do not need to cook a gourmet meal every single night. A big salad with roasted chickpeas and a really good homemade dressing would be just great. How about a piece of salmon with some roasted vegetables? I do that often. Scrambled eggs with kale. and a piece of sourdough bread. That would be amazing. That’s dinner. That’s nourishment. It does not have to be Instagram worthy. It can just be nutritious and good for you and comforting. So start giving yourself permission to make food that is simple, satisfying, and just enough. Okay, number three on how to… fall back in love with cooking again. Let’s set the scene. Light a candle, turn on some music, pour a mocktail or a sparkling water with lime. Set the vibe, even if it’s just for you. Think of cooking as a meditative process sometimes while you’re sitting there chopping carrots or stirring a soup or making your scrambled eggs. So when you romanticize your own meal, When you treat yourself the way you would treat a guest, it can change wildly how you experience it, that you are cooking for the act of self-care for yourself. Number four on how to fall back in love with cooking. Let’s let go of the shoulds. You do not need to follow a perfect plan. You do not need to batch cook every Sunday if that doesn’t work for you. You you might only cook two to three nights a week and eat leftovers for the rest. You might have a rotation of five go-to meals and you just riff on them. There is no set rules for when it comes to meal planning and having a perfect plan. It’s really what works best for you, knowing that the priority is nourishing yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally. Now, I don’t have a perfect plan. I try to sit down on Sundays most weeks and plan out what I’m going to be cooking for dinner. And then I will make a grocery list on that. And then I will go shopping. And sometimes it doesn’t always work according to plan. Or sometimes we have friends who want to go out to dinner spontaneously. It’s all okay. But as long as the priority is my nourishment on a physical, mental, and emotional level, then I feel really okay. And it’s not about perfection. You have a chance to start over the next week. So do what works. not what should work. All right. And number five about falling back in love with cooking, get inspired by the seasons. Now, sometimes when the new season happens, we’ve already been used to doing something the old way, right? We were kind of in winter and colder weather, and we got used to making a lot of slow cooker meals and soups and stews. And all of a sudden it’s 80 degrees out and sunny and things are growing in our gardens or at the farmer’s market and we have to shift, we have to pivot. And that can get a little overwhelming sometimes because suddenly now we’re cooking with tomatoes and cucumbers and zucchini, where as before we were in winter squash and sweet potatoes. So When we root our meals, though, in what’s fresh and abundant right now, like I said, tomatoes, peaches, corn, berries, it actually takes the guesswork out of what to make and what brings joy back into your meals, right? Suddenly, wow, the fresh farmer’s market tomatoes taste amazing. How can we plan a meal around those? How can we plan a meal around summer squash? And. That is exactly why I created my Summer Inspired Recipe Club, because we’re going to be doing exactly that, highlighting a fruit, vegetable, or herb every single week, and then getting inspired by the five recipes that you will have. So let’s review our five ways to fall back in love with cooking if cooking is just feeling like an absolute chore right now. Number one, we want to shift our story. Instead of thinking… what do I have to make tonight? Asking yourself, how can I care for myself with food today? Number two, we want to keep it so simple. You do not need to cook a gourmet meal every single night. Number three, we want to set the scene. Make your kitchen a relaxing, almost meditative space. Turn on music, pour a mocktail, whatever you need to do to set the scene to make it a relaxing experience. Number four, we want to let go of the shoulds. You do not need to follow a perfect plan. This is not about perfection and Instagram-worthy photos, right? This is just about nourishing yourself. And number five, we definitely want to get inspired by the seasons. It helps with meal planning. It helps to decide what we’re going to cook, and it makes it a lot more fun. So again, I have my Summer Inspired Recipe Club coming up. It’s an… eight-week experience, no pressure. Every week in your inbox, you get a new packet of recipes to try and it’s a lot of fun. All right, I want to leave you with this. If cooking has started to feel like a chore, that doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It means that you are human. You have done a lot in life. You’re probably tired and you’re in a new phase of life, right? We have to shift how we cook now. Like I said, I went from cooking for five to just cooking for two. That felt very big for me. But midlife is also a time to reclaim things, and cooking can be one of them in a different way, not as a burden, but as a way to care for you, for yourself, like you have cared for everyone else. You’re worth the effort, even if it’s just a 15-minute meal, and even if it’s just for you. So again, join me this summer in my Summer Inspired Recipe Club, and let’s make the summer the season that we bring joy back to our plates. one simple, delicious meal at a time. Because if cooking has been feeling like a chore, I hope today’s episode gives you a little bit of permission to exhale and maybe even start to see things a little differently. Because this phase of life, this phase of our life, midlife, 40s and beyond, it’s like a reset. And how we feed ourselves with food, care, and intention really matters. So if you want simple, supportive ways to bring some inspiration back to your kitchen this summer, don’t forget to join me in the Recipe Club. Link is in the show notes. And we start June 21st. Cooking does not have to be complicated to be meaningful. All right. Until next time, stay well nourished and hope to see you in the Recipe Club. And as always, if you loved this podcast, please consider gifting me with a five-star review. It is so helpful for me to get the word out on real eating, our real bodies, and real food stories. Thank you so much and have a great week. Bye for now.