Well now, it looks like some people weren’t very happy with my defense of people who like to eat out to win business or order food delivery to save time and their marriages.
I’m not sure whether the true anger lies in going against the food preparing norm or highlighting the truth about how we can all be doing more for our health and our finances.
I don’t shout angrily on the internet when I disagree with something. Nor do I insult people with different beliefs. Instead, I like to listen carefully to feedback and adopt any good ideas to improve my life. And I’ve got a good one that could really make a difference!
In the near future, I plan to drop my writing frequency from 3X a week to once a week and stop podcasting once a week in order to cook more for my family and to save money.
I calculate by cooking at home, I’ll save between $500 – $1,000 a month, equivalent to the monthly cash flow savings I’ve earned from refinancing my mortgage. Not bad! Although I might also suffer revenue loss 10X greater, that is either here nor there. All good things are worth the initial sacrifice.
Further, I’ve been looking for a good reason to give up my posting cadence after reaching the 10 year mark. I’m tired and want to mix things up. After the second year of writing, I started consistently getting thank you e-mails or comments every week from readers saying how XYZ article helped them. As a result, I started feeling guilty that if I didn’t post regularly, I would be letting people down.
Thanks to reader feedback, it’s time to make a change for health and wealth!
Chef Sam Rises
Before I embark on my new journey, I need to prepare. I don’t want to just start serving tomato sauce over boiled carbohydrates every night.
I’ll be watching some cooking videos to brush up my culinary skills. I might even take a weekend cooking class at the local community college. The last time I took a formal cooking class was in high school. It was called Home Economics and I had a blast!
My goal is to create individual breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus with a set caloric count. Each menu will have a selection of three items to choose from. Once I master each item on the menu, I’ll introduce new menus for different seasons.
Below is an example of the pre theater menu from La Grenouille, one of my favorite restaurants in New York City. If you ever want to go on a romantic date, this is the place with its legendary floral arrangements and wonderful food.
My goal is to master several of these dishes over time. So far, I know how to make Split Pea Soup, House Salad with String Beans, Lobster Medallions with Avocado, Lobster Tarragon Ravioli, Grilled Sea Bass, Grilled Lamb Chops, and Crab Meat Cocktail.
Instead of spending $100 – $150 per person at La Grenouille, perhaps I can get the cost down to $20 per person at Casa Samurai.
In addition to creating a variety of tasty meals for my family, I will make sure the food is healthy. Therefore, dishes like Cheese Soufflé is out of the question.
Even though the statistics say ~82% of Americans eat at home and are also the heaviest we’ve ever been, I’m hopeful that Financial Samurai Food will help buck this trend!
Below are the healthiest foods that I’ll use to create my menus.
The Healthiest Foods
- Almond
- Walnut
- Steel-cut oatmeal
- Cashew
- Egg
- Broccoli
- Beats
- Curly Kale
- Sweet Potato
- Onion
- Bean
- Tofu
- Spinach
- Avocado
- Mushroom
- Asparagus
- Watercress
- Peppers
- Snow pea shoots
- Garlic
- Lentil
- Edamame
- Carrot
- Banana
- Mango
- Kiwi
- Grape
- Apple
- Watermelon
- Blueberries
- Yogurt
- Chicken
- Tuna
- Sardines
- Sashimi
- Steak
If I stick to these foods, I’m confident I’ll be able to provide healthy and yummy meals for my family. These foods have been identified as the best foods we humans can eat according to every single medical group in existence.
By passionately taking on my new responsibilities as Chef Sam, I hope to not only inspire my wife to cook more, but to also teach my son the importance of eating healthy foods.
Chef Sam’s Grilled Scallops In A Beat Purée
The Importance Of Knowing Your Food
It’s imperative we learn about the healing and destructive nature of various types of foods. Further, once we know what goes into food preparation, we’ll be able to make better decisions about what we eat.
At the very least, I want my son to know what type of food sits well with him and what type does not.
When I was in high school, I often suffered tremendous stomach pain during the first period of class. Sometimes, I’d even have to go to the bathroom during first period to relieve myself. This happened a couple of times a week for years.
It was only after I became an adult that I learned that having milk with my cereal really blew me up. If I had been more aware of what I was eating as a kid, I would have not only felt better, but been less disruptive in school, and learned more.
If I got better grades and test scores, I might have gotten accepted into an overpriced private university to boost my self-esteem and make my parents proud! Who knows how fabulous my life would be if I didn’t go to The College of William & Mary. I could have been so rich and connected!
In a more recent example, in 2017, I gained five pounds over six months and couldn’t understand why. Then I realized that it was because of my love for taro milk bubble tea with extra taro chunks inside. Each 20 oz cup had over 1,200 calories! Once I cut bubble tea out of my diet, I slowly lost the extra weight over the next 10 months.
Being aware about food is key to a healthier lifestyle. And one of the best ways to be aware of food is to prepare your own food.
The Ideal Weight For Men And Women
I think we can all agree that if we don’t have our health, wealth doesn’t matter. Yet, for some reason, so many of us take our health for granted until it’s too late.
Being an ideal weight doesn’t guarantee good health. But being an ideal weight will help improve our chances of being healthier. Our goal should be to live as high a quality of life as possible for the longest time possible.
My goal is to live until the year 2050 or whenever my kids become independent adults, whichever comes last. I know I’ll be able to die more peacefully once I know my kids are financially stable and have someone who loves them as much as my wife and I love them.
But if I do die young, at least we’ve got a revocable living trust set up. Every parent, no matter your wealth, needs to talk to an estate planning lawyer and set up a revocable living trust.
Below is the ideal weight for men by height and frame.
Below is the ideal weight by height and frame for women.
For those of you now complaining the above weight charts are wrong, I empathize with you. As a tennis player, I’ve got larger, sexier, and more muscular legs than average. As a result, I’m 5 pounds heavier than the ideal weight for a medium frame man who is 5′ 10″.
But the reality is, I should lose 13 pounds to get down to 155 pounds to look and feel my best. Pictures don’t lie, but sometimes my memories do.
For the frustrated, here is a more comprehensive ideal weight table with the Devine Formula, Robinson, Formula, Miller Formula, and Body Mass Index. Unfortunately, you’ll find the suggested weights to be even lower on average.
Getting Rich Being Fit
I’m confident that if we all eat better and get into the ideal weight range, we will become richer. The reasons why are plentiful:
- We’ll feel better
- We’ll look better
- We’ll have more energy
- We’ll have more self-confidence
- We’ll have a more positive attitude
- We may live longer
- Other people may treat us better
- You’ll get less jealous of other people
- You’ll hate other people less
- You’ll take more responsibility for yourself
By being in better shape, not only do we do more to build our wealth, we get more opportunities to build wealth thanks to other people providing us more job opportunities, freelance opportunities, investment opportunities, and networking opportunities. Positive thinking does wonders for improving happiness and fortune.
Invariably, the people who are most bitter and hateful of others are either out of shape physically, financially or both. The first step we can take to improving our lives is to stop hating ourselves by eating better and getting in better shape.
Even if you cannot get into great shape, you’ve got to learn to love yourself. Learning to love yourself starts with accepting who you are and making incremental positive changes each day. Once you adopt an abundance mindset, everything around you will get so much better.
A 1% decline a day will destroy you in one year
I want to thank readers for giving me a boost to start focusing more on my physical and mental health. Although many of the comments from the “dont bother cooking” post weren’t kind, I appreciate the motivation to change. For too long, I’ve been grinding away, doing the same thing over and over again.
My first step is to cook more at home and step away from the food delivery app. My second step is to find a way to get someone to do more of the heavy lifting on Financial Samurai. My final step is to learn how to prepare a mean steak tartare without poisoning my family!
Although I will end up spending 40 more hours a month grocery shopping and cooking, I’ll be able to save $500 – $1,000 on food. That’s a healthy $12.5 – $25 an hour.
Thanks for all your support!
Related:
How To Get Healthcare Subsidies Even If You’re A Multi-Millionaire
How Much You Need To Save To Retire In Abject Poverty
For those who are master chefs and health nuts, I’d love to hear some tips from you on creating my four seasons menus, health food tips, and other health tips. If you could provide some background about yourself as well, that would be helpful for context.
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