Your life is hectic, and it sometimes seems like taking the time to prepare a home-cooked meal just isn’t possible. But if you’re serious about losing weight, cooking at home is time well spent. Besides, there are lots of fast and easy dishes that serve up in the same time it would take you to drive through the local fast-food joint. Tossing a healthy salad or stir-frying chicken and broccoli are just two examples. Here’s why preparing meals at home needs to be a part of your diet plan.

You Can Watch Your Portion Size

One of the major reasons to avoid restaurant dining in favor of Cafe Home is portion size. Restaurants typically serve up a heaping plateful of food that can easily surpass your entire day’s calorie allowance. If you’re hoping to see significant downward motion on your bathroom scale, do yourself a favor and eat as many meals at home as possible. Controlling portion size is key to lose weight fast.

You Get to Choose Your Ingredients

When you cook for yourself, you know exactly what is going into your food. Want organics? Prefer to avoid certain ingredients? Have allergies or a picky eater in the family? It’s not always easy to work around those preferences when ordering off a menu, but when it comes out of your own kitchen, tailoring your meals to your requirements is a breeze. Don’t know where to start? You can find some easy and healthy recipes here.

Home Cooking Makes Better Nutrition Easier

One problem with restaurant meals is that they are often loaded with sodium, fat and sugar. When you take control of the kitchen, it’s much easier to cut down on these waist-widening diet busters.

Less Variety = Less Overeating

It might sound counterintuitive, but the typical restaurant’s overwhelming array of dishes makes it harder to stick to your diet. Having too many options leads to poor food choices. While you can certainly have plenty of variety in your home kitchen, you’re not likely to have an entire menu’s worth, making it easier to stick to your diet plan.

You Can Save Some Money

Unless you dine exclusively from a fast-food joint’s budget menu (which is definitely NOT the way to better health or faster weight loss), eating out gets expensive, especially if you have a large family. It’s far more economical to cook at home. Now you have extra money to spend on a new wardrobe to celebrate your new figure!