16.
Fix It! Day 22 and Beyond
By now, you know a lot to get you going. You know how and why food can
serve as preventive medicine. You know that nourishing food can be delicious
food. You know why food means so much to me and my family. And you’ve
kicked off your journey with the 21-Day Plan.
But what happens after that? How do you take what you’ve learned and apply
it to the rest of your crazy life?
I’m willing to bet that the twenty-one days have engrained some new habits
and inspired some new ideas for you. But ultimately, this plan is only marginally
about the first twenty-one days. It’s really about the thousands that come after
that. What you do after this will be your recipe, your prescription, your family’s
tradition. Dreamed up by you. Made by you. Shared by you. And the key is
being able to manage the three major eating environments you will encounter in
your everyday life—eating in, eating out, and eating on the go.
Your emphasis will always be on eating in, because the greatest thing you can
do to keep your healthy momentum going is to cook your own food. It’s the only
way to control what you’re eating. That doesn’t mean you’ll never go to
restaurants, but see if you can cut your frequency down to no more than three
times a week. With the right recipe, cooking at home can feel just as celebratory
as a night out. (You don’t always have to make super-healthy food, either. I’d
rather have you make chicken parm at home than have it at a restaurant. It’s
probably way healthier than the high-salt, high-calorie stuff you’d get served.)
You can still make the dishes you relied on during the 21-Day Plan, but now you
can add the healthy and delicious recipes in this chapter. When you do eat out (or
order takeout), use my restaurant guide to the healthiest options (starting on
Eating Out Chinese). Also, the recipes in Dr. Oz The Good Life magazine are all
healthful and based on the FIXES way of eating, so you’ll find lots of great new