SPONSORED: Tip the Scales in a Good Way

As I have discussed, I don’t have the best eating habits and I have, for years, studiously avoided learning what good eating habits actually look like so that the ones I have don’t feel ugly and sad.

Cooking for one sucks. I love to make food and feed people, and to throw parties where I can put out platters and trenchers and cunning vertical displays of food that is wrapped in bacon and makes people happy. I do not love cooking for just me. Who makes one chicken breast, or a quarter of a head of broccoli? Weeknight dinner usually ends up being chips and salsa, or cereal, or those awesome Snak Factory pretzel thins and hummus (this is a winning combination. Trust.)

Or, I’ll make a big batch of pasta or soup to “eat all week” and eat enough of it the first day that I end up tossing the rest because I’m sick of it. And don’t even get me started on the soul-crushingness of coming home from work, deciding what to eat, cooking it, eating it, and then cleaning everything up by myself. It makes me sad, and then I have another bowl of pasta to feel better, and then there are more dishes, and so on ad infinitum.

(Related: This is an old The Onion headline that I foudn painfully hilarious: Stouffers to Include Suicide Prevention Tips on Single-Serve Microwavable Meals.)

So, when the people at Fresh Diet, a gourmet diet food delivery service, offered me a week of free food in exchange for posting about it, I jumped at the chance. Every day, I’ve received three meals and two snacks delivered to my house in a cute little cooler bag. It has been fabulous. I was a little afraid because, while I’m not a picky eater, I am a snobby eater. My mom did a meal service once and the food that came was awful, like MREs or something. Fresh Diet stuff is more like having a private chef that you never have to see or talk to. I’m into it.

Here are three surprising things I have learned so far:

1.  My idea of proper portion size has not been aligned with reality. At all.

2. As long as I don’t wait too long–and I never have to, because of the haute little snacks–eating the amount of food provided is perfectly satisfying.

3.  If you eat fewer calories, your clothes fit better. (The day I put on work pants after having time off during the holidays was a sad, sad day.)

The whole “not feeling deprived” thing is easier when the food is like this.

(Part of my good fortune goes to you–start Fresh Diet today for $29.99 per day and get 3 days free. The promo code is singlejan3.)

Stuffed artichoke bottoms (snack) and seared tofu salad (lunch)

Adorable wee slider with barbecue sauce (snack)

Pancakes (breakfast)