5 Tips For Making Healthy Meals In Your Slow Cooker

Sticking to a New Year's Resolution is difficult. It takes discipline, focus, and perhaps most importantly — a whole lot of effort.

One of the most common resolutions is to eat healthier in the new year, which usually means a ton of shopping, prepping, cooking, and clean up. That means going to the grocery store and carefully choosing the healthiest (and often priciest) ingredients to use. Those ingredients will then need to be washed, sliced, diced, and carefully portioned and measured for whatever recipe you're following. Then, you'll need to cook everything you prepped for just the right amount of time at just the right temperature and hope that your meal comes out as expected. When the whole process is done, it'll be time to scrub the dishes and start the process all over again.

If you're like most people, you simply don't have the time to do all of that. One way to bypass most of the work is to fire up your slow cooker or crock pot and let it do the cooking for you! Here are some of our favorite ways to make healthy, easy dinners in the slow cooker:

1. Use white meat chicken instead of dark meat. White meat is leaner and contains less fat and fewer calories. While white meat can often be more difficult to cook, using your slow cooker makes things much easier. We recommend cooking chicken in a light sauce or brine to ensure the chicken comes out tender.

2. Limit the salt in your sauce. Sauces are always the star when it comes to slow cooker dinners, but many store-bought sauces are high in sodium content. Try to find sauces that are low in sodium or cut down on the salt in your homemade sauce.

3. Try using brown rice as a substitute for white rice. Brown rice, unlike white rice, is a whole grain that is naturally high in fiber and other nutrients. White rice is often artificially enriched and refined to remove the bran and germ. Rice is very easy to cook in your crock pot, just add rice and water and the crock pot will take care of the rest!

4. Use a variety of veggies in your meals. Don't be afraid to go a little crazy with the vegetables in your dinners or sauces. Experimenting with new varieties of veggies can open up a world of new flavors and nutrients.

5. Don't worry about shopping, prepping, cooking, or cleaning — order some delicious, healthy meals from What a Crock! There are over fifty different meals to choose from, all of which require virtually zero work to prepare. Tons of low calorie, low sodium, low carb, vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free meal options are available to fit any diet. Plus, they'll ship directly to your doorstep! Simply open a meal in the morning, drop it into your slow cooker, turn it on, and you'll have dinner waiting for you in the evening. Meal plans are available, but not required.

We hope that these tips can help you make healthy, easy meals in your slow cooker. Cheers!