Like many busy parents, Nicole Moore has a major love of takeout food—but it's a habit she wants to break.
"I'm a wife, I'm a mom; I really want to change these habits for my family because I love making family memories," Moore, 37, tells Health. "I don't feel like sitting there ordering takeout and sitting on the couch watching TV is exactly creating the family memories that I want."
Moore's family is her main reason why she's taking Health's 21-Day Challenge. Her goal? To not order takeout for her or her family for a full 21 days.
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"I suffer from ordering way too much takeout," Moore says, adding that she feels "addicted" to the habit. "I order takeout pretty much every single day; sometimes it's three meals a day."
Moore believes ordering these takeout meals saves her time and energy. "I think it's making my life easier," she says. "I don't have to do anything, except just press a button."
Her stressful work environment contributes to her tendency to order takeout. As a love and relationships coach, Moore is always helping her clients deal with stressors in their lives. "I have people coming to me for help all the time," she says—and when she gets home from work, "I don't want to cook, I want to relax, I want to receive."
While Moore says she tries her best to order the healthiest things on the menu, but she feels that ordering take out so regularly in general isn't a healthy option. "It's more salt and sodium and ingredients that we don't need in our diets," she says.
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On top of that, Moore recognizes it can be pretty expensive and time-consuming to order out, too. "I have a lot of food allergies, and my husband and my son are also gluten intolerant," she says. "Sometimes I'll sit there and I'm just scrolling and scrolling trying to find something we can all eat together. Moore has even added up all the charges that she's put into ordering takeout food—and it turns out, she's spent a lot more than she thought. "We could go on vacation [with that money," she says. "I feel like I have a problem.
Ultimately, over the course of this 21-day challenge, Moore says she wants to get to a place where she feels comfortable cooking for her family. "I want to know the ingredients that are in the food, I want to know the calories in the food, I want to infuse so much more love and connectedness into our family eating rituals," she says. "I would love to have my son grow up and be like, 'I'm eating mom's recipes,' and have this sense of togetherness around the dinner table especially."
In the video above, watch Moore and her family take on their takeout challenge—with a bit of help from Angela Foo, RD, a New York City-based nutritionist—and see if they can make it through the 21 days without buying takeout once.
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