Weekly Update, and Meal Planning - HA!

Weekly Update:

Exercise: Two 25-min walks in my classroom, one 30-min walk with Kevin.

Weight Loss: To be continued.

Oofta.

This last week was a week of indulgences and "breaking the rules". Still didn't binge or eat mindlessly, so that's good.

And it wasn't bad. It was just a week of thinking, planning, and feeling tired.

All in all, it was a good week. And I have a burst of energy to get me through my next endeavor: 4 weeks of kicked-up exercise.

Here's the plan:

• Continuing to exercise/walk during my lunch break most days
• Exercising (more intensely than I have been) 5 days a week for 30 min at a time.
• Cut out all "extra" Points.

This really isn't a change from my program (if I can call it that) since January. Instead, this is a boost, an addition.

My hope is to break through my weight plateau. I won't know from the scale, but I will know from my clothes. If I can get down a few pounds, it will help my motivation - and keep me from pulling out my hair!

So stay tuned! Keep telling me about your stories!


Something else that can make me want to pull out my hair: meal planning.

See below. :)

Planning dinner for the week is not really my forte. There are several meals that we default to, though, which get cycled through often: white chicken enchiladas, spaghetti (I usually use spaghetti squash in place of pasta), Nalley Vegetarian Chili and green beans (both from cans), the lentil soup, burritos, sandwiches, and pizza (delivery), to name a few. Of course, I always add a veggie of some sort, but we stick to a pretty slim (though tried and tested) variety.

Recently there was a Groupon deal for a year's worth of e-Mealz at half the usual price. The ladies from this website create weekly menus desiged for various family sizes, dietary needs, and some specific stores (such as Wal-mart, where they can create a menu based on weekly sales). Each week you get an email with your plan: a menu for 5 dinners, recipes for each, and a shopping list broken down into grocery store sections. I looked into this last summer and decided it was really neat, but not the right timing. As you may have guessed, I went ahead and took advantage of this deal. Even if I don't stick to it exactly, it can't hurt to have 52 weeks of menus/recipes, right?

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Jump forward many weeks. The above draft post has been on pause for awhile.

The idea was nice.

In fact, I do meal plan... sort of.

But my hope of doing even one full week of the e-Mealz has yet to happen.

Again, the idea was nice. And I have many great recipes, tips, and tricks to meal planning and saving money piling up in the cookbook section of my pantry thanks to this helpful site.

I can say that it has helped me get the hang of weekly meal planning, even if not in the same way.

Here's what I have to work with:

• limited grocery budget
• cooking for two
• cooking for one who has a refined palate (a.k.a. he's a picky eater)
• cooking from scratch every night is not realistic with our schedule
• we don't mind having the same meal week after week
• limited calorie budget (mostly for me)

So what we end up with is a creative combination. Lately, I have been attempting to meal plan on Monday mornings, knowing that I will be doing a "big grocery shop" on my way home from work.

Just because I know you are so curious, I'll share some of my meal planning/ shopping wisdom (feel free to laugh incessantly at the loose use of the word wisdom):

Food Staples:

• Lucerne Lite Yogurt (I try to have one every day) (2 WW Pts. each)
• Strawberry Lucerne or Yoplait yogurt (for the hubs)
• Full fat sour cream
• Fat free sour cream
• Smart Balance, light
• Sandwich Thins
• Oroweat Original Oatnut bread

Weekly Produce:

• bananas
• apples
• tangerines
• broccoli
• spinach
• baby carrots
• celery (when we make the lentil soup)
• vine tomatoes
• onion

Alternates:

• grapes
• grapefruit
• berries
• expensive apples
• grape tomatoes
• avocado
• cucumber
• asparagus
• fresh garlic
• mushrooms
• spaghetti squash
• yellow squash
• zucchini

Non-perishable goods we like to keep stocked:

• Green beans
• The Nalley vegetarian chili
• diced tomatoes
• tomato sauce
• corn
• Classico Four Cheese pasta sauce
• Chili beans
• kidney beans
• spaghetti
• lentils
• cereal

When Monday rolls around again, I make my grocery list, making sure I restock anything we used from our "keep stocked" list the previous week. I also don't like to shop too much during the week, and not at all on the weekend if possible, so I try to get it all on Monday.

If there are some great sales, I might pick up something off-list. If I spent part of my day looking through recipes, I might note additional items to cook something new. But mostly, we know what we like and try to stick to that.

Here are our favorites right now:

• The lentil soup, as ever. Though we have added baked bacon and roasted mushrooms as sides. So. Good.
• Spinach salad with diced chicken. I've been using pre-cooked Tyson grilled chicken breasts- great for quick meal nights.
• Roasted or steamed broccoli as a side.
• Chili. This is a one-pot, fairly quick and easy meal that basically entails throwing everything I find in the pantry that might work. It hasn't failed me yet! We got a little burned out on the canned chili, but it is great in a pinch.
• Burritos. Pretty typical - fat free refried beans, tortillas, cheese, sour cream (fat free, for me), avocado (if we have it), diced tomatoes.
• Sandwich of some kind. Egg, egg salad, turkey, roast beef, etc. Add a salad and some side and you're good to go!
• Haystacks. At least, that's what my family always called them. It is very much like a taco salad. Each person builds there own from the following: Frito's, cheese, canned chili (or ground meat, or refried beans), lettuce, sour cream, avocado, diced tomatoes, onion. The possibilities are endless. This is a great go-to for company (or picky eater) because each person gets to make their own according to their taste.

Each week I create a meal plan for the week of dinners (excluding the weekend, which we leave open to whatever comes up), write my corresponding grocery list, and remind myself that my plans rarely occur "just so" - so I'm just being prepared - anything could happen!

It's amazing how much easier this has gotten over time. I used to stress a lot more about meal planning, and everything else for that matter. I'm starting to mellow a little. We have our routines, they work for us, and we are both trying to roll with the punches, allowing wiggle room for the unexpected. This is SO not my greatest strength, but I'm trying. Having a practiced person-of-spontaneity at my side is extremely helpful.

Organized chaos, chaotic organization. Living life in the balance!


So tell me: How do you meal plan? What things in life do you organize knowing it will need wiggle room?