Meal Plan February 2nd-6th

My calories allotment when down again! (1,247 calories). Okay, that's good and that's bad. That means I'm even closer to my goal but that also means I have to eat less...BOO! Every time I adjust it, I go through periods where I have to retrain my brain regarding portions. I feel like I am getting there again. For example, one of my favorite afternoon snacks is rice cake, PB and banana for a whopping 183 calories. Matter of fact, I had Peanut Butter Balls posted last week as my snack and I changed my mind at the last minute and stuck with what I was comfortable with. My comfort snack is filling and not that many calories at all. Well, I've been having to consider getting rid of that favorite because I am trying to keep my snacks around 100 calories, and no more than 150 calories. I know that's only a difference of 33 calories, but every calorie counts when I'm my hungriest in the evening. Plus, my ultimate goal is that I learn to maintain my goal weight without counting calories for the rest of my life, so I consider myself in training for the appropriate types of food for the time of day. I'm not gonna lie....I could be doing better at that. I need to eat more veggies. This should be my focus this week. With that....my meal plan.

7:00am        Hot Lemon Water (15 calories)

8:00am        Steel Cut Oats with a Mini Banana w/ coffee (243 calories) 

10:30am      Cucumber Sandwiches (replace cheese with hummus)  (63 cal) (NEW!) w/ green                      tea

1:00pm        Chicken Salad: Grilled Chicken- 3 oz, 1 small tomato, 2 TBS Hummus, 1 1/2 c                            Romaine Lettuce w/ Strawberries(1 cup), 2 pieces mint patties  (301                                            calories) w/ infused water (12 oz)

3:15pm        Peanut Butter Protein Balls. (New!) (110 calories for 2) w/ water

5:30pm        Dinner varies and generally is 3 oz of meat with a vegetable (Dinner can be up to                      420 calories based on what was remaining after all other meals were planned).

6:30pm        Choc. Flavored Fiber One Cereal (3/4c) with 1/2 c almond milk w/ hot lemon                              water (110 calories)

Just a few adjustments this week....

- Giving the Peanut Butter Balls a second shot

- Trying cucumber sandwiches

- Treating myself to a small portion of Fiber One cereal to address my after dinner sweet tooth. I'm looking to replace this with a lower carb option in the near future. 

*I'm keeping the salad again but it is VERY satisfying and I have some leftover chicken so it works out! 

My focus this week...

- Eat veggies and a real dinner. I'm skipping dinner too frequently.  

Here are some pics of some of my choices this week: 

Sick of water?

I can't drink water all day. I also will not drink my calories! I was drinking zero calorie flavored water and I just got sick of it. Plus, nothing is better than plain ol' water. Until this.....

TO.DIE.FOR......

This week's lunch beverage option. Enough for my work week. 

January 26th- Feb 1st

How do you begin with a meal plan?

• Check my LoseIt! App. If I lost weight, that means I lost calories and I need to be aware of that while I am planning. This week I get 1,260 calories. (I lost 10 calories this week). 
• I also take my new weight and divide by 2 to get the number of ounces of water I should drink this week and adjust my ounces in my app Waterlogged. (For what it's worth, the LoseIt! App also tracks my ounces with the premium membership.)
• Then I consider what I already have in my pantry, or what I really liked as a meal last week and decide if I want to keep it again for this week. This week's keeper is my lunch, chicken salad and Steel Cut Oats for breakfast. 

So here it is.....

Meal Plan This Week

Breakfast, Morning Snack, Lunch and Afternoon Snack remain the same everyday this week. Dinner changes every other day (with a protein and a vegetable). 

7:00am        Hot Lemon Water (15 calories)

8:00am        Steel Cut Oats with a Mini Banana w/ coffee (238 calories) w/ green tea

10:30am      1/2 cup of Pomegranate (72 calories)

1:00pm        Chicken Salad: Grilled Chicken- 3 oz, 1 small tomato, 2 TBS Hummus, 1 1/2 c                              Romaine Lettuce w/ Strawberries, 2 pieces of dark chocolate (1 cup) (311 calories)                        w/ infused water (12 oz)

3:15pm        Peanut Butter Protein Balls. (New!) (110 calories for 2) w/ water

5:30pm        Dinner varies and generally is 3 oz of meat with a vegetable (Dinner can be up to                          395 calories based on what was remaining after all other meals were planned).

6:30pm        Puffins Cereal (1 serving) with 1/2 c almond milk w/ hot lemon water (120 calories) 

My breakfast...Love it

This is a new recipe for me this week

Wake up to it....Go to bed with it. Does a body good.

Meal Plan Jan 18th-25th

Meal Plan does not exceed 1,270 calories this week

Breakfast 8:00am (209 calories) 

Apple and Cinnamon Steel Cut Oats w/ mini banana and 20 oz hot lemon water

Morning Snack 10:30am (106 cal)

2/3 oz of pistashios with 20 oz green tea

Lunch 12:45pm (264 cal)

Romaine lettuce topped with marinated chicken, tomatoes, hummus

1/2 c Pomegranate

Flavored Water

Afternoon Snack 3:45pm (183 cal)

Rice Cake, 1 Tbs of PB, 1/2 Banana, Sprinkled with Cinnamon with water

Dinner Varies 5:30-6pm (Not great than 320 cal)

Options this week are:

Shrimp with Corn

Spaghetti Squash Carbonara

Chicken Tortilla Soup

(For images, see monthly cooking post)

Nighttime Snack 6:30pm (170 cal)

Finish the night with warm lemon water

Prepping for the work week...

As odd as this sounds, I kind of enjoy getting my food prepped for the week. It makes me feel successful before I even begin. Maybe that's because I know it works. I do it for my daughter too. It makes packing her lunch so much easier. I don't dread it like I used to. Depending on how much chopping I have (or if I am eating pomegranates), prep can take anywhere from 30 mins to almost two hours. Just depends on my food choices.  So here are some photos of my Sunday evening prep session. 

My baskets for my non perishable food items. One basket per day. With my vitamins at the start of the line!

My vitamin stash! I usually have a fancy pill holder I clip to my lanyard so I don't forget to take them but I can't find it!

The inside of my oversized insulated bag that brings all of my goodies!

These are my fridge buckets. Purple for me, pink for my daughter...one for each day.

Fridge buckets full and ready to go

Next to my baskets on the counter is my menus I use to tell me what I need to be prepping. 

Fun times!!!!

These are a few of my favorite things...

One of my favorite drinks on a hot day! This is how I keep water fresh and fun!

Spaghetti Squash, Cauliflower "Alfredo" sauce and grilled shredded chicken. Yum

Mashed Cauliflower (Instead of Potatoes)

Rice cake topped with mashed bananas, cinnamon and Natural Peanut Butter

Quinoa Stir Fry

Any kind of chicken with Hummus as Dip with green beans

Chicken and Veggie Bowl for lunch. Instead of cheese, I did hummus. 

My absolute favorite fruit of all time

A summer favorite in our household

I love watermelon! More likely to eat if it's already sliced and ready to eat!

Aw, yes! 

My favorite kind of salad! Lettuce or Kale, Bacon, Shrimp, Avocado, Tomato, and DIY lemon dressing. The recipe always calls for corn but I always skip that.

Panini ANYTHING! I skip the cheese. 

Monthly menu

My menu this month is a mess! (but functional). I was so sleepy when I wrote it and it was kind of dark because I was trying to let my daughter fall asleep. And since I was so sleepy I kept making mistakes! 

Anyway, it's done on sticky notes so if an adjustment is needed, it's as simple as moving the sticky. I stole that idea from a friend and love it! 

So here's an example..

Monthly cooking wrapped up!

Here are the supplies out and ready from the grocery store...

Next, I labeled all of the bags

Here's one of my bags prepped

Last, (about 4 hours later), the freezer is stocked! I did realize while labeling that there are two recipes I chose that I would prefer not to freeze and I had to make that adjustment. I made sure to plan to cook those on a weekend. 

Monthly Meals: Janurary

1) Turkey Sausage Sautee

2) Chicken Carnitas Burrito Bowl with Cilantro Lime Cauliflower Sauce
http://www.closetcooking.com/2014/04/chicken-carnitas-burrito-bowl-with.html

3) Spaghetti Squash Carbonara
http://hugsandcookiesxoxo.com/2014/08/spaghetti-squash-carbonara.html

4) Clean Eating Italian Style Shrimp

5) Chicken Broccoli Stir Fry
http://natashaskitchen.com/2014/10/21/chicken-broccoli-and-mushroom-stir-fry/

6) Chicken Tortilla Soup
http://lilluna.com/chicken-tortilla-soup-recipe/

7) White Bean Turkey Chili
http://toneitup.com/2013/11/convenient-crock-pot-recipes/

8) Clean Eating Whole Roasted Chicken


http://www.thegraciouspantry.com/clean-eating-roasted-chicken/

Monthly Cooking: Step by step prep

I mentioned in an earlier post that my success would not be successful without preparation. I think that this is more important than calorie counting. I don't see myself letting go of this piece for a long time (until I am confident I can make the right choices in the right portions consistently).

So, here are the steps to my monthly food prep. I have been doing this for dinner for about 3 years and I wouldn't do dinner any other way. It just makes my life much easier during the week day.

1) Raid the Pinterest boards....In between months, I pin recipes I am interested in, that are healthy and can be adapted to fit my unique needs. My boards are very organized and I transfer pins my recipe boards to my "What's on the Menu?" board. This is where all of my dinners that I plan to cook and freeze are pinned. Sometimes I use it for veggie ideas that I would like to try that month and some lunch ideas.

Here is the link to my boards:
http://www.pinterest.com/ang8169/

2) Pin 7-8 recipes, quadruple the recipes...I pin 7 to 8 recipes because we will eat that meal up to 4 times that month. We eat it one day and follow it with leftovers the next day and then I will unfreeze the next batch about 2 weeks later, eating it as leftovers the next day. The easiest way to do this to me, is I copy and paste the ingredients from the site to a work document and I do the math so there are enough servings. I always make 3-4 servings per day. I use that document while cooking as well.

3) Grocery list... I use my word document with the recalculated measurements to make my grocery lists, raiding my cabinets, pantry and fridge to be sure I don't purchase anything that I already have. Especially spices and other kitchen staples.


4) Shop!... Don't forget gallon freezer bags! These are your friends. When you get home, don't put away this items you will need for cooking, keep it all out. It's just easier so you aren't fishing around for things.

5) Label gallon bags and any cooking/warming instructions...This step is something I didn't teach myself to incorporate until later. My favorite reason for this is because it gives me a second to preview the recipe and see if there is something important I need to know or prep for the recipe (an example of this may be the need to flash freeze something which would dictate that would be one of the first recipes you'd want to cook). Another reason I love doing this is for the rare occasion I am not home to pull something from the freezer. It has step by step directions written on the bag so my husband can't claim he doesn't know what to do!

6) Prep!..For my own sanity, I try to prep meals that only require me to assemble a collection of ingredients into a bag with minimal chopping, sautéing, etc....This make prep go much quicker. On average, it takes me between 3-5 hours to complete everything. That's down from the marathon 12 hr cook days I used to do! Exhausting!

This IS something that is very time consuming. There is no doubt about it. But I consitently find it to be worth it. We don't eat out as much as we used to because "there's nothing to eat" is never an excuse in our house. Almost everything I make can be cooked or warmed in the crockpot which makes weeknight dinners done in less than 15 minutes every night (NO KIDDING). It's worth it to me. 

I usually do steps 1- 3 on an evening, and steps

4-6 the next morning. Done and relaxing by the afternoon. 

Great lunch idea!

This is a super yummy lunch for those times you have a little extra time to prep. It was a hit with my husband as well!

I've adapted to my taste from the following site:

http://spicedblog.com/chicken-fajita-paninis.html#_a5y_p=1734314

I choose a lower calorie bread but stuck with Ciabatta for my husband. 

Each sandwich gets 3 oz of chicken, prepared with simple seasonings and thinly sliced. 

Also, I sautéed onions, red peppers, and green peppers with Nature's Seasoning. Sandwiches get a 1/4 cup of each vegetable. 

I know this sounds strange, but I put hummus on mine. I loved it. 

If dairy is not an issue, you can spread the bread with salsa and top your veggies with mozzarella cheese.  

Yum!