After over a week of not tracking a single thing, eating an entire box of ginger bread cookies, going out for drinks two nights in a row (who am I?), grabbing a bite of candy and/or brittle here and there, etc., I still managed to lose weight.
Yes, that's right: I made it through the holidays and lost a pound.
For those of you keeping track (i.e. my mom, the only person who reads this), here's the grand total for 2018 (well, the last five weeks of it, that is):
Eleven point two pounds overall? That's not too shabby -- not too shabby at all.
After a week of (feeling like I've been) binge-eating, I am back to tracking religiously via my Weight Watchers app this morning. As soon as these thyroid meds kick in (I have to wait an hour after I take them to eat), I'm going to indulge in some Mushroom & Swiss Potato Breakfast Casserole. It's been cooking all night and smells delicious -- and, it's only two points!
Yesterday, I spent a lot of time prepping for nutritional success in the coming year. And that preparation has some special (crazy?) kind of "Emmy Organization" to it.
I have found myself cooking a lot of Skinnytaste recipes over the last five weeks: first, her food is super tasty, and second, she already has the points values figured out, so it is much less work for me. But, every week when I go to make my meal plan, I spend quite a while perusing her website -- when I own all three of her cookbooks, have already made (and love) several of her dishes, etc.
So, I went through each of her cookbooks and noted recipes that I would like to make, sorted them (by type of dish), wrote down the title of the cookbook and the page number, and found how many points each was worth. I then went through and highlighted ones I'd already made.
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| The "Chicken" section is much more highlighted. We eat a lot of poultry. |
And speaking of meal planning, this is how I figure out what the heck I'm making:
Side note: when I first started working out before school, I always scheduled my Pilates classes far in advance, knowing that if I "just pressed snooze one more time" and missed the class, it would be a $20 no-show fee. What can I say? I'm externally motivated. Now, though, it's just the norm for me to wake up at 5:15, so I don't usually schedule in advance; also, with it being winter and the weather being so dicey, I don't want to risk not making it due to ice/snow/sleet/etc.
So after I figure out my schedule and my workouts, I plan my meals accordingly. If I have an evening obligation, I know that I should plan an easy dinner for that night (i.e. something in the crockpot). I also know that when I make something that has several servings, I'll be able to eat a lot of leftovers -- hence the duplicates, especially for lunch.
I also obviously left a few "time slots" empty. I don't want to over-plan for a couple of reasons. First, I may have way more leftovers than anticipated, and I don't want food to go to waste. Second, I want life to be able to happen. Like, if I come home from school, and Jesus wants to cook dinner, awesome; I'll let him do so and save my planned meal for the next day. Or, maybe we decide we want to go out to dinner -- great!
Just because all of Sunday is empty for now does not mean it'll be a free-for-all. If I do end up going through all of the planned food prior to then, I'll just quickly plan another menu for us to stick to on Sunday. It'll all be okay.
When I have the week figured out, I look through all of the recipes, make a list of all the ingredients (separated into four columns: produce, refrigerator -- meat, cheese, dairy, freezer, and aisles), "pantry shop" to cross out what I already have, and then do one big run to the grocery store. I sometimes have to stop at a store on my way home from work if I can't find something on my big grocery run, but that's a rare occurrence.
And that's that, friends! Here's to continued success in 2019!
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