and meal planning

[Guest guest]

> I get so frustrated when I don't know what to eat and then I usually end

up eating the wrong things if I wait for the last minute to decide what to

eat.

This is why it's so important to pre-plan your meals!

It doesn't take much time, maybe a half hour a week, and as time goes on it

gets easier and quicker to do.

Make a list of all your favorite breakfasts on one paper, lunches on

another, and dinners on the third. Write down your favorite low-cal snacks

on another.

Take another sheet of paper or a weekly calendar and mark out spaces for

each meal. Now choose breakfasts for every day of the week. Then lunches,

then dinners. Keep your cookbooks handy so you can check the ingredients and

see where you may have to make substitutions.

Now work on your grocery list. Go through your pantry and freezer to see

what ingredients you already have for the meals and snacks you chose, and

add what you need to your grocery list. Add your snack foods to the list,

too.

Now go shopping. Make sure you buy *everything* you need for the upcoming

week so when 5pm Tuesday comes and you look at the recipe for what you

planned on cooking you know you're going to have that spice that " makes " the

dish and that you have no excuse to call out for Chinese food or hit a

drive-thru because you forgot to buy it.

A lot of people don't like to pre-plan their meals, that they don't know

what they'll be hungry for on any particular day. Well, it's grabbing meals

at random that got us into this mess. Go half-way and just chose 7 dinner

menus but decide that morning which one from your list you'll make. If you

know you prefer the same thing every day for breakfast and don't need to

write it out, just make sure you have all the ingredients and that it's a

fairly healthy choice, like an unsweetened cereal (add sugar at the table if

you need it) and lower fat milk, or Egg Beaters and turkey bacon instead of

real eggs and pork bacon. If you prefer sandwiches for every day's lunch,

instead of squishy white bread and salty cold cuts, switch to a whole grain

bread and buy lower-salt deli meats, or make your own sandwich fixin's from

lower fat mayo and tuna, plain chicken breasts, lower salt ham, or even

experiment with things like hummus and roasted veggies. Have a variety of

stuff on hand so you can decide which healthy food to choose.

Now, about those snacks. . .

After you write out your daily meal plan, look it all over to make sure you

have the right amount of calories/exchanges/Points for your current weight.

If you're too much over, tweak it to bring it down, like using lower calorie

cheese in your lunch, fat-free gravy for dinner, sugar-free jello instead of

cake for dessert - all these little changes add up. Be sure you're now a bit

under where you're supposed to be. Add in your snacks. Each snacks should be

around 100 calories each, and you should plan them for times you know you're

going to be hungry. If it's 6 hours between lunch and dinner, you *know*

your tummy is going to start rumbling somewhere between the 3-4 hour mark,

so be sure you have something to eat then so you're not starving at dinner

and over eat. If you go long between breakfast and lunch, plan a snack for

then, too. If you eat dinner fairly early and 5 hours or more before you go

to bed, you'll be hungry at night, too, so plan a snack for then, too, but

make sure it's not something that's going to keep you awake or give you

nightmares.

Don't go hungry, is what I'm saying. Plan your food around your lifestyle.

Make your personal preferences work for you instead of against you. Eat only

foods you like and can live with for the next 20, 30, 50 years. Having only

Slim Fast for 2 meals a day will get old pretty fast, and it's human nature

to rebel and binge after a period of severe dietary restrictions. By

pre-planning your meals you're eating what you like but in healthier

portions so you never feel deprived, so there's nothing to rebel against.

It's a food plan, and a way of life, you can live with for decades to come.

Sue in NJ