Planned Eating: Techology/Intro
For three days, all I ate was cold cereal, a pizza, and organic trail mix. "But the pizza had vegetables on it!" I protest. "Vegetables are good! Besides, I've been so busy. Better to eat leftover pizza three days in a row than not eat at all, right?"
As far as it goes, the logic is pretty sound. With all the rushing around, the limited hours of the produce markets, the diffficulty of driving 10-20 minutes away on a 60 minute lunch to run errands (including groceries) every day, then getting home late.... eating well has become a real challenge. Some days, eating at ALL is a bit of a challenge.
Unfortunately, these are all excuses. Legitmate ones, perhaps, but they don't solve the problem... now do they?
No, they don't.
Especially when I still want to lose about half the weight that's snuck on over the past 5 years.
So I've decided to try using a meal plan. On the excellent recommendation of a friend here (thanks, Kim!) I started using SparkPeople.com for nutrition tracking about a year ago. It's quite user-friendly, easy to add foods to your "I've eaten" list for the day, and gives you a good sense of what goals you're hitting and what you lack. Even without using it religiously on a daily basis, it's an easy way to track whether your diet generally goes over or under the recommended range for calories, protein, vitamin c, magnesium, etc. (They also offer exercise tracking, etc. - but I've mainly used it for food.)
Recently, SparkPeople also started offering an automatically-generated meal plan that meets your personal caloric goals.
The great thing is that you can discard one suggestion and grab a bevy of alternate choices in just seconds. Even better, you can also change any ingredient in the meal for something similar with the click of two buttons. Can't stand spinach? Swap it out for a side of broccoli or a tomato salad instead! No time to cook casserole on Tuesdays? No worries, you have options that are fast and easy for busy nights. Worried about what to do with the other half of that roast chicken? Schedule chicken salad for lunch the next day!
So that takes care of eating junk all the time. Whew! Just follow the plan, right?
But... what if you're disorganized? What if you never seem to have unsprouted potatoes when you need them? What if the milk runs out just when you wanted to add a half cup to something? What if (*cough*) you mean to eat well, but the things you need for healthy recipes just never seem to all be in stock at the same time?
What if all that leads to eating trail mix and pizza for three days??
My favorite thing about SparkPeople's meal plans - and the thing that made me decide to try the program - is their shopping list function. Not only does it let you choose things you know you'll eat, but then it offers a dynamically generated list of every ingredient (by category and quantity) for everything on your personalized plan - including those substitutions you choose - for up to 7 days of menus.
This pretty much kills all my excuses.
"I want to eat well, but I always come in heavy on carbs, protein, and fat."
"I don't have time to run to the grocery AND cook after work every night."
"By the time I know what I'm going to fix, the produce markets are closed."
Etc.
It takes some time to go through the plan and adjust it so that I know I'm willing to eat (and can find) everything on the menu... but if it gets me actually preparing and eating those healthy, appealing choices, that will be progress! So it's time to give planned meals a try. I'll be posting an update or two over the next couple of weeks with my thoughts on how it goes.
As far as it goes, the logic is pretty sound. With all the rushing around, the limited hours of the produce markets, the diffficulty of driving 10-20 minutes away on a 60 minute lunch to run errands (including groceries) every day, then getting home late.... eating well has become a real challenge. Some days, eating at ALL is a bit of a challenge.
Unfortunately, these are all excuses. Legitmate ones, perhaps, but they don't solve the problem... now do they?
No, they don't.
Especially when I still want to lose about half the weight that's snuck on over the past 5 years.
So I've decided to try using a meal plan. On the excellent recommendation of a friend here (thanks, Kim!) I started using SparkPeople.com for nutrition tracking about a year ago. It's quite user-friendly, easy to add foods to your "I've eaten" list for the day, and gives you a good sense of what goals you're hitting and what you lack. Even without using it religiously on a daily basis, it's an easy way to track whether your diet generally goes over or under the recommended range for calories, protein, vitamin c, magnesium, etc. (They also offer exercise tracking, etc. - but I've mainly used it for food.)
Recently, SparkPeople also started offering an automatically-generated meal plan that meets your personal caloric goals.
The great thing is that you can discard one suggestion and grab a bevy of alternate choices in just seconds. Even better, you can also change any ingredient in the meal for something similar with the click of two buttons. Can't stand spinach? Swap it out for a side of broccoli or a tomato salad instead! No time to cook casserole on Tuesdays? No worries, you have options that are fast and easy for busy nights. Worried about what to do with the other half of that roast chicken? Schedule chicken salad for lunch the next day!
So that takes care of eating junk all the time. Whew! Just follow the plan, right?
But... what if you're disorganized? What if you never seem to have unsprouted potatoes when you need them? What if the milk runs out just when you wanted to add a half cup to something? What if (*cough*) you mean to eat well, but the things you need for healthy recipes just never seem to all be in stock at the same time?
What if all that leads to eating trail mix and pizza for three days??
My favorite thing about SparkPeople's meal plans - and the thing that made me decide to try the program - is their shopping list function. Not only does it let you choose things you know you'll eat, but then it offers a dynamically generated list of every ingredient (by category and quantity) for everything on your personalized plan - including those substitutions you choose - for up to 7 days of menus.
This pretty much kills all my excuses.
"I want to eat well, but I always come in heavy on carbs, protein, and fat."
"I don't have time to run to the grocery AND cook after work every night."
"By the time I know what I'm going to fix, the produce markets are closed."
Etc.
It takes some time to go through the plan and adjust it so that I know I'm willing to eat (and can find) everything on the menu... but if it gets me actually preparing and eating those healthy, appealing choices, that will be progress! So it's time to give planned meals a try. I'll be posting an update or two over the next couple of weeks with my thoughts on how it goes.