Some things I have neglected to mention about my food plan:
1) I have 1634 calories a day to work with. This will go down as I lose weight and actually already has gone down about 14 calories since the beginning of last week.
2) We are also on a tight budget in this house and as a project I decided to try to only spend $200-$210 on food a month! I know this sounds crazy to some but I read an article from a family of four who was eating quite well on that amount every month. So, I thought it sounded like a good idea. The problem? I went shopping for the month BEFORE I realized I was going on a diet. We don’t usually eat many vegetables. I know, bad. No secret though, you don’t get this big eating lettuce everyday! Most of what I bought was high in calories and has taken some creativity to work it in (and out) of our meal plan! We are now eating about half of what we would have before so the meal plan has stretched our food a lot!
3) We are using an app to help up keep track of our calories. It is called “lose it” and you can sign up for free on the computer (http://www.loseit.com/) or download the free app and keep up with it on your phone or iPod. It is very easy to use and you can even follow me if you want to! When you sign up you can find me under the e-mail, God1meover@juno.com
4) You get extra calories for exercising. We try not to eat any of those extra calories. I REALLY hate exercising. Enough said.
5) Pete and I don’t eat breakfast except occasionally and I usually have a donut on Sunday mornings at church. I know it is supposed to be the most important but right now it just seems like a waste of calories. Landon eats breakfast every morning, usually something small.
6) Landon is NOT on this diet with us. However, it has helped us to also keep him to healthy portion sizes and opened our eyes to his snacking habits. He has already started to make healthier choices.
Today’s food plan consisted of ham sandwiches and even a cookie for lunch! woot woot! And for supper we had queso and chips. Queso and chips are VERY high in calories but it is what we have at the house so we just ate less than we would have normally and made it all fit into our calorie budgets.
It was such a nice day out today! We decided to take our sandwiches, treat ourselves to (no calorie) drinks at sonic and have a picnic while having some family fun Geo Caching. We had a really nice time and found several caches. We walked around quite a bit which I filed in my brain as exercise ;). Some of the caches were in a very nice park and Landon wanted to play for a while. He loves to swing! I love to swing! “Hey!” I thought, “I can swing with Landon and it will be exercise and good mother/son time!”
When I got going good on the swing I asked Pete to time me so I would know how much “exercise” to log. I swang for a LONG time and finally asked Pete, “Has it been 5 min. yet?”. Nope, it had only been 1. So much for swinging as an easy way to lose the lbs! Needless to say it didn’t last long. So far the only exercise I like to do is ride my bike. Wish I would have brought it to the park today!
When we got home tonight I finished a project I have been working on the last few days to help me in meal planning.
It’s a menu board that has a place for a lunch and dinner meal. I printed slips of paper with meals and sides with calories for each. I glued the papers to a card stock backing to give it more stability. I made three boxes and glued them on the menu board and divided my meals and sides by calories. The first box is for 300 or more calories per serving, the second box is 100-300 calories per serving, and the last box hold foods with less than 100 calories per serving. This way I can match our lunch and dinner calories quickly, making it easy to plan a whole weeks worth of meals and stick to our food plan!
Are you working on a physical goal this year? Losing weight? Maintaining a healthy weight? Gaining muscle? Starting a workout program? I would really love to hear what you are doing and what is encouraging you!
bowlfulloffun 