A Day in the Life

This week marks the first week I am cooking for myself.  I started cooking my own breakfast and lunch last week.  This is day three of cooking everything.  I log several days worth of meals into Myfitnesspal and then Rachel goes on to make suggestions, changes, additions, deletions (grrrr), or, approves it as is.  So far it’s going okay, but the hard part is the part I never was good at….planning ahead so I “have time” to make a healthy meal.

I tend to get so busy with whatever it is I’m doing (mostly upstairs in the schoolroom) that by the time I’m hungry, I’m famished, and just want something quick and easy to make.  Unfortunately, most healthy options do not fall into the quick and easy category.  So planning ahead has become a necessity.  Since I already have several days worth of my meals logged, I know exactly what I'll need to have on hand, and what can be prepared, cut, shred, cooked, or prepped ahead of time.  For example, I have several lunches this week that include ½ cup serving of brown rice.  So this morning, I made 5 cups of brown rice in the rice cooker (made with Organic Chicken Broth instead of water) and bagged it in ½ cup servings.  I also have a few meals with brussel sprouts (my new favorite green vegetable), so I have a bag already washed and cut into halves.  Since I knew I’d be having stir-fried chicken a couple times this week, I went ahead a stir-fried 4 servings worth Sunday night. 

Just doing those few things above, makes putting together a healthy lunch very doable.  Today I had what is pictured below:  tilapia, brown rice, and broiled balsamic brussel sprouts.  Since the rice was already done, and the sprouts already cut, the whole thing took about 20 minutes start to finish and most of that was just the cooking time (during which I unloaded the dishwasher, did some dishes, and put in a load of laundry).  By the way, the balsamic brussel sprouts were from a recipe off Pinterest and were very yummy!  Plus I reheated the rice in the same pan I used for the tilapia and so it added just a hint of a lemony-garlic taste to it.  Lunch was 370 calories, breakfast was 375 (two scrambled eggs, plus one egg white, 1 piece of Cinnamon Raisin Ezekiel 4:9 toast with organic whipped butter and honey, and an apple). 

Today started with another 2.5 mile run at the lake.  I’d really like to get that to 3 miles by the end of the week, but my body isn’t cooperating.  I’m just dead at 2.5.  We’ll see how that goes.  I was asked why I don’t log my exercise into Myfitnesspal.  The reason is that if I enter it, it automatically increases the calories I get for the day.  While that’s great when I get to the maintenance phase of my weight loss, it makes the weight come off faster if I don’t eat my exercise calories. And since I am mentally unable to see those extra calories sitting there and not use them, I just don’t log it.