September 2009 Weddings
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
**V**
Hey, care to share some meal plans? I'm really trying to avoid getting into a rut, especially with breakfast, lunch, and snacks.
What have you been doing?
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Re: **V**
Sure! I will say, when it comes to food I can be a bit of a creature of habit. Generally for my food during the day during the week I eat the same thing, every day. It works for me because I can make a big batch of something on Sunday and know I have lunch for every day of the week.
Breakfast: multigrain cheerios with skim milk; hard boiled eggs with the yolks removed filled with salsa and a little bit of cheese, egg beaters (plain with some veggies/salsa/a little cheese or sometimes I buy the southwestern ones if they're on sale), when I have eggs I usually do either turkey bacon or turkey sausage to get some extra protein in there, multigrain toaster waffles, home made breakfast burritos or sandwiches always on multigrain bread or tortillas and will occasionally splurge and have a bagel.
Food I bring to work is a little "complicated". I bring a morning snack, a lunch entree, fruit, veggies(if my entree is not veggies already) and greek yogurt.
Snacks for at work: In the morning I usually have some plain almonds (they're filling, have good fats, boost your metabolism and I can carry them around in my pocket and pop them in my mouth as I run around all morning) I also like a good cheesestick in the morning. In the afternoon I will usually eat my fruit as my snack to get a little sugar to get over the afternoon hump but if I'm going to workout straight from work I will eat a greek yogurt so that I have some extra protein to get through said workout. If don't eat cheesesticks and yogurt on the same days ever, too much dairy.
Lunches are usually lettuce salads with chicken or turkey, shrimp and sometimes steak. I will also occasionally make wraps, pasta salads with lots of veggies and my favorite, the personal veggie tray...fill up a container with baby carrots, peapods, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, tomatoes, etc bring a couple tablespoons of dressing and I'm good to go. I have a lot of recipes that I use for lunches on my "Healthy Stuff" pinterest board.
I plan/make dinner three times per week (Jay does his 2 days off and we figure we will go out about once per week)...1 meal is healthy (WW, low cal, low carb, etc...), 1 meal is regular but erring towards the side of healthy and 1 is a crockpot meal that I alternate week to week being really healthy and being regular. I have a WW cookbook at home that I use a lot and Pinterest has been a huge resource for me.
After I make something off of one of my boards I'll comment on it so you'll see things I've made that I liked and didn't like on my "Healthy Stuff" board and "Yummmmm" board. Healthy favs include zucchini boats,cilantro lime fish tacos, roasted veggie and black bean burritos, and chicken, black bean and brown rice casserole. Yummmmm faves include creamy tortellini soup, cheesy chicken pot pie cups, shrimp boil kebobs and balsamic-garlic crusted pork.
At the beginning of each month I make a list of the recipes I want to use; so for April I had 4 healthy, 4 regular and 4 crockpot. Each Friday I choose a recipe from each category and decide what I'll have for breakfast and lunch for the week. If lunch is carb or calorie heavy then I plan a having a lighter breakfast for the week and vice versa. Then I make a grocery list based off of my recipes, go home and check out what we already have and cross it off the list, go through the sale ads for the grocery stores around us and go shopping on Sundays. I have a list of lowest carb fruits and veggies and try and base my purchases for the week based off of those and what's on sale which is why I can live in Chicago and only spend $40/week on groceries.
1) that is crazy long, sorry. But I hope it's helpful
2) sorry it took me so long to post; I've been typing it all morning and then sh*t hit the fan in my courtroom.
3) Let me know if you have any questions or want more specific recommendations, I'm sure what I wrote got a little non-sensical at certain points
No, thats perfect, exactly what I was looking for. I'm also a creature of habit, which works for a long time, but then I get realyl burned out and end up with the "eff it"s. I'm trying to avoid that!
Right now, my breakfast is one of the following:
- a smoothie with fruit and almond milk
- an omlet-type deal with bell peppers and onions, topped with avocado or diced tomatoes
- 2 hard boiled eggs and fruit
AM snack (just one):
- 2 hard boiled eggs, whites only (if I just had a smoothie for breakfast)
- fruit
lunch:
- spinach salads with bell pepper, cucumber, tomato, avocado (If I didn't have any with breakfast), grilled chicken
- or leftovers from the night before
PM snack:
- almonds or pistachios (roasted and salted)
- sometimes another piece of fruit if I'm really hungry
dinner:
- lean protein of some kind
- veggies of some nature
- brown rice or a small potato (I try to limit this to like 3x/week at most)
I hadn't thought of doing smoothies for breakfast, I'll have to think about adding that into my rotation. I always pin smoothie recipes and then don't use them because they all have bananas in them which I loathe.
Your snacks look good as does lunch. I'm sure you do this but try mixing up your salad mix-in's/proteins/dressings. I haven't eaten the same salad for a week in about 3 months and I bring salads about 2x's/month. Next week I'm bringing an asian chicken salad with teriyaki chicken, wonton strips, a little cilantro and a sesame vinaigrette dressing; last week I brought spinach, walnuts, dried cranberries, feta and a little bit of steak with a raspberry vinaigrette...so yummy, one of my favs. I usually buy cheap, cheap steaks and grill them and divide up the 8oz of steak between 5 salads; it's not the leanest of proteins but I'm not eating a 32oz porterhouse either.
What you do for dinner is what we used to do and it got boring really fast for us. We're meat, veggie, side people; if one of those is missing it just doesn't feel right. So, we do brown rice, whole grain pastas, rolls every once in a while, couscous, quinea (?) and when I know we're going to be rushed I'm totally guilty of using Rice/Pasta Roni. The key for me has been to stick to the serving size for everything and watch my caloric intake from those things. But it sounds like your dinner plan is working for you and that you and Scott are both enjoying it and that's what's important.
Another portion control trick that I've done is we use our small dinner plates most nights and the first thing I do is fill half my plate with veggies. Then I put my protein on the plate; if it's a piece of meat it usually take up a quarter of the plate and put the portion size of the "side" in the space that's left, if it's a casserole with the "side" built in with the meat I usually let it take up about 3/4 of that other half or portion out the serving size according to the recipe.
I can't wait to see some of your clean eating recipes, I'm hoping to add at least one into my menu plan for May
see, I take a salad every day, and it's hard to do too much variety because you buy like 800 ingredients to achieve variety and then it ends up going bad. So right now this is the salad I'm working with, I'll keep that until it gets old, then do something different. There's so much you can do with salads.
As for dinner, right now clean eating rules say I can only do brown rice, potato, or quinoa (or oatmeal, which I loathe). Once I'm thru April, I'm going to do a little more whole grain pasta, but still aiming for only like 2x week. And our meat/starch/veggie isn't always separated - sometimes it's a dish that incorportates all of it together. So it's not quite as boring as grilled chicken and some kind of veggie on the side.
And ditto the portion control. I pretty much only use our "small" plates and immediately fill half with veggies. And when I'm done with my plate, I try to stay done and not talk myself into seconds. But if I'm just famished still, I'll do seconds of veggies only.
I only take one kind of salad per week and only buy enough fresh stuff for those 5 days; any veggies or cheeses that aren't needed for my salads are either incorporated into dinners or snacks. Things like wonton strips or dried cranberries last for a while so they just go in the pantry and wait until I cycle around to that salad again. But I know what you mean about going for variety and things just start to pile up, not get used and are wasted; fortunately Jay is not usually one to let too much go to waste so it doesn't happen all that often.
No seconds is the hardest part of portion control for me, especially if what we had was super delicious. The the veggies don't cut it for seconds I'll put my plate in the dishwasher and then just take one more fork-full and then put that in the dishwasher too; makes it so I don't fill up my plate again but still get that little bit more.
Another big thing for us was snacking at night after dinner. So we moved all of our snack food as far away from where we hang out at night as possible. We spend most of our time in the living room on the first floor so all of the junk went into the far back corner of the basement. Now we have to make the conscious decision to go downstairs and get a snack and, therefore, decide it we really want. I think it may have been the best idea I ever had.