Don't Fail to Plan

So back several years ago, when I was attending Weight Watchers meetings, one of the sayings they had was:

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

And let me tell you, it is so true.  If you don't prepare, mentally and physically, it is really hard to be successful. I'm sure this applies to many other life areas, but especially when it comes to diet and exercise.  Part of the reason I think I did so poorly last week was because I didn't spend Sunday afternoon preparing meals for the week.  I was busy, so I thought that some leftovers and frozen meals would get me through the week. Boy, was I wrong.

That's one of the secrets of my weight loss: pretty much every Sunday afternoon since I've started, I spent time planning and preparing my meals for the week.  So, this week, I thought I'd let you in on the experience.

Yesterday, I did my weekly grocery shopping. I stocked up on strawberries, bananas, spinach, cereal, almond milk, chicken breasts...you get the picture. Before I went to the store, I perused my saved Sparkrecipe.com recipes and found two that I thought I'd like to try this week. I decided to make Cream Cheese Basil Fettucine, one of my favorite sparkrecipes, and a new recipe, Tomato and Spinach Chicken.

So today, I made them when I got home from church.  As I put each ingredient into the dish, I write down the calories and the fat grams and how many servings I've put in.  Then when I finish making the dish, I multiply out the calories and fat for each ingredient, add them up and then divide by the number of servings I made. It looks a like this:

Now, many recipes today come with the nutrition ingredients listed, so you may wonder why I do this.  Well, I usually try to get products with the lowest calorie count when I'm at the store. So, one brand of whole wheat pasta may be 200 calories for 2 oz, but another maybe 180 calories for 2 oz.  I try to get the one with the lowest calories every time. Plus, sometimes I modify the recipes. For instance the Cream Cheese Basil Fettucine is higher in calories than I normally like. So I put in less olive oil and butter than the recipe requires.
I want the calories that I keep track of every day to be accurate, and it won't be unless you figure out the exact calories for the meal that you are making.

After I make a meal, I divide it into the servings that I've accounted for and put it in individual Tupperwares. This is great, because it makes lunches and dinners during the week so easy. I just pull out one Tupperware and off to work I go.  This week, I bought grapes for a snack, so I also pre-packaged them into individual servings.

So here's my food for the week:

Every morning I have cereal (GoLEAN Kashi Crunch) and strawberries with almond milk.  For lunch I will have one of the Tupperwares lined up in the back of the picture, which are individual servings of Cream Cheese Basil Pasta. My snacks are bananas and grapes. I also have almonds and Luna bars already in my desk at work, if I need an extra boost of energy.  My dinners this week will be the Tomato and Spinach Chicken, which is at the forefront of the picture. They had just come out of the oven, so I hadn't had time to Tupperware them yet.  But they smelled so good, I made the executive decision to have one for much lunch today.   

Plated on my small plates, it looks like a lot of food! It's bedded on brown rice and the juicy tomatoes and crisp bacon made it all delicious!

This is what Bon looks like the entire time I'm cooking. So hopeful. I'm pretty sure it is her favorite time of the whole week, as she is just waiting for me to screw up and drop some scraps for her.  She eats pretty much anything I drop, except today we discovered that she is not a spinach fan.  I dropped a few of the fresh leaves. She made a mad dash for them and then slowly walked away without eating them.

So that's it.  I'm always looking for new recipes, so if you have any great ones, please share!