Meal Planning & New Roomie

So the diet's been going well.  Back on this day, frustrated with the constant existence of my baby weight, I started a fruit & veggie only diet.  That was intended to be the beginning of my transition towards the Paleo Diet.  I made it a week before I started doing actual research on the principles of Paleo, which taught me I would likely lose weight faster if I went to meat & veggies instead of fruit & veggies.  That sounded much more appealing, especially since I found myself waiting until I fed Isaiah whatever to begin cutting & cooking my dinner & then he never got any of the good stuff. 

Since then I've been pretty successfully doing meat & veggies only & calorie counting.  The only times I found it difficult were when I was at someone else's house and once when I was doing a tasting with one of my catering clients.  The removal of cheese, ranch & corn were pretty devastating.  But I no longer crave them, and I'm not really interested in eating bread or desserts.  I've lost around 10 pounds. 

I've come to the conclusion that I shouldn't really have a cheat day (at least while I'm trying to lose weight) because it tends to counteract whatever I did the previous 2-3 days.  So I've been thinking a lot about the simple math of calories in & calories out.  And the thought of eating what I used to eat & having to exercise to make up for it in order to maintain my weight seems really depressing.  So for now, I will choose to lose weight simply by eating better but mostly by eating less.  Then maybe when I lose most of it, the weather will be nice enought to start walking & then down the line maybe I'll have enough time & money to take the classes I want to take.  Maybe.  I wish.  One day... 

The other struggle I've had recently is getting bored with my default veggies & meat.  Usually I just barely make it to the grocery store & grab a bunch of things that sound good.  And then I end up with a fridge full of chicken, eggs, broccoli, & salad stuff.  Poor Isaiah - that's not good for him.

Plus tonight begins our month long summer with our new roomie - BB.  I knew it was out of the question to have chicken, eggs, broccoli & salad stuff for him.  And rather than keeping that for me & giving my sons frozen mini corn dogs, I opted to make an attempt at meal planning. 

I got several recipes from this website, dedicated to meal planning for the Paleo Diet.  I spent all day today figuring out what to cook for 3 boys of completely different ages & me, creating a grocery list & going grocery shopping.  I'm already overwhelmed.  Mommies, does it get easier?

Breakfast is usually pretty fast here, so I plan to either get the boys to school before they eat breakfast there or cook eggs, sausage, & toast most mornings.  Maybe on the weekend I'll make these Paleo pancakes.  I just got some sandwich meat for lunch because the boys will have lunch at school & Marcus & are seldom around, mostly just eating/tasting food from our events.  Then 2 nights we have events to attend/work.  I blocked off one night in the middle for leftovers.  That leaves me 4 nights of cooking.  And that seems like so much.  I spent $150 at the store.  Again I was overwhelmed.

But then I thought, I am feeding 4.  if we can make it without spending anymore, that's only $21.43 per day.  So I'm doing good!  Plus, as my husband just pointed out, we might have food leftover from catering events.  If that's the case, some of the meat I've planned will stay frozen & they will make it to some meals in week 2. 

Tonight we made a Tacos. BB had meat & tortillas.  Isaiah had mostly tortilla & a little meat. 

And I had meat, avocados, tomatoes, black olives (I ate most of them before I finished cooking) over romaine & red leaf. 

I missed my sour cream & cheese, but it was still delicious, and the boys were happy.  BB asked on the way home if we could have mini corn dogs, but I asked him to try the tacos first.  I guess they were good enough. 

We'll see how the rest of the week goes! 

Isaiah & BB were pleased to know that a bath awaited them after dinner...  Isaiah was cracking up at BB the entire time.  It's delightful to see the development of their relationship.