So I’ve been asked what I eat since I generally have the same foods for breakfast and for lunch. Eating this way makes planning meals and having discipline that much easier.
For breakfast I have a smoothie everyday. In my last post I explained that I got the recipe from Alton Brown’s “Buff Smoothie“, but I portion it down to fit inside my Bullet. My husband or I prepare them the night before so they’re ready to blend in the morning. Next morning, we add wheat germ and ground flax before blending them up. That’s usually my breakfast, with some Greek yogurt or a hard-boiled egg for protein. When I know I’m going to have a busy day, I will also have a piece of toast or half a bagel too.
For lunch, I usually have a salad. I get the big packages of romaine and Spring mix at my wholesale store and cut up the romaine at the beginning of the week with a lettuce knife and portion the salad into baggies. I also prefer whole carrots so I peel and cut those to portion for daily meals.
When I’m ready to eat my lunch, I pull out a baggie of salad, a baggie of carrots, and whatever toppings I like to have. I pre-portion a serving size of walnuts into cups so I can just grab a cup to add to my salad. A lot of times I’ll add to my salad things that I want to check off of my daily list of good foods to eat. I always include a carrot and an apple, and nuts – or, if I don’t have walnuts, I might have avocado or tuna fish instead – something that has essential fatty acids. I also include a hard-boiled egg or yogurt on the side depending on which I had for breakfast. Any other toppings are just for variety and to help make the salad more palatable. One of my favorite toppings is Goldfish crackers. So yummy! I also spring for the pricier dressings because that makes the whole difference to me. If I don’t love the dressing, I won’t love my food and, “if I don’t love it, I don’t swallow” (Ratatouille). I try to stick to the portion sizes for salad dressing though because by now, the calories are really piling on. At this point, with the nuts, egg, apple, dressing, crackers, etc. this salad is around 500 calories, which is a decent-sized lunch. Sometimes I have half a pb & j or a small portion of leftovers from dinner if I’m still hungry.
That’s it. I will go into more of what I like to have for dinner in another post, but as a glimpse, my dinner schedule includes Crock pot Sundays, one vegetarian meal, one pizza meal, and one regular dish that can be anything. The other nights, we have leftovers. I think I fell into this habit because other diet programs I have observed are usually pretty strict for breakfast and lunch but relaxed for dinner. It makes sense to me. I prefer preparing meals in the evening when my whole family will enjoy them. Plus, it’s easy to prepare breakfast and lunch ahead of time so I’m not wondering about it when I’m running around and stressed out. This is how I avoid emotional eating I guess. (My emotional eating comes when I just don’t have an appetite and I look at the salad and feel nauseous. That’s when I grab the bag of chocolates and skip lunch altogether. I don’t recommend this. However, when it happens, I have to get back into it the next day and try again.)
What do you do to keep your discipline during the day? How do you avoid emotional eating?
By Small & Simple Means 