My Back-on-Track Meal Planning

August was a particularly big month for us this year. On August 1, I started working again after the summer break and Jeff started traveling again, after a full month at home. Both of us decided to take this opportunity to start new healthy habits.

The healthy habits I’m trying to stick to include:

Run regularly, at least 2 miles
More strength training
Stay within my weight loss daily calorie goal
Floss every day (because it would be nice to stop lying to the dentist)
Read at least one book chapter each day (brain health is important too!)
Walk at least 10 000 steps every day
No alcohol for a month

I’ve started writing a bullet journal to keep track of all my habits and also to make me fully accountable of what I do every day. My record certainly isn’t perfect, but I’m trying and I am fully motivated.

Meal planning has been a huge help to stick to my goals. Luckily, I don’t mind eating the same (or very similar) meals every day so I can plan a lunch and a dinner and prepare five servings of each for the week. That way, I calculate my calories in advance and since the food is ready, I don’t have as much leeway to cheat. I wouldn’t want to waste the food I already made! 🙂

While I’ve been meal planning in the past, this time, I’m also typing my weekly meals and posting it in the kitchen. No guessing game, I need to stick to the plan! Here’s what my kitchen cabinet has looked like for the past 3 weeks…

My lunchbox has looked something like this…creamy pesto mac with steamed broccoli, spiralized zucchini with bolognese sauce, and veggie egg salad with multigrain crackers.

And my dinner salads looked like this…Caesar salad with grilled chicken, broiled lobster tail with a simple salad, and shrimp Cobb salad.

If you’re looking for healthy lunch ideas, I highly suggest the following recipes I have tried:

Did I have some extra treats once in a while? Of course I did! But that’s the beauty of planning my meals and counting the calories in advance. I know how many calories are in each dish and I know how many calories I have leftover each day for small treats or snacks.

Another great thing about Jeff and I both trying to stick to our healthier habits has been to come up with healthy alternatives to our usual over-the-top weekend meals…

When we started craving pizza and wanted to reach for the phone to order from our favorite pizza joint, we went to Sprouts instead and made a kale-crust pizza. Jeff satisfied his pepperoni needs, I filled mine with veggies (pesto, black olives, artichoke hearts, mushrooms) and we both enjoyed a healthy dose of greens.

When we both started dreaming of tacos while running errands, we went home to improvise with what we had in the fridge. Since we had ground lamb, we used it as inspiration and topped it with za’atar seasoning, cucumber, tomatoes, goat cheese crumbles, plain Greek yogurt and baby kale.