Well, here we are at the end of Week One. I've been following my program about 80% of the time, had a couple of PMS-related Oreo episodes and a glass too many of vino at a certain happy hour, but otherwise I've been doing pretty well.  I guess the scale agrees because I am down 1.8 pounds! Not bad, but I know I can do better. 

I've been thinking back to the last time I lost weight, when I was following Jenny, and pondering what it was about that program that worked so well for me.  Well, duh, it was a no-brainer: Go to meeting. Weigh-in. Buy food. Eat food. Repeat.  I had little to think about, I just heated up the meals, ate the food, and the weight came off.  Though I certainly don't want to go back to that way of eating, and honestly I missed my own cooking, I can't beat the convenience.  So, how to implement that into the way I live & eat now?

I started out by planning my weekly menu, as I've been doing, preparing my meals as usual.  Then, after dinner, I portion out the leftovers into individual containers and label them.  These become lunches for the next couple of days. If there's more left over than I can safely store in the fridge, or if I'm tired of a particular meal (that rarely happens, I don't mind repetition), I freeze those portions instead.  Same thing with breakfast, have a few containers of Tofu Scramble stacked in there.  I also have a big tub of Vegetable Soup to accompany meals or even as a mid-day snack.  Speaking of snacks, I took a cucumber & a head of broccoli,chopped & divided them up into little ziploc bags and labeled each one with the contents and weight so that logging into Sparkpeople would be a breeze.  These went into a handy-dandy Snaptight container (on sale this week at Publix, if you're in my neck of the woods), so easy to grab & go!




Lastly, I mixed up a batch of hummus and divided it into tiny tubs.  Now, when the snack attack hits, I can open my fridge, grab a bag of veggies and a pot of hummus, I'm good to go! You can see there's also a big bin of crunchy apples there, and a fruit bowl of bananas sits on the counter, nearby, perfectly portable health food.  I also have some cooked chickpeas and pink beans in there, easy to toss onto a salad or into a soup for added protein.





Also this week, I baked several sweet potatoes in the oven, used two of them for the Sweet Potato Beginnings breakfasts..



the other I mixed in with my Spicy Vegetarian Chili. So delicious, filled with fiber and nutrients. Dr. McDougall would be proud.




So, that just about wraps up Week One.  I have a simple pasta dish on the menu for tonight, will share that tomorrow so hope to see you then!

Have a beauty-full day,

Michele~