Planning – Starting off with Meal Planning and Eating Clean

 Yesterday I started my 13 virtues, self development project. For the first virtue I chose planning. It seems to me that I am a better person when I have planned out my life for the day. Especially when it comes to feeding myself. And eating clean. Whenever I don’t have something planned, I’m just usually grabbing a bar, I’m leaving it in the car because I forgot to plan. And that’s just a snack on the run.

I landed on Home Chef after trying a few out, because I like the pro Tien choices and quality of the food.  I either then cook it before dinner for my family, or someone else takes over and cooks it. When someone else takes over, they never see all of the ingredients that I prepped so it’s usually better if I do it myself. But I don’t really have that much energy at the end of the day and standing near a hot fire by the stove is not the best. What is the best chance that I have for eating right in the evening. My last meal of the day.

So I sat down yesterday with the new protocol that my nutritionist gave me. It includes the times a day that I should eat, recommendations for foods that I should be purchasing that are clean, and within my calorie intake, I am trying to thousand a day for now. We will adjust accordingly.

For planning, I wrote down the different meals that I had throughout the day. Four lunch, I wanted to have portioned greens in the fridge raider where I would just add fixings like protein and vegetables. Having a chopped up already and ready to go makes a big difference. I hate taking boxes out from the refrigerator going to the counter behind me and putting them on the counter to dig through it. All this while onto crutches. Yeah not the best idea.

One of the new protein choices I got was a packaged being mixed with an international flavored sauce. This was easy to just grab 2 tablespoons and put on top of the salad. It’s now in a small box that I can use every day. I put on cut up peppers that I had to cut up earlier in the day, I used as my main protein source, a quinoa salad that I got from Whole Foods. All of this I topped with 2 tablespoons of my vegan green goddess dressing. This is my go to dressing for salads. It’s creamy, but without the dairy and tastes really good. So now I have my lunches for the week. That’s plan

I chopped up veggies that I had on hand in bite-size pieces for dinner, and to always have on hand when I need a side dish, or even chopped vegetables to throw in a salad. 350° for 20 minutes, my choice of seasoning, and a very little bit of olive oil. I was cooking my vegetables at 400 in the air fryer and they were kind of burning. With my Emeril air fryer, 350 for 20 was the magic number. I had this with our dinner already to go. Having a chopped in advance in a box in the refrigerator is key. Not just vegetables that will go soggy in the vegetable drawer. I am not going to keep vegetables in their natural state in my refrigerator anymore. I’m going to buy Them a few at a time and then use them up.

For my snack, which I ate after my breakfast, I had 12 Mary’s gone crackers, seed, crackers, with no green. They are pretty handy to have, and a quick crunch to just grab it. A couple of tablespoons of cava hummus, with some hemp seeds sprinkled on, and I was ready to go. I did not feel hungry until dinner.

So, on my first planning crusade, I figured out having chopped veggies and fixings for salad and snacks is the way to go for me. I was full, I didn’t look for a snack or a bar. The whole day. Off to planning day number two later. Now it’s off to the gym.