Weight Loss Wednesdays: The Debut of the Menu

Well, with my rethinking of what it means to be a Supermom, and deciding to become an excellent homemaker, I also had to do some rethinking of how I want to go about losing weight. Obviously, I put in 30 minutes to work with the Kinect, although the previous 30 minutes set aside for my daughter I’d be doing her activity with her. So maybe more like an hour. . . But for me the issue has never been getting activity in. Most of you are probably familiar with the principal that a body in motion will stay in motion. . . I think that applies to people as well. As long as I can get moving I’ll stay moving. My issue has always been food.

I’ll confess, I’m a snacker. A hopeless snacker. Not even when I’m just hungry, but when I’m bored too. I’ve been like that for quite a long time, and the biggest issue for me? Unplanned meals. Unplanned meals are the bane of my existence. As long as I plan my meals, and stick to them, I’m fine. I will eat healthy, and reasonable portions. But the moment I’m faced with an unplanned meal, I don’t know what to do. Hence the need for a menu!

Below you’re going to find a menu that took me the better part of two days to come up with. Every recipe on it is a new one, except the lunch items, most of which I either came up with on my own, or was inspired by Pinterest to recreate. You’ll notice I have two vegetarian meals on it, which is important to me. Before I conceived my youngest, I was incorporating two to three vegetarian meals per week, and my husband loved it.

So let me tell you my idea behind it. You’ll notice from the menu (and the schedule I featured yesterday), that Sunday is baking day. My plan to make bread from scratch (I was doing this right before we moved to the house we currently lived in and it was so much more economical than buying bread at the store), as well as 6 additional items. The bread makes 2 loaves per batch, so if I do two batches, that’s 4 loaves right there (which is what I usually buy). The two quickbreads, the Hawaiian Banana Nut Bread and the Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread also make two loaves as well. The Orange rolls are yeast rolls and the Bagels are like making bread. All of these are relatively easy for my, I think the Orange rolls will be the most involved. I used to bake all the time (daily during the winter), so none of these items are intimidating to me, and I’m very interested to see how my bagels will turn out. These baked items will be made on Sundays, and frozen to be distributed over the week. Because quite frankly, if they were left out in easy reach I may eat them all on Sunday and you’d find me at the end of the day, in a comatose state, having overdosed on gluten.

Why baking it myself? Because I’ve noticed that if you have the time, and can make it yourself, the foods you make are more satisfying than the stuff you buy at the store. To date I’ve made my own bread and butter, my own whipped cream, and several other things that I can’t bring to mind right now. But the result is always the same. I don’t need to eat multiple servings. Usually, while it’s higher in calories, it’s rich enough to satisfy in one serving. And yeah, I’d rather eat 100 calories more in one serving, than multiply the calories of one into 2 or 3 because I just didn’t feel full after one.

The lunches are small, and kid friendly. I thought about Isabel and I having different things for lunch, but its easier to make one item, and I feel like the smaller lunches will suffice for me too. Plus, the foods I saw appealed to the kid in me. Can’t beat that. I did try to stick with stuff that wasn’t processed though. I think most of our kids loved the processed junk they have nowadays, and sometimes it’s just easier to pick up a bag of chicken nuggets and throw that at our kids because they like it, and if yours are like mine, we don’t see any ill effects. . . At least, at the moment. But focusing on my family means focusing on their nutrition, and since I also need to keep my health and calories in mind, I went with homemade versions of stuff my daughter might be familiar with.  Except the lunch skewers. . . I’ll admit, they looked cool and appealed to me.

Everything I chose for dinners are reasonably healthy, and looked delicious when I was picking them out. Yes, there’s a lot of chicken. My daughter won’t eat any meat but chicken, so I chose plenty of chicken. The stuffed peppers and the tacos were more for my husband, because he likes red meat kind of meals (the peppers call for sausage, which he loves), and of course, as I said, the vegetarian meals appealed to me.

You’ll notice there’s also desserts and they’re not the healthiest sounding. . . I really don’t know what the calorie breakdown is on those yet. They looked great, and again, this will be a chance for me to exercise will-power, hopefully. I decided to add daily desserts because if I don’t, my husband will cook a dessert, and if you think these are unhealthy, you should see the things my husband manages to create. So this is an attempt for me to control our eating habits. I did try to pair the heavier desserts with the lighter meals, just to balance things out.

The thing that this menu does do is it takes the guesswork out of what we’re eating. I don’t have to wonder what I’m having for lunch, I know it already. And I don’t have to snack relentlessly before dinner time, because I know what I’m making, and I know it’ll include a dessert.

So will this help me lose weight? I really don’t know. But it might cut down on some of that needless snacking, which sneaks in calories when I’m not looking.