Fat Girl Confessional

Another "hobby" I've taken up to help get my weight down (and help my pocketbook) is planning my meals for a week. I'm not as ambitious as some - I try and keep some healthy breakfast and lunch options around and just fly by the seat of my pants for those meals (although I will chop veggies/fruit once or twice a week so I can include that in whatever I'm eating). I DO try and plan every dinner, though, because I'm preparing a meal for the whole family.

One of my favorite sites is AllRecipes.com, because they have a "healthy eating" recipe section that includes user ratings. When I'm planning my meals and I'm trying to fill in a date, I can go to the "healthy eating" section and pick a recipe that's received 4 or 5 stars. I add the ingredients I don't have on hand at home to my grocery list (bonus: you can enter in ingredients you already have at home and the site will pull up all recipes that include those items!).

Planning ahead like this helps prevent me from making impulse junk food buys at the grocery store and also ensures that we can have a healthy home-cooked meal every night. It also helps us save on eating out. The nights that I work late, I plan ahead with a Crockpot dinner that I whip up in the morning or something quick like whole-grain spaghetti.

I was always one of those people who didn't understand how people had the time to do things like this, but I've tried to get myself in the habit of sitting down for 20 minutes every Sunday afternoon to plan out the week. That's honestly all it takes, and then I hit the grocery store (armed with my coupons and list of items on sale) and voila! I'm ready to take on another week of battling the bulge.