Thursday, June 26, 2008

My Meal Plan

My quest to get back on track has been stuttering and stalling. So I’m bringing out the big guns – I’ve made a Meal Plan Chart! There’s nothing like a self indulgent spreadsheet to get me all fired up. I yanked out my shopping list for Trader Joe’s and worked up a whole week’s worth of meals starting this upcoming Monday. I’ll be able to tweak it from week to week and swap things in so I do not end up eating the same stuff all the time. I’ve also indicated the activity I’ll be doing each day at the bottom.

I realize that real life is not as easy as typing it all up in a chart. I reserve the right to be flexible and adjust as necessary. But I tend to do better when I plan ahead and am prepared. I’d rather not stress about my food choices – if I know what they are in advance, I don’t have to worry. To make things even easier, I bolded the things I’ll need to take along each day to work. That will cut down on the thinking part in the morning. Just grab and go! There’s also a reasonable sweet treat listed every evening for something to look forward to.

I made each weekday about 1500 calories and Fri (July 4th) and Sat each about 1750 calories. That stays within the weekly range that seemed to work earlier this year. For the following week, I might keep each day at 1500 with one “cheat” day on Sat of 2000 calories. I like to plan on Saturdays being a bit more because it winds up being quite a long day with ARRC starting so early. We’ll just have to see what works.

I hope you can make out the gist of this:

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm a MAJOR beancounter Amelia, so this spreadsheet really does it for me! I liked how you said you'll tweak it by taking out the stuff you don't eat etc. How's it working for you? As you expected? Do you follow it? (My problem is I'm quite the planner, but act like a 3 year old about following it).