Lost At Meal Time - What's My New Normal?

Every week I sit down to make up a healthy meal plan (and following that, a grocery list for the week) and every single time, I feel SO. LOST.

It's the 'healthy' part that really gets me. Especially when I'm short on time or just not 'feeling' the meal-planning vibe. I'm diabetic, gluten free, and I'd dearly like to cut out all fillers, unpronounceable ingredients, and Monsanto / GMO foods. That is the goal I am for every week.

I have a basic meal 'outline' I follow when trying to put the meal plans together. It goes like this (still a work in progress):

breakfasts:

oatmeal

smoothies

eggs

lunches:

vegetarian ceviche

leftovers

soup

eggs

chips and salsa / nachos

dinners:

meat + two veggies

meat + veggie + starch

GF pasta or casserole

tacos

vegetarian?

snacks:

cashews

dark chocolate

ice cream cups

yogurt

fruit

chips and salsa

applesauce

apple and pb

clementine

banana

cheese stick

laughing cow and rice crackers

larabar

It's a good layout. Snacks are easy. Breakfast is ok. Oatmeal is easy but I miss cereal... but with my "no fillers, no GMO" plan I haven't found a good cereal that really works. I still buy cereals because my kids eat it and it's not a meal I've really managed to sway them over to the 'health' side yet. (I try to pick relatively healthy ones at least.) Lunch I struggle with mightily - I never want to eat it anyway, and nothing ever sounds good. I don't want to put a lot of work into lunch. 

Dinner is... easy in concept, not as easy in theory. The 'meat plus two sides' method is easy but I'd like to start eating less meat. It gets expensive. I'd like to find good vegetarian options that we will all enjoy and that will still be filling. 

The overall general plan is good. I continue to refine it but it mostly works and is mostly healthy. I sit down each week and the first thing I do is look at the sales papers and make a list of everything on sale that I might want to purchase for the week. The second step is SUPPOSED to be, then, to take the list of on-sale foods and make up a meal plan for the week. A SPECIFIC meal plan, with recipes and/or chosen foods - no generic 'meat' or 'fruit' or 'vegetable' items on the list. 

That's where the plan usually falls apart for me. I'm not sure why. I often end up with a half-assed plan and I go out, buy a lot of stuff on sale, and overbuy on snacks and things (making sure we're stocked each week with practically everything on the list above, when we don't NEED that many snacks each week). A lot of food ends up going to waste that way, and it also leads to overspending. Another goal is to eat on a budget because we really don't HAVE a lot of money to spend on food each month... and with us eating a lot of meat, fresher produce, and gluten-free foods (PLUS the other goals), we don't get to take advantage of most of the SUPER CHEAP foods on sale each week. I take comfort by reminding myself that we are increasing our health and it's worth the extra cost, but when money is tight you still feel the pinch and sometimes that 10 cent ramen (no matter how unhealthy) is awfully tempting.

I think I need a better database of recipes and meal plans that fit our health goals, for one. I went through a lot of recipe testing last summer when I was doing The Blood Sugar Solution. I found some foods to add to my staples list but overall I didn't find a lot of 'winner' recipes - quick, easy, delicious and SATISFYING. It's a lot of work to test new recipes, and it's a lot of work to even make a 'potential recipes' database, and it's very disheartening to be out of your element and not have a lot of 'staple' recipes to fall back on when you just need to throw a quick and easy dinner together.

The other thing that holds me back is I'm still fighting a lifetime of bad eating habits. Every time I go to my mom's house I'm reminded of how truly awful my nutritional meals background is. A veritable SEA of white everything. White breads, white pastas, sweets, frozen meals (Stouffers, Hot Pockets). I pretty much can't eat anything at my mom's house anymore. I miss those foods sometimes. My 'easy' meals, even with my own family, were things like: spaghetti with garlic bread. Hot dogs and beans. Macaroni and Cheese (yes, blue box mac and cheese, and I still love that chemically-laden slop).  Hot dogs and chips. Sloppy joes.

I can't eat any of that now, and while most of the time I don't really miss those specific foods... I still feel lost a lot of the time. It's hard to explain. Mostly it's a feeling like I don't really know what I'm doing, and I'm not terribly happy with it. It feels HARD. It still feels like a challenge. I was taught to cook as I grew up, and I've always loved cooking... but there's a part of me now that feels like I never learned how to cook, and I'm trying to learn a new skill while at the same time being limited to incredibly strict parameters. With these food restrictions, you go into the grocery store, and you pretty much have 5-6 aisles / sections in which you can shop. It feels very LIMITING to be surrounded by all that food and not be able to do anything with it, especially when it's food you've spent 30+ years eating.  To have it suddenly taken away - as I said in an earlier post, I've mourned the loss and I don't really feel like I'm still having grief over the foods I CAN'T eat, but I guess maybe I haven't come to terms with the foods I CAN eat. I am still trying new foods periodically... but I don't know what is EASY for me any more in terms of meals. I guess I haven't found my new normal.

What I find most of the time is that trying to do an entire week of meal plans makes me lose my mind. I still have to take it one or two days at a time. I hate this because I'm pretty sure I'm spending more money than I need to be (every time you go into the store you're tempted), and I know I'm spending way more time than I need to by hitting the grocery store multiple times a day.

My health is worth it. My family's health is worth it. I just wish I had figured it out more by now. 30+ years of eating habits being changed won't happen overnight. Just like weight loss won't happen overnight. Sometimes that's not terribly consoling

This post was brought to you by my frustration and anxiety as I try to put together a weekly meal plan yet again. :/

Plans, Perserverance, Acceptance

 Over the holidays I slacked off quite a bit on my overall eating and health plan. It definitely affected both my weight (as evidenced with the five pound gain over the past three months) and with how I felt.

• My blood sugar went back up, to unacceptable levels. I'm still playing around with the insulin I take, trying to take as little as possible while still keeping my sugars at a healthy level. It's really hard. My sugars right now vary between the low 100s (110's at the low end) to the high 200s (270s at the high end) throughout the day. I'm playing with diet, exercise, AND insulin... it's crazy. I was dealing with highs upon waking up until this week; now I am dealing with normal fasting sugars but random peaks throughout the day. I also don't feel great when this is going on... I vary between fatigue / sluggishness and dizziness. 
• A lot of my gastrointestinal issues were cropping back up. I am pretty sure this is gluten-related. It was overwhelming to be gluten free during the holidays and I gave up on it a lot of the time, leading me to cycle between constipation and diarrhea. I would also have periodic bouts with stomach pain. My acid reflux came back last month. I have been gluten free again for a few weeks and I'm feeling much better.
• My hair started falling out again. This was something that has been happening for a few years now, and while it was alarming at times - the sheer amount of hair I would pull out every time I showered - I have been blessed with a LOT of hair to spare and I wasn't BALD, my hair was just a lot thinner. I wrote it off as a post-having kids thing and/or a diabetes thing. When it stopped happening last summer I didn't really notice... but when it started happening AGAIN it became pretty clear to me that it, too, was probably gluten related! My hair loss over the past week, now that I'm gluten free again, has been pretty minimal.
• I had more frequent headaches and bouts of fatigue over the holidays. The fatigue was nowhere near as bad as it had been at the start of 2012 but I could feel it creeping back in at times.
• And of course, my weight started creeping back up.

I'm not really doing The Blood Sugar Solution plan, per se, anymore. There are definite positive things I have taken away from it - the elimination diet and discovering how much better I feel without gluten, for one. There are others I'm not so sure about - the vast amount of supplements, for one. I've cut a lot of them out - I didn't really notice a huge difference in how I felt, and as I do more research over time, there's just so much conflicting data on what each one actually DOES and whether or not they are really effective that it's a tough call to make. I've stuck with a multivitamin, omega-3's, probiotics, and fiber supplements... and until I run out I'm going to continue taking the "Healthy Blood Sugar" supplement I picked up from Vitacost. I don't plan on buying more of it though, unless my blood sugar changes drastically when I stop taking them!

Diet wise I am, obviously, eating gluten free right now. I'm still working to find a good balance between healthy, easy, not time-consuming, appealing to me, and cost effective. It's really hard, much harder than I think food SHOULD be. I'm sure I'll expand more on this topic as time goes on. I'm trying to streamline meals as much as possible, while trying the occasional new thing to hopefully expand our repertoire a little bit.

Exercise - I'm picking that back up. Slacked a good amount over the holidays. Contemplating working my way up to my own "Biggest Loser" type exercise plan to kickstart my weight loss. I will see how that pans out for me and, of course, report in on it too.

That's pretty much it. In the grand scheme of things, we know there's no magic pills... with RARE exceptions, it's calories in, calories out. I've also come to terms a LOT more over the past year that the TYPE of calories you put in matter. I've been staunchly denying that for years, but the more I learn, and the more I experiment with my own health, the more I realize I simply have to accept it as true. I've not just accepted it, I've even made a lot of peace with that over the past year - it was really hard for me, for a long time, to say "No one should eat this food" or "I shouldn't eat this type of food". Even after it was becoming readily apparent, I still wanted to rage against the injustice of it. I'm pretty much through with, for lack of a better term, the stages of grief over food. I don't always love the restrictions but I'm not angry or in denial anymore. I focus on what I CAN eat, not what I can't.

I slip up, I pick myself up, I start over again.

2013 State Of The Weight

That weight, it just wants to keep on creeping!


My weight officially climbed back up to 223 over the holidays. My lowest point prior to was 218, so a five pound gain over the past three months. Weight loss isn't linear; even people on The Biggest Loser have weeks where they gain!

The holidays are tough, and for me the struggle begins in October - Halloween is my favorite holiday, and there are so many delicious treats that go along with it. Apple and pumpkin EVERYTHING, and all the candy. Fall is a great time to start baking too.
Thanksgiving isn't terribly hard for me - it's just one day, and we don't go to a lot of parties or anything.
December is a little tougher, with a few parties and Christmas cookies and the holiday itself.
My husband's birthday is January 1st so New Year's always brings a few indulgences too.
After struggling through October, I decided I was going to give myself a little break and just try to maintain. A five pound gain isn't the worst thing in the world. If I was at a healthy weight it wouldn't really matter at all, as long as I got back into my healthy habits after the season ended!

Overall, I lost 13.6 pounds last year. I feel better than I did at the beginning of last year too. I'm recommitted to my goals and I am going to keep moving forward! I'd like to see a lot more weight come off this year, now that I have a better handle on what works for my body.

Still, it sucks when those numbers creep up.

(Don't forget you can check out progress pictures at my weight loss Tumblr!)