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.
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. :/
I hear you. I rarely post comments anywhere, for anyone, but I really, really want to send you an encouraging note. For me too, meal planning used to STINK! Now, it's mostly ok. I've found a couple things that help me feel like it's more or less manageable...
ReplyDeleteOne thing is that I keep a binder of dinners I like to make - a list in front and then recipes, some typed, some printed from online, some copied from books (like, I borrowed my sister's scanner and scanned favorite recipes out of my cookbooks), so all my favorites are in one place. That drove me crazy for, oh, forever, needing to look in like 5 books to make my grocery list. Finally put it together, yay. Now, I look down the list of things I know we like to eat, and I pick some for the week. Much less of a headache, though putting that together was a pain.
(As an aside, as I think about my recipe binder, have you thought of ethnic stuff as possible staples? For example, I love a good stir-fry with brown rice. (I use baked tofu, but you could do chicken or pork if you don't do soy.) I even have a quick simple sauce recipe I use that isn't crazy-hard to make, promise.
And two, something else that makes me feel less overwhelmed is to only try one new recipe each week. I used to be all ambitious, and I'd try 2-3 new things a week, but trying too many new things was just too much. And then I'd be out of energy, time, or both, and food would go to waste. Ugh. Now, I try to limit my ambition a little, and it works for me much better.
Really, keep going! :) I know, sometimes trying so hard to be a healthy eater is a pain in the rear. I'm a label reader too, having been vegetarian for +10 years and knowing there's "sneaky meat" in so many places, and now I also fight to keep crap I can't identify out of my food. Like, if I can't imagine cooking with whatever ingredient is on the label, I don't get to buy it. Oh, there are things I MISS because of that rule! But like you do, I feel so mich better following that rule. You can do it! :) And one silver lining is that it can get to the point where you just kind of blank out all the stuff you can't buy in the stores. Actually, now it's kinda nice, knowing there are aisles I don't have to go down... ;)
Cherish (can't figure out how to log in to Google, to comment as me)