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. :/

A Holding Pattern

Diet update, for those playing along at home:

We got home from vacation late Sunday night / Monday morning (a bit after midnight). The entire time I was on vacation, I stuck to the preliminary week instructions of "no sugar, no flour, no caffeine, no alcohol". I was going to start the official six weeks while on vacation, but the rest was so difficult to stick to while out of my element (and while in the South where everything is battered and deep fried and delicious OMG) that I decided to just stick to those rules until after I got home, was back in my own kitchen, and had a chance to grocery shop and stock up for the 'official' plan. I didn't count calories or anything, just stuck to the rules, and it turns out I lost four pounds in the ten days we were on vacation. I ate whenever I was hungry and stopped when I wasn't. Four pounds in ten days... VS seven pounds in FOUR MONTHS when I was counting calories and exercising. I felt a lot better too (with the exception of some cravings at first and some occasional bitterness over not being able to eat delicious vacation foods... but not TOO much bitterness because I know how those foods make me feel!).

I didn't really drink that bottle of SoCo, I just *wanted* to.

So I grocery shopped yesterday and came up with a rough outline of things I can eat for each meal and snacks. Now, in addition to no sugar, no flour, no caffeine and no alcohol, I'm also on no dairy, no fruits (except 1/2 cup of berries a day), no grains of ANY kind, and no starchy vegetables. It's not a perfect system... there are some questions the book leaves kind of ambigious (for example, no sugars of ANY KIND, but then raw honey is in quite a bit of the recipes? So I guess it is OK?) and I'm just trying to use common sense and pay attention to my body. Started today, and already had low blood sugar this afternoon. I'm hardly taking any daytime insulin. Likely going to have to adjust down soon. This is a good thing, but it's a scary process overall.

Another complication: our nephew is staying with us for ten days. He was on vacation with us in North Carolina, drove back home with us, and will be flying to his home in Texas next week. So it's kind of like having another ten days of vacation on my hands. I have some advantages - I'm home, we're not eating out as much, I can cook more and control many of my food choices. Some of the vacation 'disadvantages' are still present though - I'm entertaining another person most of the day, we're going out a lot and trying to make it a fun visit for HIM, my entire schedule is completely thrown off.

Finally, I feel guilty making all these 'weird' dietary changes and dragging the kids along. Especially my ten year old nephew who doesn't know us terribly well (he lives in Texas; we live in Illinois; we don't get to see him very often) and who just wants, say, a bowl of cereal for breakfast. I'm trying to strike a balance between having healthy but still kid-friendly things in the house (cereal and milk for breakfast, bread for lunch sandwiches, etc) and steering them towards the new diet I'm on. Aside from feeling a bit guilty for just springing it on them, I'm also left wondering how healthy it is to restrict foods so much from young kids. I will have to read up on that some more. The severe restrictions won't be for terribly long so it's probably OK in the short term, and as I just noted I AM keeping some things in the house for them that I am not eating, but it's definitely a challenge to be the main food and meal provider for an entire family when we're not all quite on the same plan.

I haven't even had time to revisit the book itself and see what other things I'm supposed to be doing. I've got the food rules down pretty well because I planned that out before leaving for vacation. I know there are things like exercising, meditation / relaxation, and supplements I'm supposed to be integrating at certain points... that's all going to be difficult with my schedule being so extremely thrown off the next week. Hell, we haven't even finished unpacking from vacation! My husband went back to work right away, and he hurt his back really badly a few days ago (not sure how; he thinks it might be a pinched nerve), so the poor man just wants to Ben Gay and lay down when he gets home. I've been trying to entertain the kids AND make new meal plans AND grocery shop for a whole new food lifestyle (I spent a lot more time grocery shopping yesterday than usual!) AND get the kids registered for school AND get all the school shopping done today AND cook a bunch of new, healthy meals with ingredients I'm not familiar with. I trashed my kitchen, it's still recovering, and while I got caught up on all the vacation laundry, I have at least half the bags left to unpack. We'll be out and about the next few days exploring the city with my nephew; I just don't feel like I'm going to catch up anytime soon!

Next Wednesday he flies home AND my kids start school. So while I'm going to continue following the food rules, as far as the rest of it goes, I think next week is really going to be when I am back on a mostly-sane schedule and will start 'officially' counting the six weeks and doing all the other things he says to do.

Right now it's all I can do to stick to the food rules!