Another Saturday For The Books!!
Time to check in… Yesterday was good. A little nutso with travel and family visits and dog kennels and packing, and disinfecting the hotel room before settling in… Ahhh first world problems ;o)
Hubby and I took a trip to our local Italian market the other day. If you have one in your area – or really any specialty shop like that – I strongly recommend going.
It is a place where the produce is generally way cheaper than you are going to find it at the grocery store or even Walmart. And since we are eating TONS more fruit and veggies now, a break on the wallet is always handy.
But also, you can get really good quality butcher meats from a lot of them. The Italian Market near us has a really great deli section with a wide array of meats and cheeses to choose from. And thanks to the weekly shopping list in my meal plan, we can buy exactly what we need, no more – which cuts down on unnecessary expense as well as reaching into the fridge to pick at things that are otherwise spoken for.
Oooo another awesome thing about getting your meat from a deli like this is that you can have them shave the pieces really thin. This means that you won’t need as much in volume to get the flavour job done. Case in point, we’re doing a prosciutto flatbread for lunch and with super thin prosciutto, a little’s gonna go a long way! Same thing with sliced cheeses. Have your deli shave them super thin – like, as thin as they’ll go. You can really make that blue container serving go a long way.
The Force Is Strong With This One
I do have to take a moment to brag about something that happened on our outing to the market. Ok, so I had all of my meals planned out for the day, geared around an amzing dish for the night… Had been looking forward to it all day.
Since we were out most of the afternoon, my mid-afternoon snack timing was off, and I was starving! OMG that is the hungriest I have been since I started this thing. And, I suppose, hubby was just as hungry.
Now, talk about habits – normally when we’d be out and about, it would be nothing to swing by Wendy’s and grab a Junior Cheese Burger an hour or so before dinner that night, just to ‘tie us over’. Hubby indicated that we was going to drive through for a couple of waters and asked if we could have one this time. (Oh, the horror!)
Since he is not really following this as strictly as I am, I told him sure, go ahead and get one, but I don’t want any (yes… yes I did want ‘any’… But NO SIR!). He drove through, parked, settled in with a few bites and then brought the burger right to my face to offer me a bit (not in a malicious way, but in our pretty standard way). It was, like INCHES from my mouth!
But I resisted!!! Woohoo!! I just kept thinking about that amazing dinner we were gonna have as soon as I got home. I kept the eye on the prize, people, and it got me through that unexpected temptation.
And guess what? The moment passed, and I felt like a rock star! Totally empowered. It would’ve been easy to say, to hell with it – what’s one little bite? And that’s true for the most part. But it was less about the one bite, and more about the will power to make a better choice for the end of the day. These eating/lifestyle changes take time, and they ALL start just one bite at a time.
Let me tell you, the MINUTE I walked in the house, I went straight for the kitchen. Dinner came a half hour early that night lol. And it was worth every count!
Of course, the key for me to be able to succeed with that, is knowing that I’ve got a tasty dish waiting for me (pre-planning, people!). I am very much about flavour. Not to be a food snob, but I’ll sit for a really expensive meal, and notice if the steak wasn’t seasoned, or if the potatoes are dry and boring. Ok, maybe I’m a little bit of a food snob, lol. Thank you, Food Network.
Thankfully, I have a few hundred recipes that we’ve been using over the past couple of years that are familiar and easy, and so all we’re doing during this fix is mostly reworking some of these with better portions in relation to daily counts.
How Are You Finding The Counting?
One of the things I’ve always HATED doing was counting… Counting calories, points, blah. Gross. It was, honestly, one of the big things with this program that I wasn’t sure about – was I going to be able to implement container counts without tiring of it super quickly? Giving up… Just like before.
Surprisingly, no! I know that my count is 6-4-6-4-1-1-6 based on the containers. I keep a daily running total at the bottom of my meal plan, and I’ve found that after the first few days, my brain was automatically thinking in terms of container=portion.
The little guide book that comes with the kit also helps. From time to time, if I run out of ideas, I just open up the page for that colour, quickly review their list of ideas, and grab something that’ll fit.
Even when we went to the market, I did not have my food plan for the week done, but I was roaming around the produce section grabbing two servings of asparagus (10 spires per person each) or enough for a few meals with cherry tomatoes (approx 1 cup per serving).
It is truly SOOOOOO much easier than calories versus proteins versus sugars. Gosh, I remember doing an insulin resistance diet for a few months and I swear, I spent more time checking nutrition values to ensure that the protein count was 2-3 times that of the sugar. All good things, but damn, too. Much of my life wasted. It just was not sustainable long term, unless I wanted to restrict myself to a certain grouping of food and be done with it.
Well, you know me enough now, not my style. I guess you can say I’m Kitchen-High Maintenance haha!
Refer to the 21 Day Fix Meal Plan for a complete outline of today’s food!
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