Anyone who knows me knows that food is my biggest weakness. Sweet, savory, salty, crunchy, chewy - I like it all! That being said, I'm also someone who eats when they're bored. Needless to say, I do a lot of bored eating at my desk throughout my 40 hour week. It's nauseating when I think of all the empty, unnecessary eating I do every week. I readily admit that my discipline, when it comes to food is currently at a negative amount. So I'm trying to do food prep on Sundays. Not really for dinners during the week because I don't have too many issues having good food ready to cook during the weeknights. The food prep, for me, is most important for lunches and ready-to-eat boredom snacks.
In a perfect world, I would only eat when I was truly hungry and a perfectly disciplined woman would never fill her face just to pass the time. This ain't no perfect world and I damn sure ain't no perfect woman, so healthy snacks are a must. But they also need to be easy to eat. If I have to peel anything more labor intensive than a banana, it's not happening (did I also mention I'm a neurotic mess?). That's why Sunday Prep Day is mucho important.
I get up at 4:30a.m. I put the coffee on and get lunches together. I'm basically a perpetually sleep deprived monkey that simply cannot function properly in the morning. Putting lunches together needs to be quick, simple and nearly mindless. I have to get lunches for 2 adults and sometimes a lunch for my 9 year old. She gets lunch at school a lot though, so her lunch isn't always needed. I allow myself 30 minutes to get the lunches together because at 5, that's my morning coffee time with my honey. Sorry. I don't make exceptions for those 30 minutes. From 5-5:30, I sit with him, drink coffee, watch the news and enjoy some quiet time to wake up. From 5:30-6:15, it's getting my daughter up, hair brushed, teeth brushed, chickens fed, bags packed, blah blah blah. At 6:15, we're out the door. Anything I need to prep on Sunday needs to make my life simpler and this week it did.
Here's what I made on Sunday:
Homemade chicken and turmeric soup. A huge bowl that will make about 6 large bowls of soup.
Taco stuffed squash. It was a small squash so this was about 4 servings.
Macaroni salad made with my homemade zucchini relish. I used 1lb of pasta so this is enough for the entire week and then some!
Homemade banana bread.
Fruit and veggie snack boxes. It's not in the picture, but I also put in a small container of french onion dip for the veggies. There's also some gouda cheese in there.
Are these foods clean eating? No. Are they low carb? No. But they are much better choices than the options in he snack cabinet at work. Or as I like to call it, the cabinet from hell. What these foods do for me, is fill me up and I'm less likely to go grab something from the nightmare cabinet when I'm bored. There's enough food in my lunch bag to keep me content for the work day. I also started keeping a case of plain bottled water and a case of seltzer water at my desk. The more I drink, the less I eat.
My plan is to progressively get cleaner and healthier as I get better at the plain logistics of making all this food on Sundays. I bought some of the plastic food prep containers at Walmart. I like them because the size is decent and they stack really well in the fridge. You can also put them in the microwave.
I feel positive about these changes. I'm working out more regularly, not perfectly, but realistically. And now, eating better. I'm not getting any younger. None of us are. I look around me and see so many people my age that are on multiple medications for this that and the other, they're overweight, out of shape and just generally in a bad way. I don't want to be that way, and it's well within my capabilities to make myself and keep myself healthy.
I have some minor day surgery tomorrow so I probably won't have any training notes to post for a few days. I'm not sure when I'll be able to get back to lifting, but when I do, it's back to barbell training. Bench is n the docket.....get ready!
