Fell way off the wagon......time to get back on......but how?!
Options
Replies
-
ColoradoDan wrote: »Tired of hearing about excuses and being lazy. Yes I could spend tons of time online finding recipes - putting them together - writing out shopping lists - prepping ingredients - mixing spices - whatever else. That isn't what I want to spend my time doing though.
I want to do this without having to learn to cook, do extra work to learn, etc.
I prefer things I can cook quickly - no prep involved, no chopping, no trimming, no making and freezing for the week. Grab n go in my style or quick throw in a pot or pan or microwave and it's done. For now that is all I can handle.
I am happy for you guys who love to cook, love to learn, and are not lazy - but I am lazy and unmotivated still - sorry. I have to work with who I am.
I am sure we will be just fine with our baby - thanks. I know people on welfare who have kids - I think we can swing it.
I'm sorry but you are full of excuses. You either want to change your lifestyle or don't. Nobody can do it for you, there is a certain amount of personal responsibility you have to take in order to be successful at losing and maintaining weight. If it were super easy we wouldn't have the obesity epidemic we do in the western world.
And honestly, I'd want to have all of healthy living skills down pat to pass on to my kids. That's not snark, it's just a proven reality that kids with overweight parents tend to be overweight themselves because skills are learned from our families in that regard.
To put it plainly, you're not ready to lose weight. As long as you are lazy and unmotivated, that's going to dictate your success or lack thereof.2 -
" wrote:I wish it was as easy as making a shopping list then being creative and making meals out of the ingredients but for us it's not. We make that list you wrote and after we get to counter it's $50-$60 which is more than we have. We like meal planner sites because you can plan by dollar amount. We have $30 - what can we buy - and it populates a list for us to take to store.
And we just are not very creative in creating meals from random ingredients. Who wants to eat plain chicken breast with a veggie. Yuck. But I bet there are sites on the web you can put in a few ingredients and it makes a yummy meal and recipe - we follow recipes. We can't really cook from scratch yet.
I'm calling you out.... your original post mentions that you are eating fast food every day. At $8 per day x 2, you are spending weekly $80 on one crappy meal.
0 -
salsera_barbie wrote: »" wrote:I wish it was as easy as making a shopping list then being creative and making meals out of the ingredients but for us it's not. We make that list you wrote and after we get to counter it's $50-$60 which is more than we have. We like meal planner sites because you can plan by dollar amount. We have $30 - what can we buy - and it populates a list for us to take to store.
And we just are not very creative in creating meals from random ingredients. Who wants to eat plain chicken breast with a veggie. Yuck. But I bet there are sites on the web you can put in a few ingredients and it makes a yummy meal and recipe - we follow recipes. We can't really cook from scratch yet.
I'm calling you out.... your original post mentions that you are eating fast food every day. At $8 per day x 2, you are spending weekly $80 on one crappy meal.
Good point. I can't see "fast food every day at lunch, frozen processed dinners, and lots of unhealthy snacks" costing less than cooking from scratch.
I'd like two meals per day to come from the Thai restaurant, but I can't afford that, so I learned to cook Thai.
My Gramma used to say, "If you can read, you can cook."
@ColoradoDan don't you have more disposable income having stopped smoking and drinking?1 -
My favorite thing to cook is easy and cheap.
Buy a whole chicken. Maybe you can find it on sale for 70 cents a pound every now and then but even if you can't, it should stretch over two meals for two people. Anyhow pick up a whole chicken, a couple bundles of celery, a couple pounds of carrots, a couple of lemons, an onion and some noodles (if I want to splurge, I buy the cheese filled tortellini).
Dinner 1, I rough chop 5 or 6 carrots, one bundle of celery and quarter the lemon. I toss the veg into the bottom of the crock pot, pull the gizzards out of the chicken, put the chicken on top of the veg. Shove the lemon inside the chicken, sprinkle whatever seasoning strikes my fancy on top (garlic if I have it, thyme, onion powder whatever). Maybe drizzle some olive oil. Turn on the crock pot and let it cook for 4-6 hours depending on the size of the chicken. Serve it with a salad and a sweet potato or yam. About half the chicken easily feeds two adults and two kids.
For dinner two, this is the most work you have to do and it's really not that much work. Cut off the remaining chicken, shove it in a freeze bag or Tupperware and put it in the fridge. Put the skin and bones into a roasting pan. Roast it for an hour or so then dump the bones and skin into a big pot of water. Salt it and let it boil until you have a nice yellow broth (an hour or so). Strain out the skin and bones through cheese cloth. I usually save the broth in a large Tupperware. Then the next day I skim the fat off the broth, dump it into a large soup pan, heat it up. Chop up the remaining carrots and celery, chop up the onion (and any other veg I decided I wanted to add but for simplicity's sake, we'll stick with celery onion and carrot). Toss the veg into the pot. Once they have softened up, add the chicken and noodles (the cheese tortellinis take like 2 minutes so if you do that, throw the noodles in a few minutes before you're ready to eat.)
The soup saves for a while in the freezer and, while it sounds like a lot of instructions, it takes not much effort and yields a lot of food for cheap
There are cheap and easy ways to make healthy and filling food from scratch. Typically when I make that soup, I have two more dinners in the freezer after.
Make the most of the ingredients you buy. If there is a special on pork shoulder, slow roast one and you can eat bbq pulled pork sandwiches, pulled pork tacos and, depending on the size, pulled pork something else.
Around Christmas time, when hams and turkeys are cheap, I'll buy and freeze a few. Hams are a gold mine, ham roast then leftovers in various casseroles then you save the bone and make ham hocks and beans.
Buy what's on sale. Make a plan. Look at adds. Decide you're going to make a positive change or don't. The only person it effects is you.3 -
bethannien wrote: »My favorite thing to cook is easy and cheap.
Buy a whole chicken. Maybe you can find it on sale for 70 cents a pound every now and then but even if you can't, it should stretch over two meals for two people. Anyhow pick up a whole chicken, a couple bundles of celery, a couple pounds of carrots, a couple of lemons, an onion and some noodles (if I want to splurge, I buy the cheese filled tortellini).
Dinner 1, I rough chop 5 or 6 carrots, one bundle of celery and quarter the lemon. I toss the veg into the bottom of the crock pot, pull the gizzards out of the chicken, put the chicken on top of the veg. Shove the lemon inside the chicken, sprinkle whatever seasoning strikes my fancy on top (garlic if I have it, thyme, onion powder whatever). Maybe drizzle some olive oil. Turn on the crock pot and let it cook for 4-6 hours depending on the size of the chicken. Serve it with a salad and a sweet potato or yam. About half the chicken easily feeds two adults and two kids.
For dinner two, this is the most work you have to do and it's really not that much work. Cut off the remaining chicken, shove it in a freeze bag or Tupperware and put it in the fridge. Put the skin and bones into a roasting pan. Roast it for an hour or so then dump the bones and skin into a big pot of water. Salt it and let it boil until you have a nice yellow broth (an hour or so). Strain out the skin and bones through cheese cloth. I usually save the broth in a large Tupperware. Then the next day I skim the fat off the broth, dump it into a large soup pan, heat it up. Chop up the remaining carrots and celery, chop up the onion (and any other veg I decided I wanted to add but for simplicity's sake, we'll stick with celery onion and carrot). Toss the veg into the pot. Once they have softened up, add the chicken and noodles (the cheese tortellinis take like 2 minutes so if you do that, throw the noodles in a few minutes before you're ready to eat.)
The soup saves for a while in the freezer and, while it sounds like a lot of instructions, it takes not much effort and yields a lot of food for cheap
There are cheap and easy ways to make healthy and filling food from scratch. Typically when I make that soup, I have two more dinners in the freezer after.
Make the most of the ingredients you buy. If there is a special on pork shoulder, slow roast one and you can eat bbq pulled pork sandwiches, pulled pork tacos and, depending on the size, pulled pork something else.
Around Christmas time, when hams and turkeys are cheap, I'll buy and freeze a few. Hams are a gold mine, ham roast then leftovers in various casseroles then you save the bone and make ham hocks and beans.
Buy what's on sale. Make a plan. Look at adds. Decide you're going to make a positive change or don't. The only person it effects is you.
Didn't you read his post about being lazy and unmotivated? This is all good suggestions for someone who wants to work for it.0 -
salsera_barbie wrote: »bethannien wrote: »My favorite thing to cook is easy and cheap.
Buy a whole chicken. Maybe you can find it on sale for 70 cents a pound every now and then but even if you can't, it should stretch over two meals for two people. Anyhow pick up a whole chicken, a couple bundles of celery, a couple pounds of carrots, a couple of lemons, an onion and some noodles (if I want to splurge, I buy the cheese filled tortellini).
Dinner 1, I rough chop 5 or 6 carrots, one bundle of celery and quarter the lemon. I toss the veg into the bottom of the crock pot, pull the gizzards out of the chicken, put the chicken on top of the veg. Shove the lemon inside the chicken, sprinkle whatever seasoning strikes my fancy on top (garlic if I have it, thyme, onion powder whatever). Maybe drizzle some olive oil. Turn on the crock pot and let it cook for 4-6 hours depending on the size of the chicken. Serve it with a salad and a sweet potato or yam. About half the chicken easily feeds two adults and two kids.
For dinner two, this is the most work you have to do and it's really not that much work. Cut off the remaining chicken, shove it in a freeze bag or Tupperware and put it in the fridge. Put the skin and bones into a roasting pan. Roast it for an hour or so then dump the bones and skin into a big pot of water. Salt it and let it boil until you have a nice yellow broth (an hour or so). Strain out the skin and bones through cheese cloth. I usually save the broth in a large Tupperware. Then the next day I skim the fat off the broth, dump it into a large soup pan, heat it up. Chop up the remaining carrots and celery, chop up the onion (and any other veg I decided I wanted to add but for simplicity's sake, we'll stick with celery onion and carrot). Toss the veg into the pot. Once they have softened up, add the chicken and noodles (the cheese tortellinis take like 2 minutes so if you do that, throw the noodles in a few minutes before you're ready to eat.)
The soup saves for a while in the freezer and, while it sounds like a lot of instructions, it takes not much effort and yields a lot of food for cheap
There are cheap and easy ways to make healthy and filling food from scratch. Typically when I make that soup, I have two more dinners in the freezer after.
Make the most of the ingredients you buy. If there is a special on pork shoulder, slow roast one and you can eat bbq pulled pork sandwiches, pulled pork tacos and, depending on the size, pulled pork something else.
Around Christmas time, when hams and turkeys are cheap, I'll buy and freeze a few. Hams are a gold mine, ham roast then leftovers in various casseroles then you save the bone and make ham hocks and beans.
Buy what's on sale. Make a plan. Look at adds. Decide you're going to make a positive change or don't. The only person it effects is you.
Didn't you read his post about being lazy and unmotivated? This is all good suggestions for someone who wants to work for it.
I know it looks like a lot but honestly, I'm lazy and unmotivated. This advice is just good sense and frankly the bare minimum when trying to eat healthfully and on the cheap.
I'm a busy mom of two young children and I don't particularly love cooking. If I can find the time and desire to do things like this, anyone can.
0 -
I love this.
Also, there are pre-cut veggies and fruit, frozen veg, canned beans... Costco.bethannien wrote: »My favorite thing to cook is easy and cheap.
Buy a whole chicken. Maybe you can find it on sale for 70 cents a pound every now and then but even if you can't, it should stretch over two meals for two people. Anyhow pick up a whole chicken, a couple bundles of celery, a couple pounds of carrots, a couple of lemons, an onion and some noodles (if I want to splurge, I buy the cheese filled tortellini).
Dinner 1, I rough chop 5 or 6 carrots, one bundle of celery and quarter the lemon. I toss the veg into the bottom of the crock pot, pull the gizzards out of the chicken, put the chicken on top of the veg. Shove the lemon inside the chicken, sprinkle whatever seasoning strikes my fancy on top (garlic if I have it, thyme, onion powder whatever). Maybe drizzle some olive oil. Turn on the crock pot and let it cook for 4-6 hours depending on the size of the chicken. Serve it with a salad and a sweet potato or yam. About half the chicken easily feeds two adults and two kids.
For dinner two, this is the most work you have to do and it's really not that much work. Cut off the remaining chicken, shove it in a freeze bag or Tupperware and put it in the fridge. Put the skin and bones into a roasting pan. Roast it for an hour or so then dump the bones and skin into a big pot of water. Salt it and let it boil until you have a nice yellow broth (an hour or so). Strain out the skin and bones through cheese cloth. I usually save the broth in a large Tupperware. Then the next day I skim the fat off the broth, dump it into a large soup pan, heat it up. Chop up the remaining carrots and celery, chop up the onion (and any other veg I decided I wanted to add but for simplicity's sake, we'll stick with celery onion and carrot). Toss the veg into the pot. Once they have softened up, add the chicken and noodles (the cheese tortellinis take like 2 minutes so if you do that, throw the noodles in a few minutes before you're ready to eat.)
The soup saves for a while in the freezer and, while it sounds like a lot of instructions, it takes not much effort and yields a lot of food for cheap
There are cheap and easy ways to make healthy and filling food from scratch. Typically when I make that soup, I have two more dinners in the freezer after.
Make the most of the ingredients you buy. If there is a special on pork shoulder, slow roast one and you can eat bbq pulled pork sandwiches, pulled pork tacos and, depending on the size, pulled pork something else.
Around Christmas time, when hams and turkeys are cheap, I'll buy and freeze a few. Hams are a gold mine, ham roast then leftovers in various casseroles then you save the bone and make ham hocks and beans.
Buy what's on sale. Make a plan. Look at adds. Decide you're going to make a positive change or don't. The only person it effects is you.
1 -
You're asking for a lot here.
There's something called the engineering triangle:
We can deliver two of the three, but not all three. This applies to your case.
You want:
-Healthy food that isn't bland (good)
-A $30 budget (cheap)
-Food that takes no prep time (fast)
If you want Good and Cheap, you're going to have to take time to do prep. Pre-cut veggies cost way more than unsliced ones, and they don't last as long. Chicken already prepped in a chef's case will be 3-4 times as much as doing it yourself. If you want Good and Fast, you spend more money. You're already doing Cheap and Fast.
At some point, you're going to have decide what your priorities are and compromise somewhere.
I can help you out in big ways if you're willing to spend 45 minutes every other night in the kitchen. That's the time it takes me to prepare nutrient-dense, calorically appropriate meals from scratch on a reasonable budget. But if you're not willing to do that, my advice won't be of much use to you.4 -
Not to be mean, but if you don't have the motivation, energy, drive, and money management skills to get a handle on feeding 2 adults, then PLEASE don't bring a child into the mix. They are a time, energy and money drain.
The remark about having friends on welfare with children has me shaking my head. WTH???8 -
Low calorie, cheap, and no prep: Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice. That's about all I've got. Either that or a crockpot. That's literally just opening a few items and tossing them in to cook all day.
Or maybe Slimfast. Nothing easier than a pre-made shake for breakfast and a 2nd for lunch. No prep work, the cans are relatively affordable, and the meal plan is laid out for you.0 -
ColoradoDan wrote: »I prefer things I can cook quickly - no prep involved, no chopping, no trimming, no making and freezing for the week. Grab n go in my style or quick throw in a pot or pan or microwave and it's done. For now that is all I can handle.
Buy a bag of frozen beef and bean burritos and a case of Veg-All.
Mrs can have a meal of one burrito and one can of Veg-All.
Mr. can have a meal of 2 of each.
Drink water afterward.
0 -
Elvis has left the building1
-
ColoradoDan wrote: »Tired of hearing about excuses and being lazy. Yes I could spend tons of time online finding recipes - putting them together - writing out shopping lists - prepping ingredients - mixing spices - whatever else. That isn't what I want to spend my time doing though.
I want to do this without having to learn to cook, do extra work to learn, etc.
I prefer things I can cook quickly - no prep involved, no chopping, no trimming, no making and freezing for the week. Grab n go in my style or quick throw in a pot or pan or microwave and it's done. For now that is all I can handle.
I am happy for you guys who love to cook, love to learn, and are not lazy - but I am lazy and unmotivated still - sorry. I have to work with who I am.
I'm damn lazy. For real. But I'm sick of being a lard *kitten*. So I cook meals. Nothing crazy...a couple hunts of meat on a rack over a cookie sheet, sprinkled with season-all or Mrs Dash or drizzled with balsamic vinegar and oil. 350 for 30-45 minutes. Throw 2 sweet potatoes in the microwave for 6-9 minutes and when they come out throw in a steamer bag of veggies. Season the veggies with salt, pepper, garlic when they come out. A 600-800 calorie meal, including butter on the veg. And your prep time is 5 minutes. This is supper at my house 3-5 nights a week. The meat and vegetables rotate. Sometimes I chunk up the potatoes and roast alongside the meat (toss them in olive oil 1st). Sometimes I make russet potatoes. Or pasta to mix with the veg. And that meal for 2 people is around $8 *with enough meat leftover for me to have on a salad the next day for lunch.1 -
SophieSmall95 wrote: »leejoyce31 wrote: »SophieSmall95 wrote: »ColoradoDan wrote: »Yeah the 20lb ones are really hard for me to use - too heavy. The TRX I want to try - need to find a weight loss workout plan online for a TRX band.
I wish it was as easy as making a shopping list then being creative and making meals out of the ingredients but for us it's not. We make that list you wrote and after we get to counter it's $50-$60 which is more than we have. We like meal planner sites because you can plan by dollar amount. We have $30 - what can we buy - and it populates a list for us to take to store.
And we just are not very creative in creating meals from random ingredients. Who wants to eat plain chicken breast with a veggie. Yuck. But I bet there are sites on the web you can put in a few ingredients and it makes a yummy meal and recipe - we follow recipes. We can't really cook from scratch yet.
Which is why I said to make plans around what is cheap or in season. I never said you had to buy what I do, I was just showing you how I make a meal plan.
"And we just are not very creative in creating meals from random ingredients. " now see...this where I am just seeing excuses. You're refusing to even learn how to do it. "we can't really cook from scratch" ...yes you can. You are CHOOSING not to. Non of this is hard (apart from arguable finding affordable options) but your attitude shows me you don't even want to try.
Never said you had to eat plain chicken and veggies, if you don't like plain add spices or sauces (though be careful on the calories of some sauces). It's not hard, so stop pretending it is.
Your failure is entirely down to your own lack of initiative and effort on this topic. Take some responsibility for yourself and you'll see change and results.
Good luck.
Wow kinda harsh
I disagree. This is the exact way I'd want someone to address me if I was making excuses and not being honest with myself. I much prefer a smack of reality than being molly coddled and have the core issues avoided.
The core issue here is that the OP "doesn't know" how to cook or make meal plans, this can easily be overcome if they'd just admit it to themselves and learn. Takes no time at all, just honesty and effort on their part.
We will agree to disagree. That's not how I would want to be addressed by anyone, especially not some stranger who knows nothing about me.0 -
bethannien wrote: »salsera_barbie wrote: »bethannien wrote: »My favorite thing to cook is easy and cheap.
Buy a whole chicken. Maybe you can find it on sale for 70 cents a pound every now and then but even if you can't, it should stretch over two meals for two people. Anyhow pick up a whole chicken, a couple bundles of celery, a couple pounds of carrots, a couple of lemons, an onion and some noodles (if I want to splurge, I buy the cheese filled tortellini).
Dinner 1, I rough chop 5 or 6 carrots, one bundle of celery and quarter the lemon. I toss the veg into the bottom of the crock pot, pull the gizzards out of the chicken, put the chicken on top of the veg. Shove the lemon inside the chicken, sprinkle whatever seasoning strikes my fancy on top (garlic if I have it, thyme, onion powder whatever). Maybe drizzle some olive oil. Turn on the crock pot and let it cook for 4-6 hours depending on the size of the chicken. Serve it with a salad and a sweet potato or yam. About half the chicken easily feeds two adults and two kids.
For dinner two, this is the most work you have to do and it's really not that much work. Cut off the remaining chicken, shove it in a freeze bag or Tupperware and put it in the fridge. Put the skin and bones into a roasting pan. Roast it for an hour or so then dump the bones and skin into a big pot of water. Salt it and let it boil until you have a nice yellow broth (an hour or so). Strain out the skin and bones through cheese cloth. I usually save the broth in a large Tupperware. Then the next day I skim the fat off the broth, dump it into a large soup pan, heat it up. Chop up the remaining carrots and celery, chop up the onion (and any other veg I decided I wanted to add but for simplicity's sake, we'll stick with celery onion and carrot). Toss the veg into the pot. Once they have softened up, add the chicken and noodles (the cheese tortellinis take like 2 minutes so if you do that, throw the noodles in a few minutes before you're ready to eat.)
The soup saves for a while in the freezer and, while it sounds like a lot of instructions, it takes not much effort and yields a lot of food for cheap
There are cheap and easy ways to make healthy and filling food from scratch. Typically when I make that soup, I have two more dinners in the freezer after.
Make the most of the ingredients you buy. If there is a special on pork shoulder, slow roast one and you can eat bbq pulled pork sandwiches, pulled pork tacos and, depending on the size, pulled pork something else.
Around Christmas time, when hams and turkeys are cheap, I'll buy and freeze a few. Hams are a gold mine, ham roast then leftovers in various casseroles then you save the bone and make ham hocks and beans.
Buy what's on sale. Make a plan. Look at adds. Decide you're going to make a positive change or don't. The only person it effects is you.
Didn't you read his post about being lazy and unmotivated? This is all good suggestions for someone who wants to work for it.
I know it looks like a lot but honestly, I'm lazy and unmotivated. This advice is just good sense and frankly the bare minimum when trying to eat healthfully and on the cheap.
I'm a busy mom of two young children and I don't particularly love cooking. If I can find the time and desire to do things like this, anyone can.
Except someone looking for the miracle of meals that take no time or effort to shop for (no "finding recipes" or "writing out shopping lists"), no time or effort to cook (no "prepping ingredients" or "mixing spices" or "whatever else"), and yet are cheap, tasty (not "plain chicken and veg") and are "healthy" by some undefined standard.3 -
If you or someone you know has a Costco membership you can get an 18" 4500 calorie pizza for $10 that is cooked for you ready to eat. That is enough for 8-10 meals so 4-5 for you and your wife.
Good calorie to dollar ratio though the true calorie to dollar king is peanut butter. Can get 14k calories for like 6 bucks it's ridiculous.
So buy cheap food that is calorie rich to cost then make meals that are a set number of calories (like 500 or 600) then just have like 4 meals a day. Cheap, pretty effective...better than Cup O Noodle.0 -
queenliz99 wrote: »Elvis has left the building
I guess since no one here was able to provide him with the name of a service that would create a meal plan and exercise plan for him, deliver tasty food at predetermined times, required no prep or cooking, had an app for his phone, would tell him when to wake up and go to sleep, and would cost him less than $10 total, he decided mfp wasn't the place for him.3 -
Meal plan. Get started and keep at it. The longer you do it, the easier it becomes.0
-
Fast food is expensive. Prepped meat and veg is expensive. Ready meals are expensive. We have ready meals as an occasional treat, we could not afford them all the time. We spend £50 per week on 2 adults and a 7 year old, including food, toilet rolls, cleaning supplies etc. We do it by cooking from scratch. Healthy food is not expensive, easy food is expensive.
On the question of which diet sites and apps to recommend, I'm quite a fan of myfitnesspal myself.3
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 391.7K Introduce Yourself
- 43.5K Getting Started
- 259.8K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.6K Food and Nutrition
- 47.3K Recipes
- 232.3K Fitness and Exercise
- 395 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.4K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 152.7K Motivation and Support
- 7.8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.3K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.3K MyFitnessPal Information
- 23 News and Announcements
- 960 Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.3K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions