Dinner tonight is lean ground beef burgers baked, baked fries and huge salads with homemade 3 bean salad….I am starving!

Turned some pickle juice into salad dressing yesterday. Pickle juice, sesame oil, harissa and a dab of sugar. I doubt I could replicate it exactly again because measurements were loose except for oil.
I’m also playing around with powders for flavor. Buttermilk powder is useful for ranch dressing and baking. Also found a mushroom powder and a cheese powder at Trader Joe’s.
Sometimes it’s good, other times it’s a chemistry experiment!

@lauriekallis, my long term maintenance plan is based on a weekly 3:2:2 (low : medium : high) calorie intake

I think my maintenance calories will be just above 1815 cals/day (so rounding down to 12,600 per week).

I plan to apportion them as follows:

Mon: 1,500 (bank 300)
Tue: 1,500 (bank 300, cumulative bank = 600)
Wed: 1,500 (bank 300, cumulative bank = 900)
Thu: 1,750 (bank 50, cumulative bank = 950)
Fri: 1,750 (bank 50, cumulative bank = 1000)
Sat: 2,300 (splurge 500, remaining bank = 500)
Sun: 2,300 (splurge remaining 500).

Rinse and repeat....

I figure that I've lived to this point on 1500 cals/day for 45 weeks and managed to enjoy a good menu, so continuing that indefinitely should be fine...and I'll have 2 intermediate days and 2 splurge days to counterbalance them.

And I'm hoping that scheduling the 3 low days directly after the 2 splurge days will help me remain disciplined, rather than just continuing to splurge for days on end.

You know me and my planning! I hope I have the discipline to pull this off...I guess I'll find out soon enough!

Oh I love it here. Write a post - wander off, do some work - and come back to find new posts that leave me feeling supported and enlightened enough to move further along this path.

I like the 3:2:2 idea, Bella. I might not have it organized enough to map it out ahead of time - because those medium and higher days will come based on other people in my life. The days it is just me and the pup will be my low days - the medium/high days will be when I socialize or have the grandson over.

This could be a successful life-long plan. Because those "social" days are tough ones and if I can find a way to enjoy them and not feel terribly stressed out over not meeting my "low" day criteria it will take a hundred pounds off my shoulders metaphorically at least! And those treats that I sometimes crave can just be scheduled during the social days! I know there are many complications there...lol...but at least ths presents some possibilities.

So, as you mention the importance of, Yooly, this will reduce my stress. Lower stress + being able to feel successful rather than a failure even if I'm not achieving 7 "low" days a week. I really need that boost to keep me going when I'm not getting the boost of a lower scale number every day.

Hey, Connie, hot momma? I can't help but think this sort of thing might be good for you too?

The 3:2:2 is a framework and will be flexed around social commitments and special occasions.

In a nutshell, the plan is to look at the week ahead, identify the days that are likely to require a higher calorie budget, ringfence higher calories for those days so that I can enjoy them without stress, and then see where I can have a few deficit days to counterbalance them, so that taking the week as a whole I've kept to my maintenance budget.

Makes it easier than thinking of a daily calorie budget (because the body doesn't work in days, right?!)

I did that essentially over Christmas, with a 16 day plan....I saw that I'd have 3 super high cal days (more than 2000 cals/day over maintenance), 5 intermediate days (1000+ cals over maintenance) and the rest of the time I had fewer stressors and could run a deficit. Across the entire 16 days it all balanced itself out...

Building a system that truly lets you be accountable yet includes indulgence days is truly brilliant. Saves that "Just duck and get through it" all or nothing mindset that can set me off in a tailspin. None of this is new...but it seems to be slipping into my mind a bit easier when I read your post! Thank you.

I feel like the odd duck out here with all you high planning ladies!

I very much agree with Laurie about the "dealing with other people" thing. Other people are EVIL! There, I've said it!

"activity" does vary for me and that when I do engage in activity it also represents a considerable amount of calories. So I don't have "preset" amounts. Because the variance is easily to the order of 1000 Cal between a low and high activity day.

But I do set a "perma-deficit" of about 300 Cal as my target.

And do (shamefaced admission) split calories between two consecutive days. I have a maximum of three. If I find myself fudging things into a third day it gets called back and assigned to where it came from!

And depending on current goals I do try a little bit harder, or less hard, to adhere to the slight deficit target

One thing I've found out over the past few years is that if I am actually hungry... I should eat. Actual hunger has almost never been wrong in terms of eventual scale results no matter what logging was indicating at the time.

HOWEVER. there is a major difference between *actual I am feeling hungry hunger* and "I just want to eat because..." (regardless of what the because is) as we all know. The "I want to eat" bit does not end up well on the scale!

I sort of like such plans Laurie. One of my first thoughts once I started to figure things out was to try to lose while eating the same way (and the same amount of calories) as I would need to maintain long term.

At the time it led me to try and lose weight while eating around 2500 Cal a day.

Turns out that extra activity has continued and maintenance has been North of that.

But doing so while losing weight gave me confidence that I COULD live within that budget if I made the effort, right? And that I had a "blueprint" that I knew I could follow.

Just hamster management 🐹 if you think of it rationally from the outside. But, hey, it works! 😘

My anxiety and depression are making it really hard to eat right of late. I don't want to do anything much less cook. Just lost out on my 5th house offer so feeling very down again... plus I was sick this week and it is cold. All of that just means I want to curl up in a bunch of blankets on the sofa with the kitties and not move. Taking the weekend off from house hunting cause I just don't have the mental energy. I did my main grocery shopping already but I do plan on going to Whole Foods for a couple things tomorrow morning before I meal prep.

Last night I made mashed "baked" potatoes (I baked the potatoes and then scooped it into a bowl with butter, sour cream, and salt), roasted brussel sprouts, and BBQ chicken breasts. Simple but tasty.

This week is a bit odd because Imbolc is on Tuesday which is a holiday for my practice. So making some beef stew, bread, and some cheese. Trying to find some sheeps cheese though I did get goat cheese.

Also having noodles with thai almond sauce, broccoli, carrots, and peppers as another dinner. Last dinner is a frozen meal of some sort.

Breakfast is just hardboiled eggs.

Lunch I am meal prepping a bunch of stuff so I can make meals as I go. So I got some greens and will make some rice, chicken, beans, roasted peppers and onions, and roasted cabbage.

Oh... and I got some vanilla skyr and cherry pie filling so I am joining the club!