Moms how did you simplify your meals to make it achievable to track with kids.

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Coffee_addict22
Coffee_addict22 Posts: 86 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I want to lose just 10lbs. But I’ve tried getting back into tracking and it’s not as easy as it was before kids😫🤣 and I need a easier food routine for me so I can succeed.

I intermittent fast until lunch because I’m not a breakfast eater. I keep eat simple for lunches but dinner is where I fall apart. I like to cook for my family and it seems almost impossible to figure out how to weigh and log my recipes and then figure out how many servings. Do you just make something different for your families and eat easy to log food?

I need quick and easy or it’s not achievable🤣 would love some insight from other moms!

Also starting drinking some apple cider vinegar with the mother to curb my appetite some and that seems to be helping. But I still gotta figure out what the crap do I eat.

Replies

  • quiksylver296
    quiksylver296 Posts: 28,442 Member
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    I make basically the same meal but make modifications for me. If the family’s having rice, I have cauliflower rice or zucchini, for example.
  • KL1887
    KL1887 Posts: 117 Member
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    My kids are a bit older now so ranging between eldest nearly 17 and the youngest is nearly 10. I’ll make a family meal, something like a cottage pie/lasagne and divide the meal into 6 portions. I use the recipe creator on here to put in the amount for each of the ingredients and 6 portions.

    In all honesty though the more you weigh and log the easier it becomes part of the routine and the more simplistic it is. Also the more you get towards your target goal/the more you lose weight you’ll find you’ll need to be tracking those numbers more because that’s where you’re most likely to hit the stumbling blocks and plateau or even start to gain weight because you’re no longer eating/moving at a combined deficit.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,876 Member
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    Coffee_addict22 wrote: »
    I want to lose just 10lbs. But I’ve tried getting back into tracking and it’s not as easy as it was before kids😫🤣 and I need a easier food routine for me so I can succeed.

    I intermittent fast until lunch because I’m not a breakfast eater. I keep eat simple for lunches but dinner is where I fall apart. I like to cook for my family and it seems almost impossible to figure out how to weigh and log my recipes and then figure out how many servings. Do you just make something different for your families and eat easy to log food?

    I need quick and easy or it’s not achievable🤣 would love some insight from other moms!

    Also starting drinking some apple cider vinegar with the mother to curb my appetite some and that seems to be helping. But I still gotta figure out what the crap do I eat.

    I'm not a mom, but I am the primary cook in the family. No, I do not make something different for the family than myself. And I don't make anything any differently when I'm trying to lose weight vs maintenance...my overall diet is the same regardless of my weight management goals.

    If I'm making something that is recipe specific, I use the recipe builder tool on this app. Some people are very specific about weighing out the final product and determining serving sizes in that manner...I was never that meticulous and I just give myself a reasonable serving...don't do seconds, etc, etc. Most of my calorie restriction efforts are simply limiting snacks, caloric beverages, deserts, and dining out or takeaway. In maintenance I add more of that stuff back in. I haven't logged in a long time, but I always lose weight pretty steadily when I'm just having 3 squares per day and 1 afternoon snack and limit alcohol to once or twice per week and eating out to once per week or so.

    That said, as meals go, most of what I do isn't really a recipe...except in winter when I do more stews and whatnot, but those aren't huge calorie bombs or anything. For the most part though, we have some kind of meat, poultry, or fish that is seasoned or marinated in whatever...a veggie side and a grain or starch side. I don't really have time to fuss with recipes and long cooking times, during the work week in particular. So I just keep it simple...a protein, a veg, and a grain or starch. If I'm trying to lose weight, I may skip the grain and starch a few nights...things like that.

  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,897 Member
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    Coffee_addict22 wrote: »
    I want to lose just 10lbs. But I’ve tried getting back into tracking and it’s not as easy as it was before kids😫🤣 and I need a easier food routine for me so I can succeed.

    I intermittent fast until lunch because I’m not a breakfast eater. I keep eat simple for lunches but dinner is where I fall apart. I like to cook for my family and it seems almost impossible to figure out how to weigh and log my recipes and then figure out how many servings. Do you just make something different for your families and eat easy to log food?

    I need quick and easy or it’s not achievable🤣 would love some insight from other moms!

    Also starting drinking some apple cider vinegar with the mother to curb my appetite some and that seems to be helping. But I still gotta figure out what the crap do I eat.

    If you need help with how to use the recipe builder, please ask. I'm going to assume you do use it, and are stuck on the servings part. I use cooked weight of the item. (I weigh the pot or pan first or get its weight from a notebook with weights that I've created.) The red beans I made recently weighed 2907 grams, so I put 2907 servings in the recipe builder. This creates a calories per gram. Then I log the weight of what I want to eat, for this food usually 200 grams, which comes to 116 calories.

    I love this method as a serving is however much I feel like eating at that meal, and not an eight of a recipe or something like that which may not fit my appetite.

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  • NextRightThing714
    NextRightThing714 Posts: 355 Member
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    Not sure of your budget but I find mail-order meal plans infinitely helpful. You cook at home but all the ingredients are pre-portioned and you only have to worry about one log entry.

    Oh, and ditch the apple cider vinegar. Your enamel will thank you.
  • Aermorgen
    Aermorgen Posts: 10 Member
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    I do a combination of things. Often, I use recipes from sites that provide nutritional information, including calorie counts. Sometimes I use the recipe builder, either to give me numbers for a recipe that didn't have them or to just log ingredients as I go when I'm making things up. It gives me something to use. Using the recipe builder comes with a caveat—I have to check what it's sourcing carefully and make corrections pretty often. I do all recipe things using the website, not my phone. Recipes are a bit of a nuisance, but doable.

    Logging is easy—that, I do on my phone as the day progresses.

    I also rely heavily on a linked Fitbit. If I didn't have its calorie adjustment, there are days where I would be too far under for it to be sustainable. I would get too hungry.

    I know that altogether, the numbers probably aren't exactly right. I'm going on the belief that genuinely trying is good enough. Seems to be so far, and I'll change what I'm doing if that changes.
  • Courtscan2
    Courtscan2 Posts: 498 Member
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    I do a lot of meals where I do a protein, chicken breast for example, and I weigh out my portion and keep it separate, then do different sides for kids and hubs as for myself. Where they might have broccoli and oven chips, I'll have broccoli and roast butternut. Or we do, like fajitas so everyone can add what they want to their own, and I just measure my own before adding. Also use recipe builder a lot, for things like lasagna etc.

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