BodyTalking
First weigh-in for 2024
80.7 kg

I have to take it easy again tomorrow. This cough is wearing me down now and I've just been sick - I enjoyed a lovely relaxing bath then couldn't stop coughing until that. If to try and sleep now. Good night all 💤

🟥🟧🟨🟩🟦🟪⬛️ (Sun - Sat)
❤️🧡⚪️⚪️⚪️⚪️⚪️ (Protein/Fiber)
❤️🧡⚪️⚪️⚪️⚪️⚪️ (Planned Exercise)
❤️😬⚪️⚪️⚪️⚪️⚪️ (Steps 5k+)

@BodyTalking I hope you feel better soon! ❤️

Wow! Congrats everyone on all your losses! I WILL be there next week!

ksludwig wrote: »

Food prepped lunches and dinners for the week on Sunday. Hoping this sets me up for success this week!

@ksludwig -
What are your go-to meals to food prep? I could never get myself to properly prepare several days of food in advance.


@minstrelofsarcasm I am a big fan of mason jar salads. I can prep 10 (because if I am making them my husband always wants them too) on a Sunday and they are still good on Friday. You can put everything but the croutons in in, including the dressing. I keep a big bowl at work and dump it out so I can mix and enjoy. This is the blog I got my ideas from, https://www.asweetpeachef.com/mason-jar-salad/, though now I often make up my own salad ideas.

This week I prepped fajita rice bowls. I used half white rice and half riced cauliflower rice to keep the carbs and calories down a bit, corn, black beans, fajita peppers and onions, leftover pork carnitas from the crockpot, a little cheese, and salsa. All the spices and flavors help blend in the cauliflower.

I also like making meals in the crockpot that I can portion out for lunches or even dinners.

sydditt wrote: »

That’s organized! The most I tend to manage is grilling a bunch of extra chicken on the weekends so I have some extras leftover. Sometimes I have canned beans on hand to mix it with. Most of the time, I throw some in a baggie on my way out the door and nibble on it dry at my desk. 😭

I find I am more likely to stick to my healthy habits if I make it easy to do so. Putting in an hour or 2 on the weekends, so I can grab lunch from the fridge and put it in my bag on the way out the door helps me from being tempted to buy lunch during the week. It's also better for my budget to be eating the food I buy at the store rather than going out for lunch.

Slow cooker meals are a great way to start. I love the recipes by skinnytaste. They have a lot of flavor and seasonings. This is a favorite of mine. https://www.skinnytaste.com/crockpot-turkey-white-bean-pumpkin/ that I got from another MFP user 10 years ago.

Casseroles can be an easy way to meal prep as well. Eat a serving for dinner, then box up the rest in individual containers for lunches. Emily Bites has some really good cassaroles: https://emilybites.com/category/casseroles. This is a favorite of mine to make: https://emilybites.com/2012/01/chicken-tamale-bake.html.

minstrelofsarcasm wrote: »

And here I was thinking I was being resourceful by having a protein yogurt, a beef stick, and some fruit every day for lunch... I'll have to give meal prepping another shot when I have two functional hands for cooking again - I'm sure there's something minimal effort I can do and still manage to be better than what I'm doing now.

I have greek yogurt for breakfast!

Can someone open cans for you? This is my husbands absolute favorite slow cooker recipe. The best part is you don't need to cook any ingredients, everything goes into the pot uncooked. https://www.plainchicken.com/slow-cooker-cream-cheese-crack-chicken/

BodyTalking wrote: »

BodyTalking
First weigh-in for 2024
80.7 kg

I have to take it easy again tomorrow. This cough is wearing me down now and I've just been sick - I enjoyed a lovely relaxing bath then couldn't stop coughing until that. If to try and sleep now. Good night all 💤

I'm in the same boat. Doctor put me on more steroids which give me a headache (already had one from sinuses and coughing) and make it hard to sleep. Sympathy from Kansas!

ksludwig wrote: »

sydditt wrote: »

That’s organized! The most I tend to manage is grilling a bunch of extra chicken on the weekends so I have some extras leftover. Sometimes I have canned beans on hand to mix it with. Most of the time, I throw some in a baggie on my way out the door and nibble on it dry at my desk. 😭

I find I am more likely to stick to my healthy habits if I make it easy to do so. Putting in an hour or 2 on the weekends, so I can grab lunch from the fridge and put it in my bag on the way out the door helps me from being tempted to buy lunch during the week. It's also better for my budget to be eating the food I buy at the store rather than going out for lunch.

Slow cooker meals are a great way to start. I love the recipes by skinnytaste. They have a lot of flavor and seasonings. This is a favorite of mine. https://www.skinnytaste.com/crockpot-turkey-white-bean-pumpkin/ that I got from another MFP user 10 years ago.

Casseroles can be an easy way to meal prep as well. Eat a serving for dinner, then box up the rest in individual containers for lunches. Emily Bites has some really good cassaroles: https://emilybites.com/category/casseroles. This is a favorite of mine to make: https://emilybites.com/2012/01/chicken-tamale-bake.html.

I am also a big fan of slow cooker stuff and casseroles. The casserole you mentioned is essentially the same as one I made a week and a half ago. Hubs complained the corn flavor was too strong and asked if we could do it with biscuits. I told him the point was tamale, which is corn. He eats corn all the time, I don't get the objection. But he still ate it. I thought about putting it in a larger dish with more chicken and then making 12 servings instead of 8 (6? Don't remember) might mellow the corn for him. Tossing chicken and noodles in the pot today.

@minstrelofsarcasm--you might ask for volunteers (bf, friends) to help chop stuff one day a week and have all your stuff prechopped. A nutritionist I talked to a while back suggested prepping all the veg I plan to use during the week on one day, which I am bad at doing. But she's right, when I did it, getting meals done during the week was simpler. And if you are doing several meals with similar ingredients (onion, broccoli, carrots) you can have a big bag of chopped whatever and just take out what you need. Or try frozen chopped. You're in/near Columbus, right? That is a big enough town for grocery stores to stock stuff like chopped onions. Not as nice as fresh and maybe a bit more expensive but maybe worth it. Having a broken wing sucks. Hope it heals quickly.

I've been sick and some times I will ask hubs to just chop stuff so I can do the cooking later.

Kyra_TB97 wrote: »

Hi everyone. I do not know if it is just me, but I am struggling to stay on track. I have done some meal prep for tomorrow, so I hope this works. Does anyone have any tips or tricks how to stay on track?

@Kyra_TB97 - It's not just you, making changes is difficult, especially early on. Starting small and finding things you like and can stay consistent with is incredibly important. I don't know your strategy of attack, but I know I tend to get more frustrated when I take on too many things at once, because starting one or two new habits is a ton easier than doing ten.

Is there something in particular that you're struggling with???

@ksludwig Nice loss you got there! 😉

Thank you for the well wishes 🤗
It was my birthday on Tuesday, so that was a bummer. Anyway, I've got all my nice photos and memories of the holiday to keep me uplifted.

I went to the doc yesterday and have been told not to talk for 2 days (have had to cancel all my lessons 💸👋) and have several meds to take to help with breathing, sinus and throat inflammation, and sleep. I still had a restless night but managed to get 9 hours sleep last night. Doing nothing yesterday helped and I'll just do the same today.

@melaniedscott I hope you're on the mend and don't suffer much longer. I feel ya 🫂

Thank you for the mason jar salad link @ksludwig Maybe I should make a proper attempt at being prepared this year. It's something I never thought I could be bothered with. I'm surprised that leafy greens can remain fresh and crisp and that it's ok to have cooked meat in the jars for days. Are there any things that you've put in jars that just didn't work?

I also need to get some casseroles or big pot meals planned. The kitchen is an absolute mess since I'm doing nothing and my husband is in the process of using every single item that exists and doesn't wash them afterwards!!! My weekend job I suppose 😔

Quick Update on Me:

Last Week...
I was hit pretty hard with a bloat last week, which could have been residual from the holidays, residual from getting back to exercising after the holidays, extra water retention because of the Thursday morning wrist sprain, adjusting to the ever-changing Cleveland weather, etc. You get the point.

And on Saturday, my boyfriend and I made decadent grilled cheese sandwiches (fancy sourdough, multiple types of cheese, crispy bacon) with tomato soup. I was not expecting it to be a healthy meal, but it still sent me reeling with how many calories could be packed into a simple sandwich (containing six slices of cheese).

This Week...
My workouts this week have been pretty good, honestly. I've been modifying my programming to be as hands-off as possible - my personal trainer has been a huge help. Tuesday's upper body day was replaced with a core/cardio split, the sweat session was really good for my mental health. This morning was a hands-off leg day. So while I'd normally do a bunch of work with free weights (e.g. holding a plate overhead while lunging, deep goblet squats, etc.), I switched to a machine-based focus. This allowed me to really isolate a muscle or set of muscles without putting strain on my wrist to stabilize myself or the weight as I normally would.

On the nutrition side... I've been better, but I'm trying to stick to a no-nonsense strategy when it comes to logging. I ate four chocolate covered oreos yesterday, partially because my aunt who owns a chocolate shop sent them for the holidays and I didn't want them to go bad, aaaaaaaaaaaaand partially because I've been teetering on the edge of self-sabotage for months now. So I logged them, and found I still had wiggle room to have dinner that was more than a protein bar and a handful of baby carrots. It was still veggie-heavy, but it was more than my brain would have thought was acceptable had I not logged everything that went into my body yesterday. Normally, if I thought I was anywhere close to my calorie limit with a splurge, I'd stop logging and give up for the day - this is why my diary for a very long time was just through lunch.

Which brings us to today: I weighed myself this morning, and the mysterious bloat of last week disappeared. I know for a fact that I have not done anything worthy of losing two pounds of fat in the past week (approximately 7000 calories). Needless to say, I'm feeling an odd rush of motivation. It's a shame I can't do everything I want to, but it's a blessing that I can still stick to a sustainable routine while injured.

(That was longer than I expected it to be. Whoops.)