Planning your meals weekly/daily

I sit down and plan out pretty much every meal for the week. I started doing it to help control our grocery budget and pay off school loans, but it has helped tremendously with watching what I eat.

For example.

I tend to have a fruit and yogurt for breakfast everyday. If I want something else, I make low calorie egg white "muffins" with ground turkey, bell pepper, and onion (86 calories!) and eat two or three.

For lunch, its usually last nights leftovers with salad, baby carrots, a fruit cup, and peanut butter. (I eat it straight as a dessert)

For supper, since my fiance isn't on the diet, I try to pick something we'll both like.

Last week we had chili, spaghetti squash spaghetti, chicken curry, chicken vegetable soup, tacos, and 2 other things I can't remember. I ate the taco meat on top of a salad and just bought him some shells to eat.

I threw some left over marinara and ground turkey on top of my salad for lunch the next day with some fat free cheese and it was AMAZING. Ditto with the chicken curry and taco meat.

I spent about 100 bucks for the two of us, which was a little more than normal, but I figure we're eating way better than when we we're eating hamburger helper.

Plus, when I have something planned out, it keeps me from picking fast food or spending money eating out since I already have that idea in my head. It's hard at first, but what I eventually did is plan out two weeks worth of food and wrote out a grocery list for everything. I just keep a copy of this list and use it each time I go shopping to make it easier. Occasionally I'll try something new, but we tend to eat the same thing every two weeks.