Food planning is a must for successful weight control. Not meal planning. Food planning. There is a difference. Meal planning implies extensive lists, schedules, cooking, food prep, and all around more effort than some, including this writer, personally like to put into eating. Some may love to do that, and that is wonderful, but today's blog is primarily for those who like the "easy eats."
It is easier to keep the weight off in the first place than to gain it and be faced with the daunting task of losing it, again.Winging it with food is not a good idea. The reward usually appears in the form of hard to lose extra pounds. So whether your eating cycle begins on grocery shopping day, preparing for a whole week of eating, or only shopping for the weekend, a little effort at the beginning of the eating cycle can pay off in both the short and long term.
Did you know that eating the majority of our veggies raw helps with weight control, so why not throw together enough veggie slaw to last most of the week and snack on it frequently?
And while planning for the next eating cycle, don't neglect to plan for favorite snacks. Oatmeal cookies are high on my list of favorites. With milk. In a perfect world, I can eat 8 or 9 cookies along with about 2 cups of milk without gaining an ounce. right. So part of my food planning now includes emptying the pack of cookies as soon as I get it home from the grocery store and dividing it up into snack size baggies, four cookies per baggie, then doing my level best to limit my daily cookie fix to those four cookies and one small cup of milk. That's not dieting. That's just life after 50.
Add a few pieces of varied fruit to the fruit bowl. I have found that fruit does help reduce cravings for refined sugar, of which I am totally addicted to but can no longer afford to indulge in. Right now, my fruit bowl sports three apples, one plum, one piece of unidentified fruit that is a cross between a plum and something else--maybe a peach--I'm not sure, and one mango.
And we can't afford to overlook protein, an absolute necessity in weight control. Avoid high fat beef and high sodium meats like pork whenever possible. Also, read labels. Some meats have added sodium. Sad but true. A healthy choice is usually salmon. Salmon is available fresh, frozen, and even in little cans packaged like tuna. Salman can be prepared like tuna salad only with canned salman instead. And salmon is high in calcium. A few non-meat protein sorces are peanut butter, nuts, eggs, and cottage cheese.
We need some kind of whole grain in our healthy diets, and oatmeal is a good weight control food. Not the cookie form of oatmeal. It's also been shown to play a role in reducing belly fat. There are other ways to eat oatmeal aside from eating it as cookies or hot cereal. I like to blend a few tablespoons of dry oatmeal into fruit smoothies. You never know it's there. I will also eat it without cooking it by mixing it with some nuts, canned fruits, and chocolate almond milk or yogart. I use the fruit juice as part of the liquid. I almost always throw in some coconut flakes when mixing it with chocolate almond milk. It makes breakfast taste like dessert. Watch out for that combo though. It can qualify as decadent.
A few no no's: Avoid conveniently stocking fattening snacks in the freezer or pantry. Make indulging as inconvenient as possible. If you are craving something badly enough to go out and buy it, then by all means do so. But believe it or not, this method does work to reduce caving to high-calorie temptation. I cannot count the number of times I have craved a fattening treat, but not badly enought get in the car and go after it, or even to walk down to the corner store a block away for it. Saved by the inconvenience of it all. Try it.
These are just a few ideas to help with food planning. Let me know some of yours. A plan doesn't have to be brilliant. It just needs to work.
And while planning for the next eating cycle, don't neglect to plan for favorite snacks. Oatmeal cookies are high on my list of favorites. With milk. In a perfect world, I can eat 8 or 9 cookies along with about 2 cups of milk without gaining an ounce. right. So part of my food planning now includes emptying the pack of cookies as soon as I get it home from the grocery store and dividing it up into snack size baggies, four cookies per baggie, then doing my level best to limit my daily cookie fix to those four cookies and one small cup of milk. That's not dieting. That's just life after 50.
Add a few pieces of varied fruit to the fruit bowl. I have found that fruit does help reduce cravings for refined sugar, of which I am totally addicted to but can no longer afford to indulge in. Right now, my fruit bowl sports three apples, one plum, one piece of unidentified fruit that is a cross between a plum and something else--maybe a peach--I'm not sure, and one mango.
And we can't afford to overlook protein, an absolute necessity in weight control. Avoid high fat beef and high sodium meats like pork whenever possible. Also, read labels. Some meats have added sodium. Sad but true. A healthy choice is usually salmon. Salmon is available fresh, frozen, and even in little cans packaged like tuna. Salman can be prepared like tuna salad only with canned salman instead. And salmon is high in calcium. A few non-meat protein sorces are peanut butter, nuts, eggs, and cottage cheese.
We need some kind of whole grain in our healthy diets, and oatmeal is a good weight control food. Not the cookie form of oatmeal. It's also been shown to play a role in reducing belly fat. There are other ways to eat oatmeal aside from eating it as cookies or hot cereal. I like to blend a few tablespoons of dry oatmeal into fruit smoothies. You never know it's there. I will also eat it without cooking it by mixing it with some nuts, canned fruits, and chocolate almond milk or yogart. I use the fruit juice as part of the liquid. I almost always throw in some coconut flakes when mixing it with chocolate almond milk. It makes breakfast taste like dessert. Watch out for that combo though. It can qualify as decadent.
A few no no's: Avoid conveniently stocking fattening snacks in the freezer or pantry. Make indulging as inconvenient as possible. If you are craving something badly enough to go out and buy it, then by all means do so. But believe it or not, this method does work to reduce caving to high-calorie temptation. I cannot count the number of times I have craved a fattening treat, but not badly enought get in the car and go after it, or even to walk down to the corner store a block away for it. Saved by the inconvenience of it all. Try it.
These are just a few ideas to help with food planning. Let me know some of yours. A plan doesn't have to be brilliant. It just needs to work.
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