Jubilee Health Place

Finding a Place of Health and Fitness through God's Grace

Planning

Diet Bumps – Planning

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Obstacles - just another bump in the road.
Obstacles – just another bump in the road.

Hope you are on track today. Stick to the plan. You do have a plan I hope. You can’t stick to a plan if you don’t have one. Don’t just plan to have a plan but plan your plan. Not having a plan is a sure-fire way to fail in your weight loss quest. For many planning is another bump in the road of dieting. It takes time in an already busy schedule.

I use a spreadsheet. Since many meals we eat the same each week, I can just leave them on last week’s sheet and change the date for a new week. Then I delete the days that are changing. This week we fixed a stew. It says 24 servings so I’m thinking that is 1-cup servings. That would be 12 meals for the both of us. I need 1 ½ cups so that will make 9-10 meals. That will fill up the dinner slots on the menu and some next week. Salads make up the rest of the menu.

I keep an eye open for new recipes that fit my plan and work them in. If you are at all familiar with spreadsheets, it is quick and easy. If you aren’t familiar with spreadsheets, you can just write them out on a sheet of paper. Just make columns for the days and write in your menus for each meal each day.

Most people only have around 10 recipes they use. However, variety helps to change the pace. Variety helps you look forward to something new. It puts a spark into the menu.

You can think about the menu plan as you do other things. Then when you get a minute, enter it into the spreadsheet or to your menu sheet. That way you have a plan you can look at each day. You know what you are going to eat and can plan for it. It relieves the stress of trying to decide the last-minute and it helps in the shopping also.

You can overcome the obstacle of planning.

10 Tips To Start Your Diet Program

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Sun peeking 700x400Here are 10 Tips for Starting a Wellness Program by Carrie Myers Smith, Health & Fitness Writer.

Tips are just that—tips. Some may apply more than others may The tips are hers and the comments are mine.

1.        Write out your goals and desires. We’ve discussed the pros and cons of goals. Imagine what it is you want. Is the goal realistic? Put them on paper. There is something about writing them on paper that makes them take on flesh.

2.        Ask what, when and how. Look at your past problems and figure out how you can solve them.

3.        Have a plan. I talk a lot about the PLAN. Plan to succeed or plan to fail.

4.        Start a journal. This might be helpful. I track my food on SparkPeople.

5.        Begin your journey where you’re standing now. This is the only place you can start. Don’t wait for something to happen. Start now and make it happen.

6.        Take one-step at a time. Don’t try to do everything at once. You will get overwhelmed.

7.        Learn from your setbacks. You will have plenty of setbacks, so might just as well learn from them. Discover you weaknesses and strengths. Find out what to avoid.

8.        Spend some time “cleaning house.” Get the junk out of your cupboards.

9.        Stop comparing yourself to others. Just look at your own situation. In comparing, you will always come up short, unless you are better than perfect.

10.     Reward yourself. Find out ways to reward yourself. God designed humans with the reward system in mind. I’ll go into this in more detail in a later blog.

 

For more details see: (http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/wellness_articles.asp?id=269)

Overcoming Diet Obstacles – Planning

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bunions 700x400

Hope you are on track today. Stick to the plan. You do have a plan I hope. You can’t stick to a plan if you don’t have one. Don’t just plan to have a plan but plan your plan. Not having a plan is a sure-fire way to fail in your weight loss quest. For many planning is an obstacle. It takes time in an already busy schedule.

I use a spreadsheet. Since many meals we eat the same eachplanning week, I can just leave them on last week’s sheet and change the date for a new week. Then I delete the days that are changing. This week we might fix a stew. It says 24 servings so I’m thinking that is 1-cup servings. That would be 12 meals for the both of us. I need 1 ½ cups so that will make 9-10 meals. That will fill up the dinner slots on the menu and some next week. Salads make up the rest of the menu.

I keep an eye open for new recipes that fit my plan and work them in. If you are at all familiar with spreadsheets, it is quick and easy. If you aren’t familiar with spreadsheets, you can just write them out on a sheet of paper. Just make columns for the days and write in your menus for each meal each day.

Most people only have around 10 recipes they use. However, variety helps to change the pace. Variety helps you look forward to something new. It puts a spark into the menu.

When Charlene sees something we need, she puts it on a note and leaves it on my computer. I put it on the shopping list.

You can think about the menu plan as you do other things. Then when you get a minute, enter it into the spreadsheet or to your menu sheet. That way you have a plan you can look at each day. You know what you are going to eat and can plan for it. It relieves the stress of trying to decide the last-minute and it helps in the shopping also.

Speaking of shopping, you do have a list don’t you? Don’t go shopping without a list. Plan your menu and then make up your shopping list based on your menu. Then go shopping and buy what’s on the list. That way you don’t get any junk and you get what you need for you menu.

You can overcome the obstacle of planning.

Plan Ahead

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Plan ahead!

I have always been a planner. I enjoy the planning process. Dieters need planning skills. Of course, carrying out the plans is important also.

I was listening to a Bible teacher the other day, and I noticed a warning. He said most people—Christians—spend more time thinking, planning, and eating their food than reading their Bibles. Many Christians don’t read their Bibles at all.

This is the dieter’s danger zone. I spend a great deal of time researching, reading, and writing blogs and devotionals. I spend much time on planning our meals. Maybe I’m spending too much time on meal planning. I think it will speed up once I have a set of meals I can use that I have already designed properly.

I think the dieters who plan ahead have a much higher success rate. I haven’t done any research on that, it’s just an observation based on my success. I do better when I have a meal plan. The first of the year will be a huge challenge. I need a plan that works. I must stick to the plan. I may have to watch carefully when I eat out in restaurants and fast food places while traveling. There are choices that work. I just have to choose them.

Does planning take all the fun out of life—no spontaneity? Two things come to mind. One, having a plan leaves you free to do other things. If you have to figure out what to eat every day, you will make mistakes, and you will spend extra time. Two, spontaneity in choosing what to eat is dangerous. You will just say let’s grab a burger. You will leave it up to what do I feel like eating today. Feelings are diet robbers—dangerous ground.

My advice is plan ahead.

Sample Diet Plans

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Most diet plans have a example of what you can eat for a week. None of the plans I’ve seen ever take into account how I can use the food I buy. Some say they are just examples, suggestions, or templates. They require work to use. The diet I’m on now is one of the most time consuming that I have done. We shall see if it’s sustainable.

The sample diets have to be totally reworked to be usable. For example: Monday breakfast – a whole wheat bagel. Tuesday -oatmeal. Wednesday – eggs and toast. Thursday – Cereal. Friday – omlet with veggies. Do you get the picture? At the end of the week, I have a bag of bagels left, a loaf of bread, a box of cereal. I realize these are sample menus, yet they are set to a balanced macro diet so any manipulation has to take into account the carbs, protein, fats, and timing.

The option is getting a list of food you can eat and make your own menu. If you choose a bagel then you have to figure in the fact that you have to use the bagels within two weeks. Same with bread. Cereal can last longer. Then if you follow the recommended diet plan you are going to see things on the menu you don’t like. Charlene doesn’t like hummas. I do. So to eat up a carton of hummus I must eat it everyday for a snack for two weeks. Some diets has a list of substitutes. If you don’t like fish – which I don’t – then I substitute chicken for the tongol tuna. Setting up a plan is a formadable task. Then of course is the budget. I can’t afford organic free-range chicken at $6 a pound. I have to wait until Ingles has regular chicken on sale for $1.98 a pound. So alot goes into the planning. Some people can eat the same thing day in day out, but I like variety but it all turns out as a compromise.

So the diet samples go by the wayside. They can’t be used as a diet plan. In fact, the writers of diet books can’t really have a diet plan that figures in all the differences in people’s tastes and in figuring you need 3 days of bagel breakfasts if you have tow people. It would be different for three or four people. So I take the suggestions and try to work them into a spreadsheet which I call the weekly menu. I try to use up foods that have a time stamp on their existence.

Do Cookbooks Lie

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Do cookbooks lie? Can you look at the times and figure how long this will really take to prepare and how long it will cook?

I ran across an article that gave a lot of good advice about putting recipes in the proper format. I heard Taylor Scott of Kevin and Taylor say that cookbooks lie. That means the writers of recipes lie. (You can hear them on 104.7 The Fish Atlanta every weekday morning from 5:30 to 10:00.) She said the preparation times and the cook times are never right. We have put some recipes on the website. We only put recipes we have tried. We haven’t been very good about carefully keeping track of the prep and cook times. It’s been only an intelligent estimate.

People who don’t have much time want to know how much time this recipe is actually going to take. If there’s vegetable chopping, then how much time realistically does it take to chop up the stuff by a novice chopper. I toss some of the veggies in my Vidalia Chop Wizard and it cuts the time considerably. Some might want their veggies peeled and others not. It makes it difficult to come up with a prep time. How long does it take you to find seasoning in your cupboard?

The skill level of each person is different. Expert chefs chop up veggies super quickly and without chopping off a finger. But what about us slow pokes? We have to look at a recipe and say we can never chop up all the veggies in 30 seconds. We need 10 minutes.

The article says overestimate and not underestimate. The problem with that for most recipe writers is the feeling if it takes too long people won’t try their recipe. But wouldn’t you rather want to know that it realistically is going to take 30 minutes to prepare a soup?

As we do our recipes, we need to make a more careful timing of the prep and cook times. We don’t want people cursing us for taking up their whole time preparing and cooking and the kids are yelling and screaming “I’m hungry, when we going to eat?”

Also we should put the order of the ingredient lists in the order in which you use them in the instructions. I didn’t know there was so much to recipes.