Any meal planning dieters????

[TheVillageIdiot]

I've decided that it would help me endlessly if I could plan my meals for the next 2 months.

I am also trying to watch the pennies, is this a costly way to diet and also, where do I start?

Do any of you have plans? could I steal ideas from you??

TIA

[TheVillageIdiot]

bump

[emily05]

havent used this website yet - but it is free and you can use it as a tool to plan meal apparently good luck

[TheVillageIdiot]

Thanks, I'll go and have a look

[Donbean]

Fab idea and ive been doing it for some time now and yes, it is working for me in every sense.
Firstly i got out all of my old weight watcher and slimming world booklets and trawled through them for recipe and meal ideas.
I popped postet notes on the pages and began to list day by day the meals that i was going to prepare.
I started with week one and left it there to see how it would go.
I made my shopping list based on these meals, went to Tescos and bought ONLY what was on the list.
This reduced my bill dramatically.
As i now know every day what i am making, there is no wandering into the kitchen at tea time scratching my head and preparing something quick, convenient, high in fat and sugars.
It is all freshly prepared, wholewheat, low fat low sugar stuff that is actually very nice.
Just to add....I have never cooked or baked in my life and so this is a huge learning curve for me. I am enjoying it though i have to say.
So far i have shifted 8lbs and am feeling much better in myself.
Good luck with it, it really is a good way of doing it.
HTH

[TheVillageIdiot]

Donbean - sounds great. I'm not much of a cook either so it will be a culture shock but i'd like to cook more.

How long have you been doing it for?

[lilaclotus]

that's a brilliant idea. i'm going to try that.

[TheVillageIdiot]

Right I've been thinking about it, here's my plan...

Tonight I'm going to open a spreadsheet, and create a plan for 1 week.

I have two low-cal/healthy eating recipe books. I am going to go home passed my local shop and get 2 different types of healthy cereal.

Then I will, weigh out the 40g (or whatever) cereal for the week into sandwich bags for each day.

I will use the cook books to find recipes for evening meals the dp will enjoy also and assign them to a day on my spreadsheet.

I will then assign a combination of soup recipes, salads and other things for each of the lunch slots and decide on what I'm going to allow myself for snacks.

I'll write down all the ingredients I need and order on-line. I am going to halve any 4 serving recipes before I order the ingredients (to ensure that I won't pick at any leftovers). Where possible I'm going to wirte the number of calories and fat grams on the spreadsheet.

I never normally eat breakfast so am going to start, then have a snack late morning and hopefully then be able to eat my lunch later, 1 snack mid-afternoon and 1 when I get in (we don't normally eat dinner til at least 9pm so it's a long wait otherwise.

Does this sound ok? I don't know how long this enthusiasm will last though!!!

[lilaclotus]

sounds brilliant to me! i will definitely sit down later and work some menus out for myself.