meal plans

One of my major stumbling blocks in losing weight is that I go out to eat—a lot. I’ve found that when I make a meal plan for the week, I tend to not eat out as much. This is good for two reasons: eating out is not cheap—it is very possible to have homemade meals cheaper than anything from McDonald’s—and it’s not particularly healthy.

I don’t usually plan breakfast—my breakfast is too light to have a real plan. For a few months, I ate Nature Valley crunchy granola bars for breakfast. One packages has two bars and 180 calories. Lately, I’ve been eating one-egg mini-omelets with cheese. These add up to about 140 calories (70 calories from each component).

For lunch this week, I’ve planned salads. Salads are quick and easy to make, and they are very easy to change so that I don’t get bored. I have a salad recipe book that I purchased1  for ideas when I’m not feeling particularly creative. This week, I am eating a simple green tuna salad. The ingredients are: a handful of spinach; a handful of arugula; half a small onion, sliced; one can of tuna, drained and rinsed a few times; and some parmesan cheese on top. I make the dressing myself too: 3 parts grapeseed oil (I ran out of Extra Virgin Olive Oil…) to one part white wine vinegar, with a dash of salt and some herbes de provence to kick it up a notch. It’s a very tasty salad, and fills me up very well. Not bad for about 400 calories!

Supper is always the tricky meal. I have the most trouble eating my planned suppers. This week I plan to make a simple chicken stir fry, but I have already managed to not eat it once. The trouble I tend to run into is that I am not home many nights of the week. I won’t be home again until Thursday night, so we’ll see if I actually manage to get to my chicken stir-fry this week.

By keeping my meal plans simple and repeating the items throughout the week, I can buy ingredients once a week and everything averages out to rather low cost. A carton of eggs and a bag of cheese cost maybe $5 together if you buy the good eggs. That’s less than a buck a meal, because the eggs will cover two weeks. A couple of bags of salad greens, a bag of cheese (I’m lazy and grating cheese is a pain.), some onions and 5 cans of tuna cost around $15-$20, which is $3-$4 per meal. Not quite as cheap, but healthy and filling. My chicken stir fry is really cheap. The chicken was $6 for a 3lb bag plus about $3 for veggies. That’s around $2 per meal when you add in the rice and spice costs. Awesome.

footnotes

1. Twelve Months of Monastery Salads: 200 Divine Recipes for All Seasons. This is a very nice recipe book. Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette has quite a few very nice cook books—I’ve purchased three. Some recipes are duplicated between books, but overall they are all simple and delicious. I try to buy from my local Catholic book store, but they didn’t stock this particular book.

life update

In December, my Knights of Columbus council elected me Grand Knight. Since then, life has been a little crazier than usual.

I still plan to finish the “Love” article series, but haven’t had a chance to get the rest of it out. While browsing my local Catholic book store, I found Pope Benedict’s encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) and want to read that before continuing with that series.

My weight loss plan is not gone, and I have not gone up. I just haven’t dropped as much as I’d have liked. I’m at 229.8lbs as of today. By the end of May I plan to drop to 225lbs or lower–the final goal being between 190lbs and 200lbs. It seems that it is getting harder to drop weight as I get lighter and lighter. My workout has also changed a few times–I’m due for a workout update soon.

I have also retried my gardening attempts this year–last year was not a good year to try it out. Something about setting a record for most days over 100 in recorded history.

I have several other interesting articles planned; hopefully, I will be able to get those written (or at least started) this summer!

“hardcore” Lent

I decided that I wanted to take Lent seriously this year and do something that I would notice and might do me some good. A good friend of mine said that last year he did the Orthodox Lenten fast. He told me a little about it, so I decided I should investigate it a little bit.

It basically boils down: no meat, no fish with backbones (shellfish and squid is ok), no olive oil, no dairy/eggs and no wine/hard liquor. According to one source, this actually includes all oils and all alcohols! So, I did some more research on the topic, and I found that before the 20th century, the Catholic Lenten fast was much closer to the current Orthodox Lenten fast. It essentially bars eating meat and dairy products. Both traditions (the current Orthodox and former Catholic) make exceptions for the ill, pregnant, young, etc.

So I decided I would use older Orthodox food restrictions (i.e. beer and non-olive oil are acceptable) with the common fasting tradition. The Orthodox Lenten tradition also calls for totals fasts on several days, but recognizes that it is very difficult for most working people to complete these. The Orthodox tradition also does not completely relax their restrictions on Sundays and Holy Days during Lent, which I think is partially due to the different method of counting the days of Lent used by the Orthodox churches.

So, my Lenten sacrifice, which I like to call “hardcore” Lent (because it sounds cool) and many people I know like to call “you’re crazy” Lent boils down to the following:

  • No meat
  • No fish (excepting shellfish)
  • No olive-oil
  • No dairy or eggs
  • No alcohol (excepting beer)
  • No eating between meals
  • One full meal a day and two smaller meals that do not add up to the larger.

So far, it’s been rough for me. I haven’t quite gotten my meal sizes figured out yet, but I’m carefully monitoring and adjusting them. I’ve also cut down my workouts a bit due to the decrease in calorie intake. My current workout schedule is:

  • Monday: run 2 miles
  • Tuesday: Leg weights
  • Wednesday: Arm weights
  • Thursday: Leg weights
  • Friday: Arm weights / run .5 miles

So far I’ve already lost more weight than normal with this Lenten diet. I also look forward to Sundays and obligatory feast days a lot more than I used to. (The two feast days during Lent that we are taking off are St. Joseph’s feast day on March 18 and the Annunciation on March 25.)

new gym routine

I’ve explained my workout before, but the amount of time that it takes has always bothered me. I don’t really like spending more than an hour at the gym. My weights days were taking around 1:15 to 1:30 every time, while my cardio days only took about 45 minutes. I came up with a plan to even the days out a little more, which I’ve been following for the last two weeks. Continue reading “new gym routine”

go to the gym? me?

Something that I wanted to do as part of my lifestyle change was to get in better shape. I was, and still am, convinced that exercise alone won’t fix your weight problems. You also have to change what you eat to lose weight. That being said, I do think that exercise is helpful. For me, exercise relieves stress and just makes me feel better in general. Continue reading “go to the gym? me?”

a new diet

The coolest thing right now is that after losing almost fifty pounds, people are noticing my weight loss and they are commenting on it. That feels good, and makes me realize that I am changing my life for the better. Sometimes, people ask me what I am doing to lose all the weight. I tell them that it’s pretty simple: I eat less and exercise. Essentially, that is what I’m doing, but it is a bit of a high overview. To be honest, I don’t have a traditional diet in mind when I decided to lose weight. I’ve read about lots of diets and they all seem to either fail after a while or cause health problems. I didn’t want this to happen to me, so I came up with my plan. Continue reading “a new diet”

tracking my progress

I’m an engineer. I went to Electrical Engineering school, and they gave me a piece of paper that says I can call myself an engineer. I even took a really annoying test (the Fundamentals of Engineering) so I can call myself an Engineer-in-Training. Because of this background, I like to collect data on things. After coming up with an idea on how to accomplish my weight loss goal, I figured that the only way to ensure I was making progress was to make a record of my progress. Continue reading “tracking my progress”

the plan

I kicked off my diet in late July by cutting out soda and cutting down on alcohol intake, but I knew that this probably wouldn’t be enough. I had to come up with some semblance of a plan to lose 170lbs. In fact, at this point, I didn’t even have a goal other than ‘weigh less’. All I really knew was that I weighed too much and I needed that to change. Continue reading “the plan”

starting my weight loss adventure

In mid-July I finally decided that I was tired of weighing as much as I did. This time, however, was different. I actually did something about it. I will start writing about my experience of weight loss here. Maybe it will inspire somebody else, or maybe my story will just provide a nice read. One thing is for sure: I’ve still got a long way to go. I started at 350lbs; I currently weigh around 310lbs; and I’m shooting for about 180lbs.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Continue reading “starting my weight loss adventure”