“What do you mean you don’t eat no meat?!” No offense to the head of curls vegetarian in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but I love me some meat…and there isn’t a day in the foreseeable future where our household will be sacrificing the world’s biggest point of protein contention: red meat. (medium rare, of course, the way God intended it)
Before I make my point here (and I will make a point before the end)…just so my Beachbody friends don’t come at me with pitchforks a-blazing before reading to the end, I’m not knocking you. I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again–everyone needs to find what works for them and what works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another. And that’s okay. I have supported BB economy through a coach and love some of the workouts. CIZE and PiYo are my faves. The nutrition side of things just isn’t for me, but it works for others–and for that fact alone, rock on with your tribes. I think what you do is awesome.
I saw the movie Bad Moms this last week, and once you get past the language and crude jokes, the underlying theme is pretty spot on. It was pretty stinkin’ hilarious, I’m so glad I went. I don’t often go out to the movies anyway, but I wasn’t going to pass a chance to go and hang out with some great women. Underlying theme–we’re all doing the best we can with what we’ve got. We do the best we can for our families based on a lot of different factors–our finances, our world view, our geographic location, our profession, our schedule, our values, our faith…I could go on all day long. We do the same thing for our health and well being.
When you look at health and wellness, you’ve got the people that are all sparkly and perfect and just seem to “get” it. Their weight loss or whatever they seek is a perfect trend in the correct direction and they have little bluebirds that groom them every morning and people randomly burst into song about how wonderful they are as they walk down the street. Then there are those of us that walk down the street and people wonder how we tied our shoes that morning. Even the pretty and sparkly have their hidden secrets…those things that they struggle with too. We all just fumble around, find what works, find what doesn’t, try something else, and keep on moving.
It’s been several weeks since I’ve been able to take a breath and write…lots have gone on, but I’m happy they will be slowing down soon too. Also in big news, 28 days until half marathon (commence hyper ventilating). Lots of things will be taken off my plate in the coming weeks and I’m very grateful for that, even though we’re ramping up for our busiest season professionally, that doesn’t make me bat an eye anymore–I welcome that excitedly. The great mystery of the weight loss plateau has been solved and the scale is moving in the right direction again. I was posting Facebook updates at every five pounds, but when you’ve lost over 100, I think you’ve started to saturate the market on self importance…I think I’m going to just post larger milestones there. Running posts, however, no limits there, LOL. So, for what it’s worth, I’m 120lbs down now. My doctor is a great and mighty genius…I actually doubted her because it didn’t make sense to me and I couldn’t find independent research to back her up, but based on her advice and desperation after over 3 months of no progress, I felt better within 24 hours, had resumed weight loss within 72 hours, have steadily continued creeping down on the scale since, and the specialist she sent me to echoed her words, was able show me medical backup from multiple credible sources, and explain to me some very eye opening things. Never underestimate God’s creation, and how incredibly amazing how everything in our bodies work together and communicate…and the consequence of sin, you never know the full weight of your poor decisions made without faith.
So one thing that fitness and wellness gurus always seem to tout is meal prep. Not my bag of chips. My husband and I eat varied diets–we also eat very differently. My husband is diabetic, I am not. He eats a high protein diet. I eat a more balanced carb/protein/fat ratio diet based on calorie intake varied only slightly on exertion (I don’t eat calorie burn, but on a long run day if I’m running 2+ hours, yeah, I’m eating a minimum of 200 additional calories of whatever the heck I please). I like to call my diet the toddler diet because I snack all day long. I eat a small breakfast (because I hate breakfast, my stomach hates consuming food first thing in the morning)–usually just coffee and cereal/almond milk, graze on small portion-controlled snacks through the day (yogurt, cheese, fiber bars/snacks, kind bars, hummus/veggies, fruit, etc) unless I have a lunch date or meeting, and dinner (a serving of a carb, a 4oz protein, and a boatload of veg), evening snack. My husband is the protein king. He can eat a two pound steak. Does he do that every day? No. If we have steak (and we eat red meat once a week), we usually split a 12oz steak at home and he gets 2/3. We also eat chicken, turkey, pork, and ground beef. Bob will eat fish and lamb, I’ll eat tofu and other meat substitutes. We’re not fans of ground turkey/chicken or turkey bacon…they aren’t the same, we’d rather just have the real thing. We eat out once a week as a couple to treat ourselves. Everything in moderation.
Everyone meal preps in different ways. Just like there isn’t one way to lose weight or get healthy–there isn’t one way to meal plan. It’s what works for you, and it likely will change over time. Experiment with what works for you. For me, it’s not about the time–it’s about the pennies. When we first started eating well, we found it was easiest to shop every day because we were experimenting with what we liked. Now that we know, it’s easier to shop in bulk. We shop mostly once a week (I still have to stop for produce occasionally twice) and then warehouse shopping when we are in larger cities every few months. Several years ago, we stopped eating out completely for months and took that savings to buy a deep freeze–we buy our meat in bulk and break in down into portioned freezer packs for us. Yeah, it’s sticker shock at the register when you buy 4-6 months worth of meat and people look at you funny when you’re loading a car full of coolers (because you have to drive the meat three hours home and keep it safely cold) and spend the time breaking it down…but it’s worth it. I’ll talk more another time about eating healthy and the most bang for your buck. It really isn’t rocket science.
I’m going to include some pictures of our fridge, freezers, and pantry here (no judging!)…and this is where we go back to Bad Moms…we all do what works best for us. With this week’s schedule and the meals I’ve got planned, the fresh produce is kind of light and we’ve got a lot of frozen veg on the schedule. We stock processed snacks (gasp!), but we also eat a lot of fresh stuff too. Some things (like my weekday toddler snacking) I do buy prepackaged foods because they’re easier (cost vs. benefit). And the freezers, that’s fully stocked as of today for meat–that’s the next six months!
Find what works, plan on, and be healthy! And if you find those grooming bluebirds, can you send them my way to do my hair?
Heart and Sole Fitness & Wellness 