Excused

Due to some extremely hectic life events lately, I excused myself from blogging for a bit. I also excused myself from eating healthy. I excused myself a bit too much and now I can no longer find a good excuse, despite the busy and hectic times lately. Oh well! I don't want to be chubby AND busy... just busy!

So as I zipped along on the train this morning I planned out my week and shopping list as well as a few go-to meals when I don't have time to pack or just want to go out for lunch with friends.

Here is my meal plan for the week (I hope this helps others to see that sticking to a healthy eating plan does NOT mean that you have to eat a bunch of boring salads!):

Breakfast:

• Oat Bran or Bob's Red Mill 10 grain breakfast with fruit (bananas or berries) OR
• Eggs and 1/2 avocado
• Water or tea

Lunch:

• Curry chicken salad (baked chicken, red grapes, and cucomber, ff mayo with curry powder-mix that first before mixing in the rest!)- A CYE recipe!
• Naan (1 piece is about 3 WPA- so I probably won't have a piece every day)
• Diet pop/diet juice/water to drink

Dinner:

• Mediterranean pasta salad (ff feta, whole wheat pasta, 2 t. oil, 2 T. balsamic vinegar, cucumber and red cabbage)- CYE again! and/or
• Vegetable soup (slightly adapted from 0 pt. soup- Weight W*tchers) and/or
• Salad w/ chicken, apples, grapes, and Lemon Basil Dressing or German Salad Dressing- I just realized how great it is to make your own dressing recently and here at Kitchen Parade's campaign to end store-bought dressings are a bunch of great recipes that are definitely CYE.
• This week dinner will encompass both my 0-2 (2 t. daily oils) and my PPS (pasta/potato/starch)

Snacks:

• 94% ff popcorn
• Fruit
• Veg
• FF Fage yogurt w/ honey (1 WPA per T honey)

There is obviously enough flexibility in this that even if you were cooking for your family every night you could switch up dinner and lunch and have left overs and different options. I like options, but I also like a plan, so this works well for me.

I enjoy coming home to a fridge stocked with food I can EAT TO LOSE weight! What a concept!

As you can see, I am down with the CYE dishes, and find it hard to make an excuse when it really is cheaper, yummier AND easier to make your own and tote it along than to spend a bunch of money on something that is not totally on Core! Then you are left trying to guess what parts are on Core, what parts are not on Core, and what points you have to count. Definitely not something I want to do everyday. I can bring a lunch most days and join my friends in the lounge or lobby and get the same effect as going out. Sometimes I like going out though, so here are a few options I pre-selected:

• Chipotle- Green salad, beans, fajita veggies, tomato salsa, corn salsa and guacamole- all on Core! Very little oil, but if I eat this I won't be eating any more oil that day without counting some WPA's
• Local chicken grill place- Salad w/ grilled chicken and green tomatillo salsa

I am also thinking of doing 8 Minute Abs- does anyone have any experience positive or negative about it?