How do you plan your menu's?

[Scooterjam]

Hello friends,

Since I've restarted induction, doing lots of prep and cooking and such. But I really have had a difficult time planning menu's. I'm usually a fly by the seat of my pants kinda guy, get home, cook, eat, yada yada . But I'm noticing that I'm spending alot of extra time in the kitchen, (I'm the only one in the house who eats this way, my son is a vegetarian who hates vegetables...'don't ask') and was wondering how you all plan your meals. Do you do it by day to day, or do you try and plan week to week. Believe me, I'm jones'n for summer time to get my smoker goin' to smoke all kinds of meat, I love that thing. Recipes are never an issue, with this site, and all the lo carb cook books and ebooks I have. It's just finding the time to do it!

Anyway....how do you plan your menu's? Thanks for your help!

[frenchfri38]

my main meal is dinner...and that is usually planned out in my head before i get home from work..Lunch is always what i make for dinner...and breakfast is gonna be eggs........ so really the only thought that goes into my cooking is dinner..and i plan day by day...

[julirama723]

I'm usually plan a day's worth at a time. My breakfast is usually the same (on induction and during the lower rungs, I'd eat an omelette everyday, now I eat cottage cheese with berries and almonds everyday) so I always am sure to have enough ingredients to assemble it, and I can make it without much thought. My lunch varies. I will pick one "finger-food" veggie (bell pepper, cauliflower, jicama, celery), one protein (chicken, turkey, homemade beef jerky) a piece of cheese, and some extra fat, like dressing for veggies, or pepperoni. I almost always have a can of almonds in my desk for a snack, and sometimes I'll bring an extra piece of cheese, too. My lunch is VERY simple, very much a lunch that needs no utensils. I just eat it out of little sandwich baggies, as I don't have much time and eat my lunch when I can.

Believe it or not, I rarely plan dinner ahead of time. Sometime's I'll know in the morning what we're having for dinner later, but not usually. Once I know what we're having for dinner, I log on to fitday and enter in amounts and shimmy things around to get my percentages correct for the foods I'm about to eat. Yesterday, I knew I had to eat some butternut squash for dinner (or else it would go bad) so I sort of cut back on my other foods in anticipation of those 12 carbs.

I just try to plug my foods into fitday BEFORE I eat them, so I can alter serving sizes if necessary. I am not a person who forces myself to eat certain foods; I eat the foods I WANT to eat, but will adjust portion sizes as needed. I DO always make sure to eat my veggies everyday (usually at least 4 servings), that's the one thing I'm adamant about!

[PigsInSpace]

It took awhile for me to settle into a routine on how to plan what I eat. Maybe 2 years. So it's good that you actually are being forward thinking with it now--so good question!

I am lucky in that my boyfriend and I love the same foods, both low carb, both love to cook! We plan week by week. I find it easier BY FAR than doing it day by day. I don't like to wake up everyday having to think about what I'm going to eat, and then on top of my work day, go out and buy it at the store then come home and cook it. I'm lazy like that!

I owe every pound of success I've enjoyed to making sure that I have food options on hand at all times. The second I come home and nothing's prepared, I'm thinking it's pizza time, just like back in the old days. Then I get frustrated and start fighting craving. HATE THAT. I avoid it well by having a well stocked fridge.

So we *usually* head out on Sunday and buy a week's worth of food and come home, spend a couple hours in the kitchen. You simply must invest in plenty of tupperware of all different shapes and sizes. It's cheap at places like Family Dollar or the Dollar Store.

We come home, turn on some music and prepare ahead rotating "staples". Things like taco meat, spagetti squash, jicama slices, cubed gouda and almond ziplocs (although you have to seperate the cheese in a seperate ziploc or else they get the almonds all soggy and absorb their salt--not yummy), a batch of our practically zero carb home made cinnamon ice cream and dole that out into little single serving tupperwares, salami slices, bake some jalapeno and cream cheese poppers (AWESOME), maybe some hamburger patties. It varies but those are sort of our staples at the moment.

Having these things on hand helps immensely with staying on plan for us. It also frees up our time so that we can experiment with other recipes, knowing we have a fridge full of ready food.

it's kind of like back in the day before our WOE, there were always staples. PB and J sandwiches, chips, the bad stuff like that. We just replace it with legal homemade stuff. Being that there are two of us, I admit it may be harder for one person to accomplish all that prepping. So I'd say just do what you can little by little on the weekends and get ready for the week. Maybe bake a squash--those are great because one squash makes a lot of servings and there are so many yummy things you can do with it.

Just kind of figure out what works for your schedule.

Oh--and my ten year old son, although much better these days, isn't good with veggies either. Years ago I watched this man at work eat a bowl of broccoli and spinach and cauliflower at work. I mentioned that I didn't much like veggies and couldn't just eat a bowl like that. He said, "Felicia, let me introduce you to a friend of mine...his name is Colon Cancer." BAM, that hit me like a ton of bricks. I told that to my son that and that really jumpstarted him into trying vegetables. Now he happily eats all sorts of stuff and sort of talks down if there aren't enough veggie options. haha, funny how the tables turn.

[killerbombshell]

Not much to add here. I prepare a ton of stuff at a time--that includes a giant bowl of salad, chopped up veggies, bacon, scrambled eggs and sausage, bake anywhere from 5-7 chicken breasts or brown ground beef and will portion out "trouble" foods (cheese to exactly 1 oz, peanut butter, etc). From there I'm able to combine easily depending on what I'm hungry for. Bacon can be for breakfast or wrapped up in lettuce wraps for lunch. Chicken can be in a broccoli-chicken salad for dinner or chopped up and thrown in with eggs and cheese for a psuedo omelette. I like to keep it simple--too much cooking and I end up losing track of the carbs in a recipe or finding something I like too much.

[tkdhabidah]

The only 2 major things that I do when I plan meals is...

1. Bake a weeks worth of chicken breast for on the go meals, so I can just grab them for lunch or breakfast and run...I also use them in salads.

2. Portion Salads. I love spinach salad, and like to buy enough for the week, then put it in gladware in individual portions.

[speedyturtle]

Thank you that helps me a lot too.
I will try cooking ahead this weekend
Had Pizza tops last night because there was nothing fixed ahead of time
It was really good so was probably a big no no. Will drink lots of water today and get back on track.

Faster than a speeding Chocolate (most of the time)
Speedyturtle

[Lamby-pie]

I'm not much of a cook either, nor do I really plan ahead what I'm going to eat.
Breakfast & lunch are usually the same, a cup of V-8 in the morning as I'm never hungry, some pumpkin w/ cinnamon & splenda for lunch.
After work, a dairy snack or hard cheese, cottage cheese, or a splenda dove bar.
Dinner, whatever meat is in the fridge that I want to eat before it goes bad. I eat a lot of steak, chicken, lamb, hamburger patties, and sausage. If I run out of fresh meat, canned salmon in the pantry. Along with an easy veggie. No elaborate recipes, just cook & eat.

[Noor]

I am planning mine a week at a time (hard copy)! That way I think "what for dinner, lunch, snk?" this ONCE a week.