Food Prep Blues

Now I remember what I hated about my last diet: all the food prep.

Truth is, I love the food I'm eating. It's delicious and healthy. Not sure if I mentioned it already but the food plan I am following is basically taken (almost verbatim) from the The alli Diet Plan by Caroline Apovian. The menu planning was a tad tricky, but mostly because I am trying to synchronize my 1800 calorie per day plan with Susan's 1200 per day plan. The book makes this pretty simple since all the sample diet menus have 1200, 1500, and 1800 calorie versions - however there are differences between them which are sometimes big (like different foods for the same meal). Anyway I was able to rationalize the menus pretty easily by making some reasonable substitutions so that Susan and I are eating the same food (BTW we are also subjecting the kids to the same menu - so far, they're buying it!).

So like I said the food is great. Today's lineup was as follows:

Breakfast

• Two Eggo Nutrigrain Waffles with Lite syrup
• Dannon La Creme Yogurt
• A cup of OJ

Lunch

• Grilled Shrimp with Corn-Tomato salad (really tasty)
• Dinner roll
• 1/4 of a cantaloupe

Snack

• Jello fat-free pudding

Dinner

• Chicken Paprikash
• Egg noodles
• Peas

Dessert

• 2 Stella Doro Sponge cookies

All in all very satisfying. But here's the rub. I must've spent 2 hours on meal prep today. I am a father of six kids and run my own IT business. I don't have 2 hours per day to prep food. Who does?

Now I remember. I noticed this last time. I was totally hummin along with the diet, but it frustrated me that I needed to spend so much time thinking about food. In fact I think I am spending substantially more time thinking about food now than I did when I wasn't dieting. Between the menu planning, the shopping, the meal prep, etc. - sometimes it seems I am always thinking about food. Aren't I supposed to be moving away from obsessing about food?!?!

I guess I already know the answers. First off I guess if I do this long enough it will become the way I eat, so I won't have to think about it as much. Along the way, I'll need to find shortcuts that save me time. For example I can't be cooking lunch and dinner from scratch every day. No can do. I'll have to get smart about advanced prep e.g. making double portions and saving, repeating the same menu 2 or 3 days a week, etc.

Meanwhile I guess I have to slog through it. Oh well, at least I'm eating well.

p.s. big day tomorrow: the first official weigh-in since liftoff...