Meal Plans

I have people ask me all the time what I eat every day.  I know I post my meal plans, but some people are more visual – they need to actually SEE the food in order for it to make sense to them.  In order to better help those people, I took photos of everything I ate for an entire day.  I really do eat all day long!  I love that I don’t feel starved or deprived.  I also eat at restaurants, even though I work to plan meals and pack a cooler with snacks (or meals, even, depending upon the circumstances) so that I am prepared.

Anyway, this is what a typical day of eating looks like for me:

Every morning, before I really even have a chance to be awake, I squeeze half of a lemon into a tall class and fill it with warm water.  I down that before I consume anything else.  There are lots of reasons I do this:

•     To help cleanse and detoxify daily without going on some weird fad diet
• ·         To bolster my immunity with vitamin C
• ·         To kick-start my digestion for the day
• ·         To hydrate my body after 8 or so hours of sleep

I just cut a lemon in half and squeeze one half into the glass, and I put the other half in the refrigerator.  I just stick it in there; I don’t worry about a baggie or a container.  I’m just going to use the other half the next morning, anyway!

Next, within an hour of waking, I have breakfast.  I almost always have Shakeology.  I like to make mine with frozen fruit, and most of the time I use either organic skim milk or almond milk for a little extra protein.  I do this because especially during the school year, I need that extra protein to keep me full until my next snack!  I usually drink my Shakeology in the mornings while I am checking in with my challenge groups.

Morning snack:  In the morning I usually have fruit and some kind of protein, and today it was blackberries and string cheese.  I LOVE blackberries at the height of the season.  Yum!

Lunch:  I am a huge proponent of “intentional leftovers.”  I always make too much food at dinner so that I can eat leftovers the next day for lunch.  Today, I had leftover Clean(er) Shrim Scampi for lunch with a side salad.  This means that when I am prepping food for the week, I generally only prep snacks, and then after dinner when my husband and I are cleaning up, I pack my lunch for the next day.  It takes all of thirty seconds, and then I have a delicious and healthy lunch for the next day.

Afternoon snack:  Today, I had cottage cheese and tomatoes.  These tomatoes were homegrown (not by me!), sweet, and delicious!  I have found that having an afternoon snack prevents that feeling that I used to get every day around 1:30 in the afternoon – the feeling that I needed a nap!  This used to be the time of day when I really felt like I needed a diet soda.  I am proud to say that I don’t drink ANY kind of soda anymore!  Having a snack boosts my energy and gets me through the day without drinking chemical sludge.

Dinner:  I made Taco Casserole tonight for dinner.  This recipe is family-friendly and delicious!  Did I mention it is clean?  As usual, I intentionally made more than my husband and I will eat, and I will have this again for lunch tomorrow.  I always pair it with some sort of vegetable, and tonight it was green beans steamed with garlic and Bragg’s Liquid Aminos, which is a “clean” substitute for soy sauce.

Evening Snack:  This one is nitrate-free sliced ham (Boar’s Head from Schnucks is always a good one) and a plum.  The evening snack is a wild card:  some people don’t want or need it; some people move it around.  During the school year, I NEED this snack, but since I eat lunch at 11:00 AM, and most of the time I don’t eat dinner until 6:30 or 7:00 PM, I eat this snack BEFORE dinner.  Yes, that is correct.  I eat Breakfast-snack-lunch-snack-snack-dinner.  This gets me through the afternoon and to dinner without feeling like I could eat my own arm, and it keeps me from overeating or blowing my meal plan at dinner!  Dinner used to be the most difficult meal for me; I could eat healthily all day, but by dinner I was so hungry that I would make terrible choices and GORGE myself.  This wild-card snack really has made a difference for me.

I think when people think of eating healthy, clean eating, or going on a “diet”(ugh, I DISLIKE that word!), they think it has to be complicated; it doesn’t!  They think they need to make separate meals for themselves and their families; they don’t.  They think they need to skip meals or feel like they are starving all the time; PLEASE don’t! 

I learned all of this when I joined a challenge group.  Now, I get to pay forward this knowledge by teaching it to others!  If you want to learn how to make meal plans that are SIMPLE and DOABLE for you and your family, join a challenge group!  I have a new 60 day group beginning every month!  For more information or to be considered for my next group, please fill out the challenge group application below.

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