When you’re just going to eat whatever you feel like, planning a menu and shopping in advance aren’t quite as important. I’ve always had an ability to look in the fridge and cupboard and figure out something I can throw together for a tasty meal. But when you’re planning to live the low carb lifestyle for a few weeks in a house with people who aren’t, the planning gets more complicated.
Even when you’re single or cooking for one, menu planning is actually a really good idea. That’s why many diets provide not just recipes, but day-by-day menus. The time many of us fall off the diet wagon is when we are standing in front of the fridge, hungry, and trying to decide what looks good, or when we’re tired and just want to hit the drive-thru or call the pizza guy. If you plan chili dogs for Wednesday and make the chili in advance, then come Wednesday night, it’s 5 minutes to warm the chili and the dogs, toast buns for the non-dieting household members, and get dinner on the table.
Yes, it does require some advance planning and some advance cooking, and yes that means doing more work and the diet’s less easy. But it’s been taking the path of least resistance that got me here. No diet is going to provide lasting results unless I make some changes in my lifestyle. And one of those changes is planning ahead more and cooking ahead more so I don’t fall prey to convenience foods… like Al’s breakfast burritos in the Building 50 cafeteria at Microsoft. Al, much love to ya, brother, but when I’ve been on contract in Building 50, those burritos have been deadly to my waistline.
So, I’m planning out the first week. I need to plan 6 dinners, 7 breakfasts, and 7 lunches. The 7th dinner is the Tuesday night ritual I started with my oldest boy, which is to go to “the peanut restaurant,” a place where they give you a bucket of peanuts in the shell when you’re seated and you can throw the shells on the floor. Luckily it’s a very meat oriented joint.
Since Safeway’s got London Broil on special and it’s low fat enough for South Beach, we’ll do a curry. This is the one “I don’t have to worry about sharing this” recipe that I can do as hot as I like.
In fact, soups and stews are easy ways to fill up, so I’m also going to do a tomatillo chili. That will be mild. That I can serve straight, letting the wife and boy add crackers or bread while I eat it straight or use lettuce leaves and bell pepper sections to scoop it. Later in the week I can serve chili dogs and just go bunless while the wife and boy don’t.
If you look at a lot of the proposed diet plans, there’s not a lot of repetition, but it also means there’s not a lot of quick reheating and there’s a lot more prep time. I plan to get two dinners and a lunch out of my chili, a couple of breakfasts and a lunch out of my curry (yes, I like curry for breakfast). I also plan to get some lunches out of dinner leftovers.
One dinner is going to be tuna salad sandwiches for the wife and boy. I’ll eat the tuna salad piled into some celery ribs. I’ll also have that as a lunch.
Another dinner will be chicken breast, cut in bite size cubes and browned, then simmered in a sour cream enchilada sauce made with sour cream, some chicken broth, garlic, spices, onion, and frozen chopped spinach. The wife and boy will get some tortilla chips for scooping while I’ll use lettuce and/or peppers.
The last two dinners will be a Pesto chicken (still need to decide on the side veggie) and a chicken stir fry (over rice for the family, but straight up for me).
I like to let the ingredients speak to me as I walk through the store, but I also need to have an idea of what I’m going to eat so I make sure I have the things I need on hand. One of the easiest ways to rationalize myself off a diet is to have nothing I can eat in the house, then I don’t want to go out, then I fall prey to a convenience item. Planning my menu in advance means I’ll always have the food or fixin’s I need to ensure I can stick to it.
As I move from the early, super-low-carb phase into the more rational phase, I can play things a bit more fast and loose. But for the first few weeks, menu planning is going to really help me stick with it.
Anyway, no recipes yet, but I’ll record the recipes I create, and if one sings, I’ll publish it.
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