Meal Planning

Does anyone else ever get home at night and have absolutely no clue what to make for dinner no matter how much wonderful food you have in the house? This is me and the boyfriend every single night. And lately that has left us eating out, ordering pizza, and making things that aren't even worth eating. Now don't get me wrong, we can both cook. We actually both make most things we try out pretty well. I guess our biggest fault is that we're not very creative. We're not really "throw things in a pan and see what happens" kind of people. I do this some times and it usually turns out but I'm not too confident in my abilities.

This leads me to thinking that we need to start meal planning. And shopping every week because half of our food goes bad before we even have the chance to use it. We would waste much less food this way. The problem is that I don't know where to start. I've tried in the past, but I just haven't succeeded. I even have a whiteboard next to my kitchen with the days drawn out and everything. That's as far as I ever got. I think I wrote one single dinner on there and we didn't even make it that night.

I think if we could print out recipes for two week and rotate those it would work out well. We usually eat our favorite recipes that often anyway, so I don't think that we would get sick of things too quickly this way. Maybe we could even come up with a whole month's worth of dinners one week at a time. This way P will always know what to get ready.

I also think this will help if my calories are all planned out for me every single day. I find when I don't have any type of plan I make dinner and still have hundreds of calories left after dinner. Then I spend the evenings eating everything in sight and ruin my whole day. P doesn't eat very well either. He is a former fat kid and has some bad habits just like me. Sometimes he won't eat unless he is eating with me at dinner time. I think this happens more often than not. If we had everything planned out we would both be healthier.

Now let me just share with you that last year I got gym and health crazy and was down to about 190 pounds. Then my whole entire world came crashing down on me. My sister passed away and a month later to the day my grandpa passed away. This was the hardest time of my entire life. And then just a month or two later I decided to buy a house. I never knew just how stressful that could be. And I can honestly say that I am still not healed from this. My vocal physical therapist is trying to talk me into seeing a counselor and I just might take her up on that.

I need to get back to where I was last year. I need to cook myself and the boyfriend meals and be as healthy as we can be so that we can live a long and healthy life together.

Now for some painful reminders of why I should get healthy fun: Here are some pictures from last year at about 190 and from now... At ___... I don't even know because I haven't weighed myself for a month or so.

 I was honestly feeling absolutely amazing at this time. Probably March 2011.

 Again, feeling and looking phenomenal. May 2011.

 This was also probably March 2011.

 This is today, April 7, 2012. I think I'm wearing the same shirt in one of the other pictures.

 I think this was in February 2012. I love sock monkeys.

And this is March 2012 before I fell off my latest attempt at healthy living.

Do you meal plan? Do you use any type of program, spreadsheet, etc?