My Top Obstacles to Weight Loss and How I Overcome Them: Obstacle #2

Obstacle #2: Not being prepared for meals

Let’s face it.  When we are not prepared for meals, whether breakfast, lunch or dinner, we do the next easiest thing: we either unwrap some pre-cooked high fat meal for us and our kids OR we order in something just as bad or worse, OR we finish off the kids’ lunch OR we rifle through the cabinets in search of some high-carb treat that will satisfy our cravings!  The options are endless and completely anti-weight-loss.  Patterns like this threaten to carry us into the next ten years with an extra 20 pounds!  Yikes!

Not being prepared for a week of meals for ourselves or our families can sabotage our weight loss efforts.  As a busy mom, there will always be way too much going on for us to just spontaneously choose the healthiest alternative UNLESS we are prepared.

My solution to the obstacle of unpreparedness:

I really like the magazine “Real Simple” and when they started a new television program “Real Simple: Real Life” I was so excited!  So far they have suggested one idea that I have been able to implement immediately and see a significant improvement in my everyday life.  In this particular episode they were helping a working mother of three boys to plan ahead her meals for each week so that grocery shopping and fixing dinner could be a lot less crazy, haphazard, hectic and high-fat.

They bought her a white board with the days of the week on it to mount the fridge with her weekly menu.  All she had to do was spend a couple minutes each week planning what her weekly dinner menu would be for the family.  Then, she based her grocery shopping on that menu for the week.

I bought a similar white board at Target and took the concept to the next level.  On the other side of the weekly dinner menu I jotted down what my lunches would be so that I could include those items on my grocery list.  I also incorporated my coupons so that my pre-planned grocery list assisted my weight-loss goals and my budget. (If you need any help finding money-saving tips, my friend Jenn has an excellent blog that will give you DAILY deals – go to Deal-licious.com!)

This has worked out great!  It is so simple and basic but for the past four weeks there have not been anymore statements like, “Well, honey, I didn’t have any plans or ideas yet for dinner so why don’t we…..” fill in the blank: “order something fattening”, or “go out for something greasy”, or “pick up something over-priced and unhealthy”.

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Tagged as: ahead, family, food, loss, meals, obstacles, overcoming, plan, postpartum, weight