Meal Prep for the Week!

Well, my friends... As requested, here is a little look in to my "meal prep" for this week.

I ALWAYS meal plan, shop accordingly, and prep the fresh vegetables that I bring home every week. For me, it's not only a way of keeping track of my food, but I find that grocery shopping according to a meal schedule is MUCH cheaper and easier.

I keep my list of meals in my phone, so it is easily accessible for me to track. I keep the list and just change the meals out from week to week. Before I go grocery shopping, I take a glance at what I have in my freezer, fridge, and cabinets, then I write out meals for the week. After I write them up, I go over the list and make a grocery list of things I will need to complete each meal (I find that I usually don't need a ton, which is where this is cheaper).
PS-- Sorry the list only goes to Thursday, my phone wouldn't let me screen shot the whole week, but I do plan for Friday! Usually it's our "pizza" day.

This past weekend, my fiance and I were talking about food for the week and he suggested that I "get our stuff for lunches" together to save me some time. That made me think that, yes, I DO meal prep, but could I do more and give myself even MORE time during the evenings. If you know me, you know that time is a bit scarce in my life these days (f/t school and work). Anything I can do to give myself more time is a plus in my book! :)

SO off I went to the grocery store and bought everything I would need to get my week together!

I came home and first worked on my lunches.

I made up 3 of my cottage cheese bowls. I explained how I make them in this post. I also made up the fixings for 2 english muffin pizzas (to give myself a little variety). I put together some snack bags that have a rice cake and almond butter packet to eat as my morning snack.

Next I put my breakfasts together. I have a protein shake every morning, so I made up enough protein packs for the week.

I have a variety of shakes that I make. For this week, I made a couple "Fake Dole Whip" shakes, a strawberry cake batter shake, and 2 espresso shakes.

"Fake Dole Whip" shake
1/2c. Frozen Pineapple
1/2 Frozen banana
1/3 c. frozen spinach (not for flavor, I am trying to add iron to my daily diet)
1 scoop vanilla protein powder
1 c. coconut milk

Mix in blender until "shake" consistency.


Once I finished up everything for my week, I made up The Engineer's lunches (he's pretty easy and predictable.. sammie, fruit, and veggie...EVERY. DAY). And he LOVES it! Me? I need variety! 

I didn't need to do a TON of dinner prep because I actually had a lot already made, but I did some.

Tonight's dinner- Italian Beef sandwiches. This is a roast in my crock pot with a can of crushed tomatoes, salt, pepper, italian seasoning, and a packet of onion soup. I prepped it yesterday and today it cooked all day on low (about 9-10 hours). We came home to a delicious smelling house and all we had to do was quickly use two forks to shred the beef, pull out the buns, and plate our food! Easy!

This is a bag of oven roasted, organic chicken breasts that I chopped up for our burritos this week.

The last thing I "prepped" was some butternut squash to use as a side dish this week. I had a hard time putting this baby in the fridge... Smelled SO good!

I will leave you all with a picture of my fridge after I prepped and finally put everything away. The funny thing is, I got home from work today and realized I literally had my whole evening to devote to school work. Nothing else to do! It was AWESOME! I full plan on continuing to prep like this every Sunday.

Have a great evening!  I will let you all know how the rest of the week went!

What I Ate Wednesday!

I haven't shared much of what I have been eating lately, so this post is going to focus mostly on my eats from today.

Breakfast

I have had the biggest loveeeeeee of any and all nut butters lately. While grocery shopping this past week, I saw that individual packets of Justin's were on sale 4 for $5. Not a huge difference, but enough for me to buy a few flavors I haven't tried yet. This morning, I tried the Justin's Vanilla Almond Butter on 2 whole grain waffles. I can say out of all the butters I have tried, this one was not my favorite. It was good, but I am not a huge vanilla fan. It almost tasted like coconut. I prefer the Justin's Maple or Honey Almond Butter.

Lunch 

Looks a little gross, but I swear it is HEAVENLY! I found a recipe for a ricotta bowl on a fellow gastric bypass patient's Instagram account. I took her awesome idea and modified it to my personal tastes. Yummo and full of protein!

Cottage Cheese Bowl

1/4 c. fat free cottage cheese
2 TBS gravy (I use Heinz Pork gravy)
1 TBS grated Parmesan cheese
3 Morning Star Chx Nuggets

Mix first three ingredients in bowl. Bake nuggets night before (when you microwave them, they get gummy). When ready to eat, microwave bowl for 1 minute then stir in chopped up chicken nuggets. Enjoy! SO SO good!

212 calories
18 grams protein

Snack

 
 I was feeling muchy after work and planned on making honey mustard salmon for dinner, so I snacked on a handful of Smartpop. Ok, two handfuls... Don't judge me. lol

So after all of my "dental drama" from last week, I thought I was finally done and just waiting for my crown appointment on the 24th. WRONG! I finished up my antibiotic on Monday and was feeling great, but all of a sudden, woke up with mouth pain again today. I tried ignoring it, but then had a fever and chills by this afternoon and got a little worried. (If you didn't know, the infection had already spread to my jaw bone, which makes it pretty serious.) I called my dentist and he asked me to come in this evening because he wanted to take more x-rays. I decided to eat a mug of cereal in case he decided to numb me up (I totally can't chew at all when I am numb, so dinner would be a no-go). Well, went to the dentist, got x-rays, and found out not only did the infection spread even further down my jaw (while I was on some seriously strong antibiotics), but it had already started eating away at the bottom of my tooth...For realz!????? Come on dude! SO over this dentist thing! Needless to say, my dentist is very concerned and now referring me to an oral surgeon... :(

Dinner 

When I finally got home from the dentist office, I was a bit hungry again (probably due to the lack of protein in my pre-appt choice of cereal). I decided to make a low carb, low fat, cheese quesadilla. Tasted so yummy! Now I am stuffed and ready for bed.

Hopefully I can get all of this dental crap out of the way soon. It's been making me feel so yucky lately. I just don't have it in me to go to the gym. Maybe I can get myself to do some Wii Zumba tomorrow. That always cheers me up!

Good night! Only 2 more "wake-ups" till the weekend!
 
 

A Very Bold and Terrifying Move..

So it has been forever since I have even logged in to my blog to check stats and such.. Wow.. Time flies when you're going to school and working full time. Ugh!

This semester has been nothing short of a living hell and I can't wait for it to be over in May. I feel like it has been sucking the life out of me. I have also been seriously slacking on exercise, which is terrible because I have my first 5k in June.

I am SUPER excited, but really need to start training again.

If you follow me outside of the blog via Instagram or Facebook, you would have already picked up on the fact that I have been experiencing some MAJOR dental issues this past week. If there is anything I absolutely hate about having a gastric bypass, it is that we cannot take Ibuprofen or any other NSAIDS post op. NSAIDS eat away at your stomach lining and when you have a teenie, tiny tummy... No good!

This leaves us with Tylenol (acetaminophen) or narcotics. I ended up leaving work early twice last week because the pain was THAT bad and Tylenol just wasn't kicking it. It was miserable. At one point, last Tuesday, the pain was so bad that even my prescription wasn't touching it. Thankfully, I was put on a second antibiotic that seems to be healing it up. My mouth still hurts after I eat, but it isn't a constant throb like last week. Man, do I miss Ibuprofen. In my opinion, it works even better than the hard stuff without the loopy feeling. I got so desperate at one point last week that I DID take an ibuprofen (against the many warnings from my fiance) and ended up with a mouth that felt better and a terrible stomach ache.. womp womp! #liveandlearn

WEIGHT LOSS 

**IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE MY STOMACH WITH EXCESS SKIN, STOP READING NOW**

Anyway... A little update on the weight loss and my eats lately (there isn't much in the way of exercise to talk about). So after battling with 3 pounds for what seemed like FOREVER, I finally hit my first big goal of having lost 100lbs from my highest weight. Yay!! I still have about 70+ lbs to go, so I can't party too much yet, but The Engineer did restock my closet with new clothes that actually fit me. Thanks, Boo Boo! You're the best! 

So now is the point where I get very brave. I am truly nervous about this and have debated over and over about the pic I am about to share. I have *officially* lost 103.7 lbs and have only done it with the inspiration I continually get from others who have done the same thing. I am always curious about what people's bodies look like post major weight loss, so I am going to share a side view of my abdomen. I notice a difference, you may or may not. All I ask is for kindness, please. This is very, very hard for me, but since I love seeing other people's pictures, I am sure some of you are interested in what a stomach looks like after having lost 100+ lbs. It is very clear in the pic that I still have fat to lose, but unfortunately a lot of what you see is pure skin that I can pull out inches in front of my body. 

In all of the contemplating I did over whether to post this picture or not, it occurred to me how much I am worrying about offending people, yet if I were a skinny mini in a bikini, it would be nothing. Funny how we think of over weight people in society these days. At any rate, there it is.. My body. My greatest enemy. My project.
                                                                         FOOD

Since  I haven't been blogging lately, I have been skimping on meal pics (other than what I post on Instagram). While making my lunch for tomorrow, I snapped a pic because it is an epic salad. I have been eating all mushy food lately because of my tooth. It will be nice to have some crunchy, fresh greens back in my diet.

I picked up a rotisserie chicken at the super market today and used some of it for this salad. It consists of romaine lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, parm cheese, and a very ripe avocado. Can't wait to pour some balsamic on this baby tomorrow!

Have a great evening and Happy St. Patrick's Day to all of the Irish and "Irish" out there!