One of the keys to not only losing the weight, but keeping it off was changing my lifestyle habits over these past 10 years.  After my morning coffee, water is pretty much the only liquid I drink all day.  That’s how I get at least 64 ounces in, and that is also how I keep some “head hunger” at bay, and that is how I feed my body what it needs to carry the nutrients to all of my cells and regenerate them and keep my skin, hair, nails looking good, all my systems “go” and me feeling good.  Fitness is the other piece.  It is what I do every day, even when I don’t feel “up to it”, I have found over the past 10 years that I am typically responding to some sort of emotional situation and I will get my “happy drug” and organize my thoughts and rebalance and refocus after at least 30 minutes of fitness.  I crave it now.

Both the water and the fitness take planning.  I needed to schedule these into my day and create the habitual behaviors that keep them going.  I did this.  I’ve been pretty good at this for the past 10 years and these have definitely helped me get off an keep off the majority of the 250 pounds that I have lost.

The greatest challenge has always been the food challenge for me.  THIS, what I eat, has been the one that has kept my creative juices flowing, my eyes open, and my cooking and prepping skills honed to fine edge.  PLANNING is my savior.  That means planning my grocery adventures, at the same time being open to looking for new and exciting finds.  That means planning my meals by creating new twists on old standards and creating my new, “who’da thunk those things go together” standards.  I have been on the road the past 2 weekends, and prepping for not only taking our

WLS SUCCESS MATTERS to the ObesityHelp 2014 Convention, but also for taking our SUCCESS HABITS WORKSHOP to Riverside Community Hospital and then turning around and 2 days later presenting to a WLS patient support group at The Khalili Center in Beverly Hills.  These are just the road trips all over greater Los Angeles and don’t include the rest of life.  It’s true, we all find our lives extremely busy and what happens if we quit paying attention to ourselves and our weight loss surgery tools?  For me that means grabbing food on the go which can be a dangerous experience.  How do I deal with it?  I PLAN...  Maybe I overdo it, but I don’t think so because it’s working and in my opinion THAT is what counts…whatever works for YOU.

So this is how I do it on Sunday mornings to prep for breakfasts, lunches and possibly even an “emergency” quick dinner for my husband and I.

Sundays begins with a cup of coffee and the local Sunday newspaper.  Yup, I read the comics and cut the coupons first…Coupon advice - ONLY cut what you actually use or what will fit into your food plan... so, not the potato chips or the cookies or candy bars just because they’re obviously a “good deal”.  Good deals are what fuel my body and taste good, not necessarily what is on sale.  I have been known to grab my phone or my kindle to do a little bit of research on the calories and protein in a new item that looks interesting.  If I don’t do that, I take the coupon with me to the store and read the label carefully.  If it fits into my food plan (that means at least 1 gram of protein for every 10 calories) I’ll try it if I like the rest of the ingredients. 

I’ve finished my first cup of coffee and am awake enough to start.  This morning that was at 8:30 after sitting with the newspaper (and a second cup of coffee for about 1 ½ hours - a luxury for me).  I opened the refrigerator and thought about breakfast for the week and lunch…What was in there that needed using.  I had both eggs and some egg substitute that had been opened, some sliced ham that needed to be used, feta cheese with a date at the end of September, baby spinach who’s freshness might be questionable come Monday, sweet mini bell peppers, celery and I always have my refrigerator stocked with the yogurt based salad dressing that I am currently fond of.  I began with my “egg frittata of the week” It had baby spinach, eggs, egg whites, and the rest of the egg substitute along with the baby spinach, some of the crumbled feta, ham and finished with some of Trader Joe’s lite shredded mozzarella cheese.  Into my “sprayed” 13x9x2 pan and into the 350 degree oven while I worked on lunch next.

Went out to my pantry to see what kind of “salad” this week was going ot be.  Tuna was there, so tuna it is.  What’s this week’s twist on Sandi’s tuna salad?  I used my Salsa Ranch and Mango Chipolte salad dressing together in place of the mayonnaise with 4 cans of well drained and lightly rinsed tuna, along with chopped celery and chopped mini sweet bell peppers.  It works…And it’s a new taste treat that made 8 servings that will hold in the refrigerator all week. 

End results, at 9:26AM, less than 1 hour after I began, I had breakfast for 8 and lunch for 8 made for the week.  What does that mean for me in my busy life?  It means that when I am hungry for a meal during the day I don’t have to think about it.  All I have to do is go into the kitchen and get it.  I heat the eggs in the microwave for about 30 seconds or so, the tuna can be “as is” from the frig, stuffed into a tomato, tossed over some fresh baby spinach, scooped up in ½ of a mini sweet pepper.  My husband makes wraps with the tuna using low carb tortillas.  I often just grab a pickle spear to have some “side crunch” and I am good to go.  If I have to run out of the house to get somewhere I have my plan B.  I always have a Quest bar and an individual package of jerky in my purse and 2 bottles of water in my car.  My frig has yogurts that are 80 calories/12 grams protein for a quick meal or snack as well as cottage cheese, salsa, cheese sticks and Baby Bel cheese and Laughing Cow cheese wedges.  There are usually blueberries, apples and grapes in my frig so I can “grab” a little fruit and some protein to go with it.

That’s how I’ve been doing it and it works.  An hour spent on a Sunday morning planning and preparing and then replacing and buying fresh and new for dinners when I make my grocery haul later today.  It works now, it’s another lifestyle action I had to integrate into my new habitual behaviors and it took time and patience.  Now on with the rest of my Sunday.

Are YOU worth an hour of planning?  I am.