BBR -- Saturday, 11/14 -- Day 14

I do plan my food/eating ahead of time by:
* Pre tracking my food the night before in my journal.
* I grocery shop once a week, go with list in hand to get foods needed for the week.
* I always allow time in the morning to prepare my food so it's ready at meal time. I always prepare my breakfast oatmeal the day before so it's ready to heat and eat.

I usually have standard meals and snacks at planned times. I do wonder if it's a mistake to always have standard meals because it can get boring and lead me astray to eating those sugar foods. I do like to try new things once in a while. When I was younger I fixed a lot of new recipes. I hope to start using my air fryer to get a little more variety in my meals. I like to cook larger batches of food for more then one meal.

Friday - 8 days off sugar.👍

Hello everyone! Mind if I pop in?

Do you plan your food/eating ahead of time?
- Used to, don't now, definitely should. And I am today!

Do you have standard meals and snacks and choose from them or do you often do new things?
- I don't often do new things but I think that my meals have a large range of options. I think I do best when I have a 'go-to' list, or I pre-plan and put the points on things.

I'm very moody when I eat, but if I get a range going, like say 8 points for lunch, I can look at all the food that's around the same number of points, then decide what I'm in the mood for. And if what I really want is a little over I can look over my dinner and snacks to see if there's any wiggle room. This worked very well for me in the past.

cathygeha , your repeat meals sound wonderful.

Thanks to BBR and this group, I’m getting soooo much better at planning ahead and tracking and no surprise, this month and this round,  it’s working. I used to fight mentally against having to decide what’s for dinner, etc. but know I understand how important it is to stay on plan. Having pre made and pre planned healthy options in the fridge is a game changer for sure. My husband likes to celebrate (he’s down 25 pounds) Friday weigh ins with pizza and I pretrack that dinner choice. I’m trying to add in better snack choices now too and that is a better work in progress.

I skipped lunch on Friday and learned that I’m much better at tolerating a little hunger and saying I’ll eat later than I am dealing with cravings.  Hunger I can rationally handle: I make the decision that I can eat later and take no action of not eating.  Cravings,  not so much if I don’t preplan or stop myself in my tracks to make a decision before an action. I used to think I was the only person who “forgot” I was dieting when cravings hit. I’m learning that I am indeed making a very fast sabotaging thought decision and action even if I sometimes don’t take the time to recognize it at the moment. It’s these fast, bad trigger decisions that I’m trying to be accountable far: ie: eating a bag of Halloween candy without dealing with the trigger, thought, decision and action aspect of eating. I told my husband this year after horrible decision making in Oct.: please don’t bring Halloween candy in the house 2 weeks before Halloween- you can ignore it, I can’t. And last night when we ordered pizza we agreed to only order the individual size, not a large. so there were no pesky leftovers in the fridge or at best, one slice each if we chose not to finish it that night. Better decisions=better actions=better results. Thanks for repeatedly laying  out this thought process for us Carol Ann, it’s helping.

lani, I don't have a food imagination and have ended up eating the same thing over and over for a lot of my life. I think the bagged lunch I took to school didn't change for years. Part of that was my mom was probably happy to find something I would eat and stick with it. My husband teases me because I very rarely will try something new.

Good to see so many people posting here today👍