One Week's Meal Plan

Here's what one week's meal plan looks like in my spreadsheet:

 
 The top three rows of the spreadsheet list breakfast, lunch and snack values, the next 7 rows contain the dinner menus for Monday through Thursday, and rows 12-16 show the daily totals.  These daily totals take into account if we are having 2 servings of anything that day, so they contain the total number of calories, fat, WW points, etc.   You can see that Monday was a little high on calories - it was Valentine's Day, so we were okay with that as we wanted it to be special.  My total daily calorie count should be around 1,500 including snacks.

According to the National Diabetes Association, the total number of calories consumed from carbs should be between 40% and 60%, and there are 4 calories in each gram of carbohydrates. This makes a nice little double-check.  Note to self:  add a calculation in my spreadsheet to calculate the daily percentage of carbs!

The values in columns B-F are linked directly back to my point values spreadsheet in the same workbook.  One of the recipes I used this week was adapted from one I found online.  It's the Thursday dinner: Lasagna Rollups.  Here's the recipe as I have adapted it:

Lasagna Rollups
28 oz can crushed San Marzano Tomatoes
14 oz can tomato sauce (no sugar added)
8 oz can organic tomato paste (no sugar added)
8 Dreamfields low-carb lasagna noodles
1/2 pound lean ground turkey breast
1/2 pound turkey Italian sausage, casing removed
1/4 c chopped onion
1/2 c chopped green bell pepper
1 small can green chilis
1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs
1 t salt
1/2 t basil
1/4 t pepper
8 oz (2 c) shredded lowfat mozzarella cheese
12 oz low-fat ricotta cheese
1 egg, beaten
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup parmesan cheese

Heat oven to 350.  Boil water in large pot with 4 t salt.  Add lasagna; stir, boil 10-12 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Cook to al dente - do not overcook.  Drain and rinse under cold water.

Mix together crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste and garlic.  Spread 2 cups of sauce over bottom of 9x13 pan.

In large skillet, brown sausage and turkey with onion, chilies and green pepper over medium heat.  Drain.  In bowl, add breadcrumbs with ground meat, 1 t salt, basil, ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese and egg.

Spread about 1/4 cup filling on each lasagna noodle.  Roll up from short side and place in pan, seam down.  Pour remaining sauce over top.  Cover and bake for one hour.  Sprinkle with parmesan cheese before serving.

9 WW points per rollup.

To calculate the nutritional values of any recipe, start with a list of ingredients.  If you can't find the nutrition information on the packaging, look it up here.    This is what my list looks like for the recipe above:

At the bottom of each column, I total the counts for each category, which gives me the total for the recipe, and then I divide it by the number of servings - in this case, 8.  Remember that ordinarily because there are 6 grams of fiber per serving (fiber >5), you could subtract this from the number of carbs to get the net carbs for the dish.  However, in this case, because I used low-carb pasta and used the net grams per carb as allowed on the package, I did not adjust for the fiber. 

I didn't use recipes for Monday's dinner but here are the recipes for the other two nights:

Slow Cooker Pork Roast with Sauerkraut
Slow Cooker German Potato Salad 
Grilled Ham Steak with Mustard Sauce
Blackeyed Peas with Bacon and Escarole

On Friday or Saturday of each week, I pull up the recipes for the following week and create a grocery list right in the same Excel workbook, transfer it to a checklist in my android phone and I'm ready to go.  We typically do our grocery shopping on Sunday after church and then we're ready for the coming week.

I should add that whenever possible, I lighten recipes - even if they're within our WW point and carb counts to begin with - by using lower calorie and/or lower carb ingredients.  We love Dreamfields pasta and it's what we buy routinely.  It comes in about 6 varieties and we have enjoyed all of them over the years.  I also routinely use Splenda and Brown Sugar Splenda in place of sugar.  In addition, I have found some interesting substitutions online for things like powdered sugar, marshmallow creme, corn syrup, honey, pancake mix, biscuit mix, etc.  I also use sugar free and low sugar jams and preserves, syrups, low carb egg noodles, etc.  This allows us to use a wide variety of tasty ingredients without compromising The Plan.  Planning our menus a week ahead allows me time to shop for or order ingredients if I don't already have them on hand.

A couple of cautions about creating a meal plan:

First, I will admit it - I am a planner.   I love the nitty gritty details of coming up with a plan, documenting it and putting it into practice.  By trade, I am a project manager - it's what I do.  However, I'm also spontaneous.  There will be times, I know it, when I will just not feel like cooking, or I won't feel like eating whatever's on The Plan for that day.  If you follow me on Facebook, you might have noticed that the chart above shows Thursday's dinner was supposed to be lasagna rollups.  We had them on Wednesday night because I had an extra spurt of energy on Wednesday morning before work and decided to make them.  I could have left them in the refrigerator until Thursday, but I also decided the leftover pork roast should become our soup for Sunday night and I thought Wednesday to Sunday was a little long for cooked pork to be sitting in the fridge, so I decided to switch those nights.

So if you're going to create your own plan like this, always make sure you have some contingencies.  Before The Plan, our spontaneous I-don't-feel-like-cooking meal was frozen pizza.  We found some flatbread pizzas we really like that are within our limits, so we make sure to have those in the freezer just in case we need them.

Also, don't ever make anything you know you won't like.  You will resent the change in eating and you will have cravings that will be difficult to overcome.  That doesn't mean you shouldn't try new things.  We tried escarole for the first time this week and loved it.  But I hate lima beans and I always will no matter how good they are for me.  My husband loves them, so we have a deal:  I won't make him eat spinach as long as I can have it while he eats his lima beans.  Sure, I have to cook two veggies on those nights but whatever.  We're both happy.  I shared with a friend recently that we had gone out to our favorite breakfast place and split the bacon and gruyere frittata.  Her response was that I should have ordered an egg white veggie omelet because it would have been lower in fat.  I'm sorry, but an egg white veggie omelet sounds more like a punishment than a treat.  I would far prefer to limit the amount of times I eat out in favor of eating something I really like than to deprive myself and force down food that is distasteful to me.

Finally, examine the way you live.  Unless I'm having a dinner party, I really don't want to spend hours at a time standing in my kitchen doing prep work or cooking.  I have become fond of Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Meals method of cooking and if I have to spend much more time in the kitchen than that, I'm going to resent it.  I also don't like to do dishes, and although my husband does nearly all of them, I'm still prone to make things that use fewer (rather than more) pots, pans and utensils.  What that means is that I examine every recipe before I make it and I determine how many minutes I will have to stand in the kitchen and how many dishes will need to be washed.  I favor one-pot meals, things you bake in the oven, and crock pot meals.  If I review recipes with an eye toward how I prefer to live, I'm so much happier and I know you will be, too.

In other words, take these suggestions as just that, and figure out what works for you.  This is one method.  If your preferred method is (as a friend recently told me hers is) to open the fridge and see what comes to you, then know that about yourself before you go shopping and stock the fridge with things you can throw together that will be healthy for you to eat and that you will enjoy cooking and eating.  Make your PLAN work for you and you will enjoy it, not resent it.  Good luck!

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