Lunch and Mental Prep

Happy December! Hard to believe it's here already.

Just under a half pound loss and I will definitely take it! I chose to have some of those Thanksgiving day extras, but I really tried to be careful the rest of the time and also worked out hard at the gym. Guess it worked out okay in the end.

Here's some pics of my secret weapon! Sunday night lunch prep. I'm shocked at what a difference pre-planned meal preparation has made for me, especially with my lunches. And saving some money has been a great side benefit too since I'm not going out to lunch all the time.

I'm a huge fan of soups and salads at lunch, but lately I've been sticking to salads because they're easy to pull together on weekends and I usually feel more satisfied. Here's what goes in:





Costco is my friend with their 6 heads of romaine for under $5. I use 2 or 3 heads for a weeks worth of lunches.





I love my food scale. Besides my trainer, this was pretty much my only weight loss "investment." I think it was under $20, but worth so much more! I have to have some kind of protein on my salad - here's my leftover Thanksgiving turkey! It actually tasted even better on a healthy salad with some avocado and honeycrisp apple. Soooo yum!



Finally, here's the end result. Five days worth of healthy, satisfying lunches. Some of them look a little empty, but I'll add things later so they don't get yucky from sitting together. Any of you Costco fans might also notice familiar storage containers. My husband and I eat at the Costco food court before we shop, and I always get the chicken caesar salad and save my container. My tupperware obsession might be getting the best of me these days, but they're so sturdy and perfectly reusable. I feel guilty throwing them away, and they're perfect for my lunches.




So, on a totally separate note, looking back at my last post I feel a little silly. It makes me seem like someone who only needed to lose twenty or so pounds to start with, but I wasn't. I also realize this isn't a competition to lose the most weight, but I don't want anyone to think that I don't know what it is to be obese. That I'm just someone who lost a few pounds and has declared herself an expert on weight loss.

The thing is that I know my weight loss history already, and I think I'm having a hard time talking about it because I don't really want revisit the really bad parts. I already lost a lot of weight - not the before picture in the last post, but tack on another 50-ish pounds to that. I've pulled out my "before-before" pictures and it's like looking at someone else. It's such a strange feeling. I think I'm having a hard time even identifying with who that person is - I'm a stranger to myself. Most of the pictures are from the late 90's when I was in my late teens and early twenties. All I can think is, "Who IS that person? How did she even happen?" It's kind of painful to me that I don't even want to aknowledge the person I was then. Isn't that sad? Everyone wants other people to be compassionate towards them, and I don't even feel compassionate to my old self! I just wonder how I let it happen. How could I just let it get worse and worse, and just not notice! Or notice, and ignore it. I probably topped out around 215-220 - I'd stopped weighing myself of course. I just look like someone else. And it freaks me out to have to go back and look at those pictures. I've moved on with my life and I'm to a place where I don't want to spend a lot of time looking back. It's part of who I am, but it's not who I am now. If that makes any sense at all.