Why Meal Prepping May NOT be Helping You
The real way we implement lasting change and STAY at our happy goal weight is by changing habits. Seriously. You Do Not Need to Meal Prep to be Successful.
Think about how you ate before Surgery or during your Regain. Did you honestly spend hours on a Sunday, cooking and wrapping up all of your meals for the entire week? So how will prepping for hours and eating leftovers for seven days straight teach you how to keep this weight off for good? Is it going to be like all the other times you tried to lose weight with a quick reward of a few pounds lost then a return to your Old Habits?
I can honestly say that based on my own personal experience & what I see daily in our Bariatric Support Groups on Facebook for the past 5 years that you will absolutely fall off the track. Why? Because you are Overthinking.
Stop Overthinking things. Spending all day Meal Prepping is going to get really old really fast when you realize that after all that work, you are eating reheated leftovers, every single meal, all week long.
So take our recipes & the foods on the Inspire Diet list and start thinking a little critically. Use them to learn techniques... for example, we have Sheet Pan meals that are fast & easy. Once you realize it's just putting food on a cookie sheet you can do anything you'd like.
The foods on the Inspire Diet list are actually what ALL post-ops should be eating for the rest of their lives and that's why the Inspire Diet works, it teaches you how to combine and assemble meals that help you for life.
The photo above is my lunch today, it took me less than 10 min to make this.
Leftover Chicken, chopped
Chopped Cucumbers, Mini Pepper, Cherry Tomato
Greek Salad dressing (that I measured carefully using an actual measuring spoon)
This plate is fresh. It's vibrant. It's full of micronutrients, fiber, and honestly, it is DELICIOUS. Plus.....it went CRUNCH. What more could you ask for?
BOOM. That is IT. It took me longer to type all this up than it did to make this wonderful plate of food. I want to point out that this is how I eat about 98% of my lunches and at least 75% of our dinners are large salads that are made the same way.
I have a Husband, a job, a home, pets, a Daughter who's on Swim Team and I like to do things for ME like work out. I don't have time to bother with cooking elaborate meals on a regular basis. I don't have time to spend half the day on my precious weekend to cook all the food for the week ahead.
I ate fast, simple meals just like this to lose the weight and I eat like this to keep it off. So can you.
~~ Embracing Bariatric Life with a Smile, Suzi Shaw!