5th Week Using Mommy Meal Planner

This week I had to go to the tracking portion of the my pyramid website. I finished with clearing out the meal planner for a couple of weeks and thought I would take the next step and go to the tracker. You need to devote 10 minutes a day to this and do it after dinner. If you forget when you login you need to select the day that you are entering for before you go to food intake. Once you have entered your food you go to the analyze step and you select the my pyramid option and it will show you where you are lacking for the food groups. I felt comfortable with this since the prior three weeks in the meal planner I never went over my calorie intake. I see that I just need to switch to eating better foods. The main 2 things for me were the lack of veggies and meat in my diet. I found that is I followed my meal planner I barely got all my food groups in and had to eat veggies for snacks to fill that food group. In this process it has cut out all the junk. Next week is Christmas so I am going to skip all this and know that by default I will choose better food choices. For the new year I am adding my 2.5 year old and my husband and we will continue from there. Thanks for reading this and I am excited for the Meal Planner and the success it will have in your family just like it did in mine!

Forth Week Using The Mommy Meal Planner

Here we are in week 4! This week I was so busy with getting ready for Christmas that I did not input my food intake. I found this actually to be a good thing in my progress. I was able to stick to my plan and keep track of all this myself without inputting into the computer. I found myself adding veggies to my meals without even thinking about it. I found myself preplanning my meals for the day and trying to get all my food groups in. I also used all the tips and ate the healthier snacks that I had in the house. Someone was telling me about a good recipe and I also found myself altering it to fit into my pyramid that we have created. When I did have time to sit down at the end of the week, I pulled up my week before since it was very similar. I pulled the reports on the days and I found that I continue not to meet my veggies. My Pyramid gave this list of helpful hints that I will use next week.

	Snack on celery sticks in the afternoon.
	Add a green vegetable like broccoli or bok choy to dinner.
	Stock up on frozen vegetables for quick and easy side dishes.
	Try a main dish salad for lunch. Go easy on the dressing and toppings!
	Buy pre-washed bags of salad greens, baby carrots or grape tomatoes.
	Keep a bowl of cut-up veggies in a see-through container in the refrigerator.
	Grill vegetable kebobs as part of a barbecue meal. Try tomatoes, mushrooms, green peppers, and onions.
	Include a salad with dinner.
	Include cooked dry beans or peas in mixed dishes such as chili or minestrone soup.

I will apply these next week and make it a part of my pyramid to hold me accountable. The week after that I plan to add my husband and my 2.5 year old to my plan and expand this to the entire family.

Third Week Using Mommy Meal Planner

Wow! I am so glad that I set these small weekly goals for myself and I am really seeing and feeling the difference and so is my family. I had never thought about food groups as much as I do now. This week I made the veggie chili and the shrimp and orzo dish on Monday. I ate these through the week as my meals. Both were great and my husband loved them both as well. This week I also had the turkey sandwiches with TURKEY BACON. I thought I would never do or like this item and I love it. This week I used the menu planner option on the website. This is allowing me to see how many of each food group I am eating. It has helped me with adding additional meats and veggies to my meals and snacks through the day. I see that my extra calorie intake is too high each day. Next week, I am going to look at my menu planner this week and make a menu for the next week and stick to it. I feel that this will help with my extra calories as well. I already see a difference in my mind set when it comes to eating. Just this morning I had to choose between fruit and a cookie. The old me cookie all the way! The new me ~ 1/2 cup of fruit, that I put on my planner right when I got home with a smile. I had no idea that this was going to feel so good and be so fun. This is a daily exercise that I am building a new pattern for my eating patterns. I will reach out to Ellen this week so we can discuss the high calories before I create me meal plan for the next week. Thanks~