This I Wonder sounded very familiar to me. “We’ve done this before -” I thought. I scanned through the archives (and got hung up for quite a while, re-enjoying our old posts! We are some good writers, yo!) And found it – a FFAF of mine from last August, which explains why I was the only one who recognized it as a done topic. However, just linking to my old post would be cheating, so I’ve decided to give you a bonus blog about my current It’s-Not-A-Diet-It’s-A-Lifestyle-Change meal plan that is supposed to help me slowly and healthfully get back to my pre-baby weight. Because if you force me to sit here and write about mouth-watering, artery-clogging, weight-increasing yummy goodness right now, I’m never gonna make it through this, my fourth day of following the INADIALC meal plan.
So. We start the morning with a delicate egg white sandwich on an English muffin, the eggs topped with 2% mozzarella cheese (no salt allowed, alas). This accompanies 2 ounces of cold cereal with wheat germ, raisins, and skim milk, and a half-banana. I add to this my first cheat of the day – a large-ass cup of coffee with tons of cream and sugar stirred in. Oh, yeah.
My morning snack is a Kashi TLC bar – made with their patented 7 whole grains granola mixture, with a generous portion of dried cherries and chocolate chips thrown in. This is actually completely delicious, and if I don’t tell anybody that I eat it with a cup of hot chocolate, then I’ll still be mostly on track for the day.
For lunch today, I will be eating a Lean Cuisine lasagna (also delicious, though woefully small), with a bunch of green grapes and some strawberry yogurt as my two sides. My lunchtime dessert is not on the INADIALC meal plan, but since it is a 90-calorie bag of chocolate drizzled mini rice cakes, I don’t count it as a cheat. Neither do I count the caffeine free Diet Dr. Pepper. It has no calories, so I don’t know from what ghost-ingredients it is made, but it must be magic, and magic doesn’t count against me in the War on Baby Weight.
Dinner tonight will be shrimp and veg kabobs, grilled, served over brown rice, with a large salad of spinach leaves, radishes, non-salmonella-infected tomatoes (fingers crossed), and olives. The olives are my second cheat of the day, unless you count the hot chocolate, in which case they are my third (unless you count the hot chocolate AND the rice cakes, in which case they are my fourth.) My final cheat will be my nighttime sweet, a very small scoop of fat free strawberry ice cream, but since it’s fat free (but double churned, and thus relatively delicious) I don’t count that against me either.
This INADIALC meal plan is actually quite followable. It gives lots of snacks, the meals are great and large and filling and I usually like them. It forces me to get up early and make a nice breakfast (well, the baby forces me to get up early, but the INADIALC meal plan gives me something to do with my extra morning time). And clearly I don’t force myself to stick to it absolutely.
Because, you know, last night for dinner I had a chicken burrito supreme and a beer. Whatevs. I’m not made of willpower, you know.