HEALTHY TIP: Use a Food Schedule

Here's a healthy tip for you: 

Use a Food Schedule

If you're like me, you have very little willpower; you forget a lot and don't adhere to set "diet" plans very well. Yep, I feel your pain. Instead of changing what is inherent about you, how about adding a cheat sheet that will help you to compensate and stay healthy.

My cheatsheet is a grid that looks like the calendar month. Feel free to use this one which you can download here. 

How I use this schedule:

I like to fill out one of these sheets for a 2-week period. I've found that I get a like bored and like a change right around the 2-week mark. I follow these steps to complete the cheat sheet.

1) I fill in the dinner days first. For me, it is the hardest meal sometimes because you are tired at the end of the day and need to get in cooking time really quick. What really helps me is to NOT put in actually recipes. Instead, I fill in just what I want to have.  Like "chicken", "beef", "fish", "veggie", "takeout", "freebie".

2) I fill in the lunches. Notice on my food schedule that I do not designate actual days for lunches. That's because I don't specifically track my lunches the way I do my breakfasts and dinners. For those breakfasts and dinners, I want to make sure that I'm getting certain days of smoothies, meat-types like fish and beef, etc.

I'm a bit more flexible on my lunches. They are often my dinners, "breadless" sandwiches or green salads. I actually like to limit my overall choices for lunch-types to make following a Paleo diet regimen much easier. I find that the more structure I have, the better off I am. It's quells the "no willpower" part of my personality. So, for the lunch boxes, I'll write something like "soup-salad", "meat-salad", "dinner", or "salad wrap".

3) I fill in the breakfasts. Here I follow the same strategy as I do for lunches. Again, I limit my choices here to a few entrees that I love to make and eat. For me they are: "veggie egg omelet", "meat egg omelet", "egg frittata" (this is a egg scramble with meat/veggies mixed in), "smoothie", "dinner", "meat-fruit-tea". My meats are usually sliced Boar's Head turkey breast or black forest ham or MorningStar veggie sausage patties. Under Paleo eating, I forgo eating bread, pancakes and waffles which personally, I don't miss at all these days.

4) I fill in the snacks last following the same strategy.  Again, notice on the food schedule that I do not designate actual days for snacks. My possible snacks are any combination of meat, cheese, nuts, fruit, cookie, herbal tea or coffee. I make up 4 choices for the week so I don't have to think hard about what I want. I've made up "meat-fruit-tea", "meat-cheese-nuts", "meat-fruit-nuts", "fruit-tea", "cheese-fruit-nuts", "cookie-coffee" combinations.

Here is one of the completed cheatsheets that I have been using.

my completed food schedule

I put it in a sheet protector and place it on the side of my fridge right where my prep area is.  Just to change it up, I'll re-adjust my boxes for the latter 2-weeks. The key for this cheatsheet is that it is simply a guide as to what you can eat to maintain a healthy regimen. It doesn't tell you EXACTLY what to make in terms of recipes.

While some people like following a set plan of what to eat and how much, I've found that it just doesn't work for me. I am too spontaneous and end up not wanting a particular recipe on a particular day. So, by leaving my self choices within a category (i.e. "salad wrap"), I've found this to be a healthy compromise that adds some structure to my eating.