Day one recap.

I diet too well. Don't laugh at me. It's true. I try to cut back to a "normal" amount of calories-I wind up at a "diet" amount for the day. My goal was 2000-2500. I topped out at 1774. Did I mention I had both skittles with lunch and sangria when I got home? Yeah. So, Even though I order breakfast before setting my goal, and made lunch before that, I still managed to come in 225 under my minimum. This was what annoyed me on WW. I would end the day HAVING to eat 15 points just to hit my minimum. Sounds nice, huh? The easiest way to do that was a handful or 2 of hershey kisses. Great! You might think. In actuality-not so much. Once or twice is fine. On a daily basis-it actually gets frustrating.

So back to my current quandary. I need to spread out my calories more. Would also help if we planned dinner before 5pm. But I know that won't change. So, how to deal with it? This is what has been driving me insane for 3 years now. Why 3 years? When I was single, I only had to worry about myself. If I had 4 points left for dinner (was on WW at the time, obviously), I'd get a Lean Cuisine and sugar free jello. If I had 15 or 20, I'd get McDonalds. I didn't care what anyone else wanted. It didn't matter. But now, there are 2 of us.

How does that change things? Well, I certainly can't just grab a LC meal when it needs to feed both of us. It means we try to cook more. But I hate cooking, and I'm not especially good at it. Unless it's something like baked mac&cheese-which is entirely impossible to make totally low/non fat. Yeah, you can try. But to do it right takes a lot of butter, milk, and cheese. Even if you use low fat versions and whole wheat pasta (which, oh by the way, the DH hates and complains about-but only when he knows that's what it is. Otherwise, he loves it until I tell him), it's still not exactly "healthy". Then there are my other specialties: shepherds pie (mashed potatoes, gravy and ground beef, all in one), baked ziti (again-it's like the mac and cheese). And DH spent 20 years cooking for people-he isn't good at low fat substitutions, and is tired of it most of the time. So we eat out a lot. I try (sometimes) to make better choices. But it depends on where we eat. My "standby" when there is nothing on the menu that I like is chicken tenders. Very few places have screwed them up. But again: not healthy.

Where does this leave me? I have no idea. I've lost my train of thought. Note to self: don't ChaCha and blog at the same time. Those questions make you forget what you are talking about. Oh, yeah: spreading out my calories. I think I need to divide my total by 6. 1/6 for breakfast, 1/3 (ie-2/6, for you non-math people) for lunch, and 1/2 (3/6) for dinner. I know dinner is my hardest meal to control. Breakfast and lunch, I only have to worry about myself. That's one thing about Special K that was good. The bad things were it made my breath stink (the protein bars), and I got beyond tired of cereal. But it allowed me to control what I could, and be able to do almost anything for dinner.

So, with my new meal proportions, let's do some math.

Breakfast should be 333-416
Lunch should be 666-832
Dinner should be 1000-1250

That looks fair and reasonable. I think I've been skimping too much on lunch and overestimating what I need for dinner. Oh...and I just included snacks in those totals. I don't normally snack in the morning, but I do have something around 3 (count it as lunch) and I have dessert (count as dinner).

So I looked at my plan for today:
Breakfast was coffee with creamer and 2 of those little Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits. 505 calories. A little over the plan, but not bad.
Lunch plan is more leftovers: the pasta with the mulled wine sauce (funny story if I didn't write it) and sausage. A mere 179 calories. Umm...even if we move the "extra" from breakfast, I'm still about, oh, 350-400 short here. That definitely needs to be looked at.
Dinner: unknown. I was going to pull out some chicken and make...something. No ideas. We don't have one of our main staples right now: cheese. I seriously don't think ANY of my recipes DON'T use cheese. Even the healthy ones. So I have no idea what to make. And besides-I really don't feel like cooking. But it is only fair. DH works all day today. I'm off. Ok, sort of off. ChaCha doesn't count. And it's not like the questions are exactly flying in anyway. But that's another story.

Back to dinner. I love this website. Kraft 1 bag, 5 meals. Lots of great ideas, all easy, mostly healthy-ish. Definitely better than chicken fingers. Guess I scour it for something to do. And pull the chicken out.