I love writing my blog and it’s part of my week I really look forward to – typing up a new or a favourite recipe (plus the fun of cooking it, taking photos as well as obviously eating it) or a top tip or strategy but this week, for the first time since I started my blog almost a year ago, I’ve been really struggling for this week’s topic.
It’s been a really busy couple of weeks – you know when you seem to blink and another week has gone by but if someone asked ‘what have you been up to?’ you’d struggle to list everything out but it’s felt like you’ve not had a minute – that’s how the past few weeks have been.
I scrolled back through my instagram account for any recipe ideas and was not inspired, I had a look back through my journal to see what I’d been writing about and if anything leapt out at me as a great topic for a blog post, but nothing stood out particularly and then it struck me – what I have been doing the past few weeks in terms of my healthy eating and healthy living journey amidst a very busy few weeks is keeping things very simple and sticking to easy to follow routines and that in itself is actually a really good blog post in itself.
A bit of background
I was 34 when I started my ‘last diet’ – at that time, I was living alone in Woolwich in South East London, commuting almost two hours each way every day to work in Teddington, South West London, travelling a lot overseas for work, couldn’t cook and was completely disorganised in terms of food shopping, planning and preparation.
Things I learned very quickly:
1) I needed to learn to cook at least two or three healthy dishes from scratch
2) There was no way I was going to chop vegetables and cook up meals from scratch every night when I got home from work at 8pm most nights so I needed a solution for that
3) I was going to have to find time in my week to plan, shop and prepare food if I wanted to actually make this work.
So what did I do?
1) I made a couple of key investments:
a very easy to follow recipe book
lots of tupperware
a couple of massive pans
2) I taught myself to cook a couple of simple dishes: chilli, a chicken curry and a prawn pasta and sauce
3) Once a fortnight, I blocked 3 hours in my diary on a Saturday or Sunday for ‘meal prep’ when I would do my food shopping and batch cook a vat of each of these three dishes which I’d then freeze in individual portions and stick in the freezer – I’d have about 5 portions of each dish and they were my dinners for the next two weeks.
4) I’d take a tupperware box out of the freezer in the morning before leaving for work, it would defrost during the day, as soon as I got home, I’d put the rice or pasta on whilst I got changed etc and then dinner would be ready with no effort whatsoever
Breakfasts were eaten on the train on the way to work so I kept that simple – 2 low fat cereal bars and a couple of pieces of fresh fruit.
Lunches were in the office – again, I’d keep it simple and found a couple of quick and easy options that needed no preparation or cooking time: jacket potatoes, beans and salad was one, packet rice or noodles with spinach or tinned mushrooms thrown in was another and I’d buy bags of seasonal fruit on the way to the office to keep on my desk for snacks.
I kept it simple and I lost almost 7 stone over the next 18 months.
As I became more confident in the kitchen and experimented more, I did add additional dishes to my repertoire over the next two years but I carried on with my weekend batch cooking, a freezer full of tupperware and simple and easy breakfasts and lunches as this was working for me – I didn’t have to spend ages thinking about what’s on the menu each day, I only had to shop once or twice a week for food so I was saving a lot of money and time too.
Sometimes we really overcomplicate our weight loss and healthy eating journeys, you don’t have to cook up complicated recipes every evening, you don’t have to match all the amazing food you see on social media – find dishes you enjoy and repeat and if you do get bored of eating them, just find a new one to replace it!
Change of circumstances and a love of cooking
A few years later, I was now at my target weight, I’d changed my career and given up my full time crazy commute job to become a full time Slimming World Consultant. Cooking actually became something I really enjoyed and I loved my time in the kitchen, I was much more confident at experimenting and trying new dishes and had more time most days to actually cook from scratch. Now I’m fully self employed and working from home, I cook all of our meals from scratch and mostly fresh each day because I’m lucky to have that time and cooking is something I do to relax and unwind. However – I still have two freezer drawers full of batch cooked meals – chilli is still one of our staple dishes and appears regularly on the meal plan. Back in the early days of my weight loss, I was probably eating chilli at least 3 times a week, now it’s maybe once a week instead!
Keeping it simple without even realising
The thing that stuck out when I was looking over my instagram food diary from the past couple of weeks was how I’d actually gone back to a lot of the patterns I followed in my early days of my weight loss journey:
Jacket potatoes, beans, grated cheese and salad has featured heavily on the menu (I counted 6 over the past 2 weeks!)
Tuesday night has become ‘chilli night’ – we’ve actually had chilli for the past 3 Tuesdays
Other patterns I’ve spotted
Omelettes have been a regular lunch option, we’ve had simple and easy pasta dishes for the past few Wednesdays and I’ve not cooked or tried a new recipe for a while – I’ve just repeated a few favourites and easy to cook dishes to fit in around our schedules. I’ve used up lots of the batch cooked meals I had in tupperware boxes in the freezer, I’ve gone through quite a few of the tinned foods I keep in my storecupboard and we’ve eaten a lot of spinach and pre-made salads.
Talking with one of my new 1-2-1 clients this week, keeping it simple was one of my biggest pieces of advice – don’t overwhelm yourself with expectations of turning into a michelin star chef overnight, don’t expect to magic an extra hour out of thin air to suddenly cook homemade dishes from scratch whilst running a busy house and working full time. Find what works for you and repeat, repeat, repeat until before you know it, you’ve created an ingrained habit that, like me this past few weeks, just clicks into place without you even realising it.
If you want to know more about my weight loss coaching services, just get in touch: georgina@mealplansmadeeasy.co.uk – I’d love to hear from you.
Thank you for that timely reminder Georgina. Just back from holiday and need to refocus.
Keeping things simple is the key.
plan-batch cook-eat-repeat
hope you had a lovely holiday Mary and glad the post has helped – keeping it simple makes it so much easier to get back into your normal routine!
Thanks for this it’s helpful to hear about your refections about your eating patterns .
You have obviously , have many ingrained habits that make eating well a routine.Helping you when times get stretched .
Thanks for this post and good ideas
Hi and glad you found it useful Loretta, definitely made me realise just how many ingrained habits I’ve actually created without even realising it – good to reflect back and realise these things!
Hi George. Ive had a really dreadful few days and the next 24 hours is not going to get any better, as food options are out of my control. So looking at the email, tonight yep jacket spuds. I’m going to go amd make a coronation sauce and have jacket with chicken, and salad and tomatos. Easy to make. Thanks for the reminder to keep it simple.
Always remember ‘control the controllables’ and do the best you can when you can! Your coronation sauce sounds amazing, I may be asking for that recipe!!!