Advice to keep you sane..

1. Don’t over think the plan – always find the fuels in the food. What does that mean? If you pick up a food item..say eggs..what’s in it? It obviously is protein, but what else? Does it have fats? Does it have carbs?  If you don’t know…look it up. Ask your smart phone.
2. Don’t complicate the plan: pick a protein (usually a meat), pick a side dish that fits, pick a veggie – sometimes that veggie IS your side dish.
3. NEVER BE CAUGHT UNPREPARED. Always have something ready to fit your cravings. Be it salt or sweet, or crunchy..know your weaknesses and be prepared.
4. Know your ‘red-light’ foods.  These are foods that once you start eating you cannot stop. For me that’s cashews. I combat this by either not buying it, or buying individual serving packages.
5. Make in bulk- partition into serving sizes – bag, label (be sure fuel type is on it) and freeze.
6. Buy frozen foods in a pinch if you’re pressed for time.  I buy frozen brown rice (Birdseye), frozen veggies like sweet peppers, onions, cauliflower, okra, just to name a few. I can prepare a meal in 15 minutes with these.
7. Become friends with your crockpot. Put meats or meals on at night – they’re done when you wake up. Do whole chicken or roast, partition label, freeze.
8. Scale not moving?  Put it away. Find a too tight article of clothing, try it on once every two weeks or so. Use that as a barometer. Forget the scale, it’s mostly useless and it lies! Take pictures, in same place/pose/clothing, once monthly. Compare the differences.
9. Give yourself grace.  Not to go off plan, but if you make a genuine mistake, or accidentally ingest something, or eat before time is up, or overindulge one day cause you’re in a funky mood.  It happens, get past it and regroup.
10. If you had a binge day, the next day clean it up with EFB meals.

Drill Sergeant out!