Happy Tuesday!

I'm new to 3FC (my "intro" post can be found here: http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=89843 ).

I've been poking around the maintainer's board quite a bit in the last few days, and I hope you all don't mind me lurking and posting occasionally even though I'm at the start of my maintenance (read: I will have about 100 to lose after my daughter arrives sometime in the next 2 weeks or so).

I consider myself a maintainer right now, since I'm thinking about all this much differently now. I'm glad to see that sentiment on this board quite a bit - it is encouraging to think I may have had my first light-bulb moment in quite a while).

I know planning is key for me, but I'm a terrible planner. Someone in many of the threads I read (Funniegrrl?) commented several times that she cannot live/eat on a whim, and that is exactly where I am. I *know* that if I don't plan I will have a hard time making the right choice a lot of the time, at least in the near future, and probably off and on the rest of my life. But my lifestyle is very spur of the moment (although with the baby on the way, I'm sure that will change quite a bit).

Does anyone have any practical planning suggestions for the planning impaired? The things I've done or will do soon include putting together good choices for many of the restaurants we go to frequently, although we are working on cutting down how much we eat out. I'm also putting together little cards with snack ideas for when I'm out and about, and I need something to eat. The idea (hopefully) is that if i pull out a card with 6 ro 8 suggestions on it, I can hit a grocery store and decide before I even go in what I will get, as opposed to standing in front of the muffin case and arguing with myself. That doesn't work well - I'm a lawyer, I can beat anyone in an argument!

So any other suggestions? Eventually I would like to work up to planning each day or even a week at a time. It will be difficult, because my work schedule is so erratic, but that will just have to be a factor I take into consideration.

Thanks for any thoughts!

-Sara

I plan my exercise, ahem, I hire a coach to plan my exercise for me, since I'm a working professional with an infant and a triathlete who has to juggle 3 sports and weight training and it makes me tired to just think about that. I have a schedule and a calendar and I know what I am going to do two weeks in advance in detail, and in general for a couple of months. I'm pretty rigorous about it, and it takes a lot to break me away from it, illness maybe--mine or DDs. I treat my exercise time as seriously as I would a doctor's appointment.

I'm a bit more relaxed about food planning. But I am always prepared. I have 2-3 snacks a day that are in the 100-150 calorie range. So I have these on hand. At home I have buckets of fruit, veggies with hummus dip available, yogurt, cottage cheese, granola bars, and 100 cal snack packs. I carry snacks with me, mostly granola or lower-cal energy bars or fruit in winter, since going into a grocery store hungry is one of the least smart things I could do, list or no list, bad things WILL happen. I also buy or put everything into single serving packs in advance, to make it easy to grab the grapes and hard to eat the entire box of crackers when I'm hungry.

The other key to planning for me is just forming good habits. We have about 10 different meals that we eat regularly, keep stocked for all of them, and just refill when we grocery shop. They are fast, easy, tasty and lower calorie, with one portion being 300-500 calories--DH will generally eat 2 portions, unless he is cutting back as well. We just pick what we feel like eating on any given night. So it is routine, with no real planning required.

Finally, we eat out rarely, so when we do, I pretty much get what I want. Within reason anyway, no fettucini alfredo here. I just watch the portion sizes and take at least half home. I do like your idea of having things picked out in advance if you do eat out often.

And FWIW, I found all this changed pretty radically when my daughter was born last fall, and we resorted to survival mode for a while. Things got more sane at about 3 months if I remember right! Not quite back to normal yet at 10 months, but getting there. I had the great 60 lb pregnancy and am slowing closing back in on my maintenance weight.

Anne

Thanks for the reply, Anne, and congratulations on your baby daughter. I'm pretty close myself (week 38), and starting to get pretty apprehensive and excited at the same time.

I apologize if this can be found in another thread somewhere, but how long after the birth did it take before you felt (fairly) normal working out? I've been fairly active before I was pregnant despite my size, and I had just started with a trainer the day before I found out I was pregnant. I've been working with her the whole pregnancy, but I've not been able to push myself in the same way I have when working out in the past. I'm just wondering how long it will be before I can really hit it hard.

I think you're right about carrying snacks with me, as opposed to relying on my..erm.... decision-making skills when hungry and in a grocery store. I just haven't figured out what are good snacks to carry. Non-squishy fruits (apples...?), bars (any good brands to recommend? I just bought a box of Clif bars at Costco to try - at least they're organic), but I prefer for them to be sort of emergency rations, rather than a regular part of my day.

And it's not like I'm out running around all the time. I have an office, with a fridge, and a microwave. I think I'm just still rebelling a little bit against the idea of having to plan. It is so against my nature and my current lifestyle, but I also know it is soooo soooo necessary in order for me to be successful.

-Sara

Sara,

My pregnancy was complicated, so I really didn't work out at all after 10 weeks. I was so ready to work out after the birth--a c-section FWIW, was walking at 1 week and swimming at 4, and trying to run again at 6. I was pretty desperate to get moving again, and knowing what I know now, I probably would have taken it a little easier on myself. Sleep deprivation and breast feeding are HARD on a person. Then DD went to day care at 4 months and the string of illnesses hit, and that has been another story. Suffice it to say that the first year has been rough, with lots of 2 steps forward, 1 back. I keep hanging in. And as Mel has so thoughtfully reminded me, once you actually have the baby, you can no longer afford to put yourself first, and things get harder. That was all very abstract to me, until DD was actually born--you'd think 9 months would be enough time to get used to the fact that you are building another person and the job is just begun when the baby arrives. But it was all pretty abstract until she showed up.

I do like the idea of carrying fruit around, but I'm so absent-minded I tend to leave a piece in my gym bag for a couple of weeks. I have found that this is VERY BAD, so I usually stick to some kind of engineered food for my carrying around back-ups. There are better and worse choices, so read the labels. For example, Luna is made by Clif bar, but with about 170 calories as opposed to 250 calories. But some of them have high saturated fat content with lots of palm kernel oil, and they are more expensive than Clifs. Personally, I like the Mojo bars, since they have nuts and are saltier, but you'd just have to find something you like. Lots of people like protein bars for hunger control, but I find them mealy and yucky. And good old Nature Valley granola checks in at 90 cal/bar but they come in packages of two, so guess what I eat??

Good luck with the birth, and be good to yourself.

Anne