Yes! I love frozen goodies in the freezer ready to go again. I'm in school full time, working full time, exhausted full time, and dirt poor ALL the time! I keep all the bits of veggies that I don't use IN my dinner in a large ziplock back in my freezer to turn in to vegetable stock for more soups in the future, as well - just as another step toward staying frugal. That may or may not have been a tip from 3FC, I honestly can't remember.


Basically I just do whatever kaplods tells me to do, lol. I use V8 juice cans as a base for soups that is easy and yummy, and I keep brown rice cooked and ready to go in my freezer to add to meals (just be sure to put them in a plastic bag and crunch it up every thirty minutes-hour as it's freezing so it doesn't lump!). That woman is such an inspiration!

You've got time to post here. So you do have some discretionary time, regardless of having the only important, tenuous, and time-consuming job in the world.

well, i'm alone too, and also went through a breakup from ****!!!! i didnt binge; i couldn't eat for awhile. living alone just means that not everything is gonna get done. fat or thin. i will spare you MYYYY complaints about living alone, cuz i still gotta live. you gotta eat regardless. single people eat and married people eat.

definitely use a computer to track calories. those sites mentioned are wonderful. havent used all of them but did use sparkpeople. when you measure the ingredients for the recipe, there's the measurements. add up all the calories for each ingredient. WRITE IT DOWN ON THE RECIPE. when the dish is done, divide into fourths, or whatever, divide the total calories by the whatever portion, and there is the calorie for your portion for that meal. next time you make that recipe, half the counting is already done. make a cheat sheet of calories in things like apples, carrots. after a while you will have apples memorized??? not real hard to do.

I'm pulling double duty! I'm working on lesson plans, plus revising my sub folder, while posting on here :)

sounds like you could totally pull double duty and count up your calories then :)

Ya'll are scaring me. I don't think she was claiming that she has the only hard job in the world. :(

I am doing WW online. Drum roll.. you've gotta set up foods!!! if the food you are looking for isn't listed in their points database, you've also got to enter that food. that means you enter four pieces of information besides the portion and then set the food as a favorite. but i have so many of the same foods that i took one day awhile to set up most of my stuff. when i grocery shop, i put new foods in. restaurants that are not in their database are the same way. you have to go to their site to get the four pieces of info and then enter it and set the food as a favorite.

Just wondering, though... would it be easier to cook then freeze meals or just do things like Lean Cuisine?

Not trying to be pushy or hurt anyones feelings, but I just know that I was the same way always thought it would be way too hard to eat better and to exercise too hard to make myself a priority. But now that I've actually made a commitment to myself I see it isn't that hard at all. I love my new lifestyle. Once you start eating better you will feel better and you will have more energy and yes make time for exercise even if it means you get up 30 mins earlier to squeeze in 20 mis do it. i broke two bones in my leg in april, had a pretty nasty surgery and had 2 plates and 12+ screws inserted and I am now working out 5-6 days a week. Its not motivation you need its dedication... make commitment to yourself that you are going to get healthy. In the end you will be so happy you did!

It's easiest to not do anything - but seriously, not doing anything got us where we are now. So ANYTHING you choose to do - and it's a complete choice - is going to take some work. You're not trying to maintain, you're talking about wanting to remove extra weight that is making your organs struggle to work harder ... you will have to work at this.

Well, it would definitely be easier to eat Lean Cuisine, BUUUT:

As a woman on a serious budget - LC's and the like add up to way too much $ after a while. Cooking your own food is a lot less expensive! I do it all at once on Sundays.

Also, you'll find that calories, fat, and especially sodium is significantly higher in frozen meals. You can eat more food for less calories if you cook yourself.

And homemade tastes better :)

If you can squeeze in a weekend hour or two to cook for yourself, it might be a nice me-time ritual. You give a lot to those kids - it will feel nice to take an hour or two for yourself!

Dunno. I worry a little about the health ramifications of processed foods, plastics, preservatives, etcetera so I try to steer clear and focus on eating real food that I KNOW I can readily identify - AND I can't afford to eat frozen meals every day :)

Plus learning how to cook, sew, knit, mend - that type of stuff is important to me in general :)

Calorie counting isn't the only way. Weight Watchers isn't the only way either.

There's also Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, other prepared food delivery options.

You don't have to cook and you get your food pre-portioned out for you. Weight loss is inevitable if you follow plan and there's nothing medically wrong with you.

However, it does add up.

That's the problem, because you have to figure out what is more valuable for you:

1) Do nothing (free, no time required)
2) To count calories (free, requires some time to get the hang of it, requires time to think and plan ahead for your meals)
3) Pay a company to teach you how to count calories (nominal fee, access to lots of online tools to play with, proven method of weight loss, support for questions/issues)
3) Company that delivers/prepares food for you (expensive, no time required from you, no counting calories, no need to think about the food)

Ultimately, it's going to be up to you to decide how much you want to handle right now.

If your job is really as crazy as you say it is, then maybe this isn't the time to focus on your health and you should focus on keeping your job and getting tenure or whatever else you need to get there (or a new job!).

What you don't want to do is start something that you won't be able to follow and then feel bad that you are "failing". Weight loss is hard enough as it is without starting with the deck stacked against you.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me like weight watchers is the same as calorie counting, except you have to transfer those calories into "points"... seems like more work to me, but I'm not that familiar with the program, other than knowing people who follow it...

yep. different people have more obstacles to overcome in order to lose weight. there will always be people who have nearly no obstacles but i'm not one of them. and neither is every skinny person. if you read enough posts in different places by people who either are skinny or have lost and maintained, alot of them are the ones making sacrifices to get up and exercise every day at 4am or at 11pm at night, hauling food around, etc. i can't find words to say how much i hate some of the things i have going on now and in the past, but regardless i want to lose some more weight, and i have to make the choices to do it as much as i can. yeah, i've had a back injury and a knee injury, and two other surgeries, and i've still lost some weight. and still got more to lose and still working on it.