Personal trainer food is a frozen food you may want to look into. Pre-portioned vacuum packed meats and veggies that are shipped to you frozen and get steamed in the bag they come in or reheated in oven.

Absolutely do what works for you!

I don't really have any advice to offer, but I wanted to chime in and mention that I relied on frozen meals a few years back to help out with my portion control for my lunches, and I lost about 30 pounds that summer. :)

I hadn't really touched them in ages, but I actually bought a set of 6 at Sam's Club on a whim just a few days ago. I had a baby this month, and since his arrival was earlier than planned I didn't get the chance to prep and freeze all the meals I'd wanted to ahead of time. Knowing the hubby would soon be going back to work and that I'd be spending days taking care of a newborn by myself, I figured they'd come in as a handy back-up plan for lunches for days when I don't have time to cook or am just simply too tired. It beats ordering take-out or stocking up on other convenience food! ;)

To me, it's a sensible way to help myself get back on plan now that I can concentrate on losing weight again. And if it's something that works for you as well, go for it. Congrats on your weight loss and especially getting yourself back on track! :) I had a regain myself back in 2010 before I started losing again, and I had to pause most of this year for my pregnancy. I totally get wanting to find a way to get back into the groove of things; I personally have to work pretty hard to get my portions back under control again since I got used to eating quite a bit more, especially in the third trimester. :dizzy:

Kaplods - I can identify with your hubby - hence the reason I've curtailed my cooking ;)

I've looked at it - a bit too over my price range, and I dunno why, but vacuum sealed stuff (similar to Nutrisystem) smells chemically to me. :)

Elladorine - congratulations on the new baby! Yes, I also think it is a sensible way to get back on track and portion controlled.

Yeah, I say do it if it works for you.

Screw sodium if your BP is OK. It only leads to temporary weight gain (water).

I eat a lot of canned fish. Economical (mostly, anyway, my Millers Jumbo Lump Crab in cans was $150/dozen from frickin' Walmart!). Very healthy. Shelf-stable. Cooked. And perfectly portioned. And, yes, I will eat it for the rest of my life.

There are super-healthy canned varieties out there. So there must be super-healthy frozen ones too.

I like the idea of adding steamed veggies to supplement. I also add eggs (boiled, poached, scrambled).

Eggs are my "super food" - only 70 to 80 calories apiece, and packed with protein. They are my go-to food when I need tasty protein. Incidentally, lump crab is really great inside an omelette.

And yes, there are actually really good frozen varieties out there. Many are flash-frozen, which is better for nutrients as well as flavor. And, adding extra steamed veggies to them makes them even better.

Whatever works for you. That's how I look at it.

Today is day three of my "back on track with portion control" plan. Yesterday, my menu looked like this:

Breakfast (I'm notorious for not being hungry at all) - coffee, half&half, stevia - and a pear

Lunch: Progresso New England Clam Chowder soup with green beans added for extra veggie.

Snack: 1 cup celery and two cups Ginger Miso broth from Trader Joe's (15 calories a cup, can't beat that)

Dinner: 2 servings of my own shrimp/cabbage/broccoli slaw/green onion stir fry.

Snack: Naughtiness - three snickers bite-sized candies

2 glasses red wine

I went slightly over my caloric limit for the day - today, apparently, my body is cleaning itself out. TMI, maybe, but after years of struggling with constipation on low carb, I'll take it. lol

Tonight, for New Years' Eve dinner, we're meeting friends for sushi. I'm off to investigate approximate caloric intake of sushi rolls. :)

What on earth is your daily caloric goal? That all must be under 1000 calories.

coffee - 50
pear - 100
soup - 250
beans - 25
celery - 10
broth - 30
shrimp & veggies - 250
wine - 250
snickers - 150

pulease1, I love, love Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers! I wish they would expand that product line even more. I eat one frozen meal pretty much every day as part of my diet. I also eat a few cans of Light Progresso soups every week. I absolutely use eating frozen dinners for portion control and portion education. This is the first diet I've ever attempted and to say I was ignorant about how many calories were in foods is an understatement ><. I still find it very difficult to estimate the calories in things I cook myself, so prepackaged stuff helps me with the math. That said, one of my New Year's resolutions is to begin to learn to cook better and more interesting/tasty foods. I am envious of the delicious and healthy meals i read about on here that some ladies and gents prepare. To a rather crappy cook like me, it seems like some sort of wizardry, lol. However this new lifestyle of mine is a marathon, not a sprint, and I'm not there yet when it comes to, you know, getting fresh ingredients cooking portioning and freezing, lol, but, someday! Until then I'm not going to beat myself up over it if you know what I mean. Good luck with your diet :)

Kaplods, thanks for the tip on the Birdseye Meal Starters. I'm going to check that out on my weekly shopping trip on Friday. If they're on sale or I have a coupon, I also buy the little frozen cartons of Green Giant steamers I think they are called... Veggies with some beans or potatoes.

Ian, I eat several envelope things of salmon each week, usually over salad. I'm not really into eating a lot of meat, but I do like fish and seafood! I usually get hungry reading your posts. I have no idea why, but I had completely forgotten about crabmeat. I need to branch out.

Last night I was reading the labels on the Kung Pao and Fried rice Birdseye mealstarters and I found that the serving sizes listed were a little off. The fried rice dish listed 2 servings, but when I did the math it came to 2.53 servings. The kung pao claimed 2.5 servings but came out to 2.89.

This amounted to approximately an extra 100 calories per bag.

This is pretty typical for prepackaged items that have more than one seving, especially those that list the serving information as "about ____", but even when there is no "about" or "approximatly" in the serving info, the math can be off.

I'm ok with imprecise calorie counts, but it still annoys me when I find it.

And another thing the package doesn't make clear (unless I missed the info on the bag) is that the calorie count does not include the meat.



On another note, I did have to laugh at a friend's recent comment that frozen dinners did not teach anything about portion size or how to cook and eat "real food," after I revealed that I had been relying on frozen dinners more often as my arthritis and fibro has sapped more of my energy and interest in cooking.

I laughed and reminded her that I had lost 100 lbs cooking mostly from scratch and I had been dieting and studying weight loss and nutrition for more than 40 years. I knew how to eat, cook, and portion control and that eating frozen dinners was not going to make me forget everything I already knew.

Right now, it's about 1200 calories. Shrimp and veggies included sesame oil, fish oil, and red chili paste, so there was added fat, and I ate two servings of it.

With my peculiar metabolic issues, actually keeping calories between 1000 and 1300 a day is optimal. :)

TooWicky - I wish they'd expand the steamers as well. They're really pretty yummy, and easy to add extra veggies like broccoli to as well, to increase fullness and just add more veggies. :)

I have the opposite problem - I'm a good cook and I like to cook, so I have to virtually stop myself from cooking for periods of time, because when I do, I experiment too much, and tend to make what otherwise would have been a healthy recipe much less healthy. ;)

Anyway, Thus far, I've dropped 5 lbs in a few days - I don't expect that trend to continue so quickly, but it is encouraging!