Now that I have the vegan thing down as far as cooking goes, I am going to start working these things in this week:
1. Setting a calorie limit each day.
This is how I've lost weight in the past, and it's really the only way to go. If I'm not paying attention, unlimited calories seem to enter my piehole! I'll be using sparkpeople.com to track what I eat.
2. Shop frugally!
This is a tough one, because vegan stuff can be daunting and it's easier to buy expensive packed foods like Tofurky. However, my recent (post forthcoming!) foray into veggie lunchmeat making was a HUGE success. Seriously, Dustin slapped my hands because I kept sawing pieces off of the still-hot loaf. Anyway, we want to buy a new car soon AND I have to start saving to pay for my grad school classes in the fall. (My employer provides tuition reimbursement, but I will have to front the money until after the class when the reimburse me, because some of the "pre-admission" courses I have to take aren't covered by federal loans since they're not part of a specific track for a degree. Pain in the ass!) This will involve a lot of experiments like one Dustin did yesterday where he made bread in the bread machine with all-purpose flour ($1.99 a bag) instead of bread flour ($5 a bag.) It was perfect! I'm using an app for my iPhone (I think it's just called "Groceries") to organize my shopping list before we go shopping so I don't end up with a bunch of crap that I don't need!
Few things..one is the calorie thing definitely works. I lost 40 lbs last year by just setting calorie limits, and, have stuck to it pretty well. You just can't limit foods you like, or "diet", because you will always fall off the wagon that way, which is why the calorie thing works so well.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I am a nutcase about shopping frugally!! We eat mostly vegan, and mostly organic, so, it gets tough, but, I still try to stick to it as much as possible. I'm sure you are familiar with how to shop well at whole foods. I love their 365 organic stuff, especially canned goods, pasta sauces, and frozen veggies. Great quality, and super cheap. Also, Big Lots has a lot of great options as far as soups, spices,rice, snacks..things like that. I have also found that a lot of the brands that I shop often ( like lightlife, silk, amy's, muriglen, bob's red mill) have web mailing lists, that if you sign up, they send you all kinds of coupons.
But, the list and meal plan are always key.
Good Luck!