A Pantry Meal and a Weight Loss Challenge

Every new year means it's time to reduce the frozen foods in my freezer. That means I get to act like a dog looking for a bone he forgot where he buried it.
I am forever digging up bags of stuff and hope it hasn't been eaten by Jack Frost.

The Nudge hates retrieving stuff from that freezer because most are unlabeled and dated and I can always wait for inevitable...."Sue, is this the chicken breast?" Really? a breast looks like a breast frozen or fresh, right? A sausage is a sausage and nothing else?

Well, not really. Under a layer of frost a boneless loin chop does look like a breast and chorizo? well, it could pass itself off as Hot Italian Sausages. Since organizing my life will make every one's life easier, labeling the freezer food is on my list of resolutions.

For now, I have to shuffle stuff from one shelf to another because I just know it has to be in there....
Now, while not a gourmet meal, on a 9° evening it warms up the tummy and with some applesauce and spicy mustard, it's a solid meal.

You will need a kielbasa of choice (I love Hillshire Farm's Turkey version), a knockwurst & bratwurst (with a butcher I can buy one of each) and a package of pirogi.
Sour cream, spicy mustard, applesauce and baked beans round out the meal and everything was in my pantry.

Now, this pantry meal was a good reason for this post but it was not the main reason.
I wanted to talk about a challenge that Eating Well magazine put forth to anyone who needed help keep the #1 resolution of just about as long as there have been resolutions.....eating and exercising to a healthier lifestyle.

I usually do not give these challenges a second look, but my doctor has been getting on my case to keep track of every amount of food that I swallow. He seems to think it will help me lower my BMI, which in turn will can help me never worry about Diabetes again.
I thought I could do it on my own but his statement to that was......
"If we fed you under a door, you would loose weight".

Meaning, if someone else weighs and portions my food, I will have no choice but to loose weight.
At first I was slightly insulted (OK, maybe more than slightly), but once in a while someone says something that really makes sense the more you think about it.

No longer slightly insulted, I opened my email to this invitation.
I decided to give it a try.

I downloaded the free app and after a few minutes I got the knack and set a profile, a plan and a weight goal.
I have to say, it's pretty complete and easy to use. One hint: make sure the amount of weight you want to loose and the time you want to loose it by is doable because they will set your daily calorie intake based on that and my daily "budget" is a mere 1360 calories. At first I thought it was impossible but since Monday (when I started) I have been under by over 100 calories.

It has also been eye opening to the fact that I do not the 5 small meals recommended for successful weight loss and that might be hard for me to do, so along with this challenge I have also downloaded two months worth of Diabetic meal plans. All about 1400 calories a day.

There is some shopping to be done but I plan on posting the recipes from the meal plan starting on January 18th (Sunday), which means I start eating them next week. I can not guarantee I will post a whole months worth in 30 days but I will post them all eventually. My life like most of yours, has hills in the way and not every day is exactly what I plan.

I do hope you at least read about the challenge. Of course the App developer would love you to upgrade to a premium subscription but that would be up to you. I am giving it a trial run before I decide.

Note: I was not compensated for this recommendation, they have no idea who I am or that I wrote a post about the App.

If you take the challenge I would love to hear how it's working for you.
Good luck!!