Finishing up getting ready to begin

So just got back to my home from going to the store that provides the ready made meals. The plan they recommend for me clocks in at $149 per week which includes 4 meals per day x 6 days plus a morning protein shake the one for my girlfriend is $115 per week. The companies focus is on clean eating whole foods so minimal to no dairy is used and it is relatively gluten free it includes “lean proteins, nutrient dense vegetables, healthy fats, and grains”. according to their information.

When we arrived at the store my girlfriend and I were greeted by one of the employees there, she sat down and discussed my goals and the different options they offered. She explained they were not so much focused on the scale, instead their focus was proper nutrition and making people feel better through better nutrition. The result being more energy, better health and therefore more focus on eating healthy. The main purpose of this company was to educate and help people lead a healthy lifestyle change not a diet.

I explained some of the struggles I had been through with my weight. How every time I try to eat healthy by the third day in I feel like crap, drained of energy and in a very bad mood from avoiding carbohydrates or cutting them down.  Usually by the third day I would break the better eating either because I was in such a bad mood or I did not feel like cooking. To make matters worse my girlfriend doesn’t get home until late three nights of the week at various times so by the time she gets home she is too sore from work to cook and I am too hungry to wait and to worn out to cook. Also due to time constraints we just end up ordering out three times a week  not including dinner out on the weekend and breakfast out once on the weekend.

In essence we are eating out way too much which is only robbing us of energy and our health and we both know it, but habits are hard to break and even more so when you are stressed out. Combine that with the limited time I have each night of  trying to run a side business to generate extra income after my primary job and eating healthy becomes an “if this than not that” proposition which counters all of my financial goals for this year and beyond. It is easy to realize that health should come first before business  after all you cannot run a business nor is money any good if you are dead.

Let me break from this main topic for a moment and address  time, money, and opportunity

Time:
Life is that constant ubiquitous battle of  time vs x where x is whatever activity we are doing. We trade time for money, we spend time making food, we spend time with friends, we spend time doing daily tasks such as cleaning dishes, vacuuming the house etc. It is the one resource once spent we can never get back. However in my case if I spend time eating right which will leave less time to pursue business ventures then that becomes a circular trap , again only so many hours in day so it becomes an “if this than not that” (one or the other) scenario and I have to find ways to be extremely efficient with my time. However time efficiency takes extreme discipline and usually requires money to acquire people , processes or  resources to assign to tasks requiring time.

Money:
The less money you have the less ability you have to maximize your time spent. The more money you have the more you can maximize your time as you will have the resource that can free up your personal time by assigning those tasks to other people to spend time on those tasks, this is the entire basis for every economy where time and skills are traded for money.

Opportunity:
The other factor is money buys opportunity which is why I am focused on creating more money so that I can have the opportunity to help others with it, to travel, to  have the financial resources for financial security. For example if I am on a trip and fall ill and my medical insurance does not cover me I need to have enough financial resources to get the medical help I need immediately or else it could cost me my life. My financial priorities are obviously my own but we all have them and we all have limited time and at the most basic level money provides opportunity that would otherwise not exist.

Back to the main topic….

Currently cooking a meal at the last minute 3x per week causes me a great amount of stress it also take at least an hour of time away or more between preparing the food, cooking and cleaning afterwards Considering I only have about 4 hours after work each night of  the work week it really cuts into that time. So these pre-made meals are a perfect fit for me and meet several criteria

• Maximize my time, quick and easy to prepare and cleanup
• Eating Healthier, provides more energy both physically and mentally
• Portion Control, instead of woofing down a dozen wings and several slices of pizza or cooking my own food and having a huge amount leftover I have exactly what my body needs no more no less.
• KEEPS ME ON TRACK and REMOVES ALL EXCUSES, which for me is by far the biggest benefit .

There is nothing preventing me from still cooking and I do plan on getting back to it but now my lifestyle change is “fault tolerant” as it is called in computer terms. What does this mean? Well whenever stress, laziness or whatever else kicks in and tries to derail me into calling the local pizza shop, going to the drive thru at a fast food place or ordering subs I can simply open the fridge and pop one of these meals into the microwave or oven and dinner is done!

My whole reason for going this route is simple. I looked at what was holding me back, it was getting back into the swing of cooking and stress from not having enough time along with physical pain from standing too long while doing this activity. To try to watch what I eat and use my already limited time to try to run a side business the two goals work against each other which puts me in a conundrum of realizing I will be trapped on a hamster wheel if I try to balance both right from the beginning. At the same time just focusing on one leaves me frustrated that I cannot work on the other and causes stress.  I can’t sit idle and I also cannot keep doing the things I have been so these prepared meals became the perfect answer.

The way the plan works is you order ahead of time as they do not have any subscription boxes on hand ready to go. However, they do have individual meals available in the freezer cases right in the store at $6.00 each which honesty is a decent price considering its already prepared and the selection is quite good covering all major proteins sources such as fish, turkey, chicken and beef. As I said before they are also portioned correctly so no overeating can occur which is common when cooking for yourself or others.  I decided to pick up 10 of them for now, one of each flavor and some extras to try them out. My girlfriend picked up 6 of them to try if she likes the food then she is going to stop buying groceries and go on the meal plan.

You might be wondering about sodium these are not your typical frozen meals available at a grocery store as these do not have the added sodium that those do. They also are well balanced each meal being between 300 – 400 calories. These are made fresh and they have a 5 day shelf life or can be frozen for a longer shelf life. They require being put in the refrigerator 6 hours before use to gradually thaw them out.

I am fine with making my breakfast most mornings but I do need to inject some variety in it, eating 3 egg whites and 1 whole egg everyday is getting old.  Lunch I need to work on too, my go to has been prepackaged salads from the grocery store. Again I need more variety my answer could be in the meal plan but $149 per week is a bit costly. Then again I’m not having to spend an hour or more prepping food, cooking it and the cleanup afterwards. Also I save time driving to the grocery store and back, the time spent in the store while avoiding people crashing into me with their carts, waiting in line at the deli counter, checking produce, items being out of stock, waiting to be cashed out in the check out line and loading and unloading the car. This is another hour minimum to two hour exercise in frustration.

Before buying these meals I did run the numbers in my head with how much I have been spending when we eat out and came to a total of about $150 to $200 a week between the cost of food, delivery charges and tips. This is only dinners and the once per weekend breakfast. It does not include my $60 to $100 weekly grocery bill per week for lunch and breakfast food. So I can afford the weekly plan but this runs counter to my goal of  wanting to save money. My current solution is a hybrid approach to address the problem area which has always been dinner. Now that I have a solution I will begin my Journey tomorrow.

I will have one more update before tomorrow..

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