Counting Containers

I’ve never been a fan of counting calories. I’ve tried a couple of app:s where you insert your foods and it gives you all details about how many calories you’ve had and how much more you need etc. It’s doable, but I find it taking too much of my time trying to look for right foods from lists and picking the correct amounts.

Last summer I started working with a Beachbody program called 21 Day Fix Extreme. The program comes with five coloured containers, same as in 21 Day Fix. Instead of counting calories, you count containers. There is a method to count the calorie target depending how active your lifestyle is and how much you weight. Once you’ve found your calorie target, you look from a chart how many of each containers you should be eating. The bottom line is, if it fits in the container, you can eat it.

How to use containers?

With the program comes a list of allowed foods. The basic line is that green is for veggies, red is for protein, purple is for fruits,yellow for carbs, blue for fats and orange for seeds and teaspoon for healthy fats. Easy enough? Just fill your container with food and you’re ready to eat! The containers are easy to also to carry along -I often have a blue box of nuts in my purse just in case I get hungry.

At first, it of course took a little while to get used to the containers and remembering what product goes in the which container. But this, like everything, you get used to really fast and now the colours seem really easy to me.

How much to eat?

As I mentioned earlier you need to calculate your calorie target. Depending on your target, you check the chart for right amounts. For me, the target is 1200-1499 kcal, which means 3 green, 2 purple, 4 red, 2 yellow, 1 blue, 1 orange and 2 teaspoons. With these containers, you don't need to eat the exact same amount of calories each day, in fact it's even better if the calorie amount varies a bit (as long as you stay in the limit of the allowed containers. I found that pretty quicly you also get the routine to containers and amounts, so even if you need to change your meal plan for the day, it's pretty easy to fill the right containers.

How to keep track of what your eating?

Of course there also is app:s you can find to help you keep track of how many containers you had at which meal and how many you still have left. Or if you're more of a paper and pen -type, there are tally sheets to be printed out to help you keep track. I used the tally sheets first, but once I got used to the app on my phone, I found it pretty useful. Once you see, that all the containers are used, it's time to close the kitchen for the day :)

How does one day with meals in containers look like?

I've shared with you a couple of my meal plans in past and now it's time to get those meal plans into actual foods :) I usually start my days with a Shakeology smoothie. I always throw in one green container full of spinach (or something else green). For lunch I had left overs from the day before: ground beef sauce with brown pasta and a side salad. And for dinner I made some chicken with brown rice and a side salad. Since the Shakeology is counted as 1 red, I had 3 portions of protein, 3 of veggies, 1 of purple and 2 of yellow from my main meal of the day.  I also added a teaspoon of olive oil on both of my side salads filling my healthy fats for the day.

As you can see from the picture below, even though I measure the foods with containers, I like to eat them from a plate. That way you also see how much each container is on a plate and after a while you won't be needing to use the containers all the time.

To fill in the rest of my containers, I had two snacks: Greek yogurt with chia seeds and a little pure vanilla extract (counted as free foods) and then an apple with almonds.

With that, I got all my containers filled quite easily. I've found that I have most trouble with the yellow container: usually I have either too much (especially when we have rye bread at home) or too little (when I eat a salad for lunch). I don't use the containers every day, since I know by now how much I should be eating, but I love the idea, that I know that they are there waiting for me, in case I need to get back to them after a weekend with cheat meals or vacation :)

Are you familiar with the 21 Day Fix containers or would you like to know more?

The Power of Accountability

The other day I shared with you my meal plan and told you that I make a new one every weekend. Well, as it turned out, last weekend was crazy busy and I just didn't get my meal plan done. I was going to do it on Monday, but for some reason I didn't. Luckily we had leftovers from Sunday, so Monday's dinner was done. Couple of weeks ago I made clean freezer meals, so I just picked out one of them for Tuesday, and phi-uh, problem solved again.

But then came Wednesday. That's the one day of the week that we have activities after school. My son has basketball right after school (we literally run to car from bus stop) and of course he (and the rest of the family) is starving by the time we get back home. On the way home from the community centre there is a pizzeria. Thinking about the dinner in the morning, I was really tempted to just settle for a pizza. But then I thought of the two accountability groups I'm coaching and how it would look to them:

1) I had an unhealthy pizza for dinner, even though I say you should avoid them, when not having a planned cheat meal
 
2) I failed in my nutrition just because I didn't take the couple of minutes to make the meal plan

So instead, I took a piece of salmon from freezer and made a quick salmon soup before heading for basketball. We had a delicious salmon soup with some real rye bread for dinner and I didn't have to feel guilty :) And after dinner I finished my meal plan for this week. That was a close call, but thanks to my awesome accountability groups, I made the healthier choice :)

Meal plan to the rescue

Hello everyone and happy Thanksgiving!

When my family moved to Canada almost 1.5 years ago, people asked me to start a blog about life here. I haven't really thought of myself as a writer so I didn't act on the blog -subject. Then again this summer, when I started coaching, I got again people suggesting me to start a blog. Again, it took me couple of months to get to it, but here it is! My blog and my very first post :)


My weeks usually end  by taking a look to the upcoming week: what's in the calender, what workouts I'll be doing and most importantly what is my meal plan. This long weekend changed my schedule a bit and even though I know it's Monday already, it feels like Sunday since the whole family is home. That's why also my meal planning got a bit delayed.

In my meal plans, I plan out the whole week: breakfasts, lunches and dinners and also snacks. I try to keep my calender in mind: am I going to be at home or running errands, have I made lunch -plans with someone, are there hobbies to go to in the evenings and so on.

So why do I take the time to make meal plans? Here's few reasons:

• it helps me keep track of what I'm eating
• I don't have to think everyday what to make for dinner
• I can buy most of my weeks groceries at one time (prevents me from running to store everyday and ending up buying things I don't need)  
• I save time and money          

And how do I do them? When making my first meal plans, I found them pretty hard to make. Then I asked each member of my family to give couple of meals they would like to see in our meal plan. That way everyone has an opinion in what kind of meals we're having. Now that I've been making  meal plans for several months, I just mix up the dinners from past weeks (and try to add some new ones every once in a while). By now I also know pretty well which meals I get leftovers for the next day and when I need to think of other ideas for lunch.
 
Last summer I did a program called 21 Day Fix Extreme and ever since I've kept the colour codes in my meal plan: green for veggies, red for protein, yellow for carbs and so on. The codes help me in making sure I'm having a balanced diet.

In my meal plan I have also scheduled my workouts. During week days, I usually workout first thing in the morning, when rest of the family is sleeping. I'm just waiting to get a new workout set, so meanwhile I'm combining PiYo and 21 Day Fix Extreme -workouts and running. Having the workouts planned out, I have my mind set first thing in the morning (or even the night before) in what kind of workout I'm heading to.

Hope you have a great and successful week!