Lessons from the 1st workweek of the year:

1. Meal Planning isn't sufficient for our household.  It works much better when the meal is fully (or almost fully) and ready to go at 4:45/5 PM.  Too much prep needed at the time of cooking means it will either not get done and we will just scavenge the house/fridge for packaged meals, or it will get done after substantial snacking around 5 plus dinner around 7.  This is not meeting our goal of eating less/healthier.

2. Focus on having meals prepped and ready to go and less on the actual meal planned for that day.  My planner has "Meatless Monday",  "Seafood Tues",  "Roast Anything Wed",  "Taco Thurs",  'Seafood Friday",  "Anything Goes Sat" and "Roast Sunday."  So far, none of those expected meals happened on the expected day (but Tacos tonight and seafood does look likely.)  Monday's meal got served last night as I finally had enough time to actually do the 15 min prep and get it going. 

What is working though is having the meals in the house and knowing what will go into them.  I have food in the house for five more meals and even if they aren't in the order that is expected, it is great to know generally what we have and what it will take to get it ready to go.  We had Monday's meal last night and Tuesday's meal (fish sticks) on Monday. 

3.  Days will go more smoothly if prepped snacks are included.  I have salad that still isn't chopped up.  But the carrots, celery, and peppers that were chopped up are used.  YUM.

4.  The Instant Pot and slow cooker are incredible tools which are making this so much easier.

So full prep is really the key for this to work.  Last night I cooked up a ton of chicken, half shredded in the Instant Pot for Tacos tonight and half roasted for lunches.   Friday is a seafood chowder which will cook in the slow cooker all day (seafood in at the end.)

So I stepped up the prep last night and tonight and Friday are ready to go.

The husband and I went with our son for his annual check up last week.  He has always been tall,  he has consistently been in the 95% percentile for height and usually around 85% for weight.  At his age, this has now flagged him as just on the edge of being overweight.  It's the first time an MD has indicated that we need to watch his weight so he doesn't go over the line. 

My husband has always been tall and thin; just in the last two years has he gained any real weight in his life.  He was shocked and angry.   I've noticed since high school that my perception of someone else's weight was affected by how much I weighed at the time; for instance, now that I am obese, people who are overweight look pretty normal to me.  I became overweight in my early 30s and have bounced back and forth between being obese and overweight for the last decade, since having my son.  My son looks very normal to me;  I mean, I can see that he has filled out a bit looking at his school pictures this year vs last year, but I would not think he was overweight or even close to it.  Perception. GAH.

I do not want to start him on this horrible weight treadmill.  This has hugely increased my motivation to make this meal planning/prep thing work.