Puppies, Husbands and Other Things That Do Not Equal Excuses

First things first: A brand new bouncing puppy has been added the to Grumpy Family – please meet Oscar. He’s like … sorta happy to meet you.

http://instagram.com/p/x-vKYpkgjD/?modal=true

Basically I’m going to lose friends because I’m going to post nothing but pictures of Oscar all day long on Facebook and I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK. DEFRIEND ME. I WILL NOT STOP POSTING. K?

Onward, friends. Now, the big challenge with Oscar other than the fact that he’s an 8-week-old puppy and eats everything and poops everything … the BIG challenge is that I have a tendency to make excuses to not work out. Like if I worked 15 minutes later than usual, I claim I’m tired and gift myself a night off. That is a terrible excuse. As one of my motivational quotes says…

Planned Puppyhood
So … I’m not going to use things like puppies and husbands and work keep me from my fitness goals any more. No excuses. That’s what I want you to remind yourself every morning when your alarm goes off to tell you it’s time to work out: No excuses – not one. Mother Teresa didn’t make excuses and she changed the entire effing world. So get your ass out of bed and go say good morning to Shaun T, people. Get!

It also helps if you make this the background on your phone: 

Ok, so what’s going to make not skipping your workouts easier? Planning your meals ahead, and getting them as ready as you can on Sunday so you have barely any work when you get home and are trying to talk yourself out of exercise.

This is what I call Planned Puppyhood. We all have crazy lives, crazy schedules, crazy families with crazy plans and then on top of that, life always throws you a curveball. Get over it – and plan ahead. Your Sunday is getting overhauled, but I am telling you, it will make the next five days so much easier.

Here are some tips: 

• Plan your entire week’s breakfasts, snacks, lunch and dinners. Make a calendar of exactly what you’re going to eat each day so you don’t cheat yourself.
• Go grocery shopping on Sunday and get everything you need for your meal plan. Helpful Hint: If you choose recipes that use similar ingredients, your food will be easier to prep in advance. For example, if you make fajitas for Taco Tuesday and turkey chili for Thursday’s dinner, the peppers and onions will be used for both recipes. You’ll spend less money and gain more time. If your fajitas use ground turkey, well – then you’ve just seriously made your life easy.
• Cut all your veggies – this includes any snack veggies and any recipe veggies. Example: chop half the pepper for the chili and slice the other half for the fajitas.
• Grill a package of chicken – this makes salads and lunch wraps SO EASY. And fajitas! And it also makes adding shredded chicken to recipes easy – why? Because it’s already cooked and ready to be shred, that’s why.
• Cook any brown rice you’ll use for the week and store in a gallon ziplock. Brown rice is yummier after it’s been in the fridge anyway.
• Cook any meals you can in advance and put them in the freezer. Like that turkey chili! Helpful Hint: Let those recipes cool FULLY before putting them in the freezer. You do not want food poisoning and this has been known to cause it. Also, it makes your food taste like plastic when you thaw it if you put it in there hot. I don’t know why…

Ever since I started Sunday Prepping, my life has been easier. I make less excuses to eat out – which was a big one for me – and I don’t make excuses not to work out because most times all I have to do is pop the already prepped dinner in the oven and wait for the timer to pop off. This gives me like an HOUR to work out. You’ll hate the Sunday dishes, but make your husband do those. He won’t mind (WILL YOU, HUSBAND!!?!?!).

Here is an example of our meal plan for this week!

Sunday Prep: Cook turkey chili, make stuffing for peppers, bake banana bread, make casserole (minus the final step of baking it), cut broccoli and grapefruit for snacks and make stuffing for enchiladas, and finally, grill a package of chicken.

• Monday:
  • Breakfast – 1 slice whole wheat banana bread
  • Snack – Apple
  • Lunch – Chocolate Shakeology w/peanut butter and unsweetened almond milk
  • Snack – 1/2 english muffin
  • Dinner – Barley-Stuffed Peppers with Baked Chicken Tenders
• Tuesday: 
  • Breakfast – 1 slice whole wheat banana bread
  • Snack – 1/2 grapefruit w/1 tsp honey
  • Lunch – Vanilla Shakeology w/cooled cup of coffee
  • Snack – 1 cup of broccoli w/2 tbsp rosemary white bean hummus
  • Dinner – Brown Rice Casserole with Cauliflower and Broccoli
• Wednesday: 
  • Breakfast – 1 whole wheat english muffin w/peanut butter and bananas
  • Snack – 1/2 grapefruit with honey
  • Lunch – Chocolate Shakeology with strawberries and unsweetened almond milk
  • Snack – Carrots and hummus
  • Dinner – Turkey chili (made on Sunday, in the freezer!)

…. and so on through next Sunday! I know this seems a bit cray-cray, but trust me… you won’t regret it when your husband asks on Thursday, “What’s for dinner?” and you say “Sweet potato enchiladas that are already made all I have to do is put them in the oven and bake them for 25 minutes!! WHAT WHAT!!!”

What ways do you prepare yourself for Mondays to make your week easier?

For more shameless pictures of Oscar, feel free to follow me on Instagram … I went a bit overboard on capturing his first weekend in the CLE (he loves everything about this city already!).