Teriyaki Turkey Meatball Bowls Meal Prep

Today I spent some time meal prepping.  I made Teriyaki Turkey Meatball Bowls.  I had one for lunch and it was pretty good!

Ingredients per serving:

• Kroger Reduced Fat Frozen Turkey Meatballs - 85g (6 meatballs per serving)
• Green Giant Frozen Cauliflower Rice - 85g (the package says you get four one cup servings but I really only ended up with four 1/2 cup servings out of the package so I used my old food scale to weight the grams just to be sure - I bought this thing over 20 years ago at Weight Watchers and it still works like a champ!)
• Coconut Secret Coconut Aminos Teriyaki Sauce - 1 tablespoon per serving (I actually found this at my local Kroger and I do NOT live in a large area so I was quite surprised to see it!)
• Member's Mark Steamable Broccoli Florets - 85g
• Kroger Canned Pineapple Chunks - 141g (drained)

I precooked everything in the microwave except the pineapple.  I like the Green Giant cauliflower rice that comes in a steamable bag so I cooked that on high for 6 minutes.  The broccoli I bought comes in a steamable bag as well so I cooked that on high for 8 minutes.  For the meatballs I put 24 meatballs in a glass bowl and poured 1/4 cup of the teriyaki sauce over it.  I cooked it on high for 3 minutes.  After it came out I tossed in the canned pineapple and stirred it around to coat the pineapple.

I'm using some two compartment reusable meal prep containers that I found on Amazon - they seem to be ok but I think I might invest in some better containers at some point.  I'm not sure I trust these not to leak in my lunchbag.  In the large section I put 85g of the cauliflower rice and then topped it with 6 meatballs and 141g (approx 5 ounces) of the pineapple - I divvied up the remaining sauce among the four containers.  In the smaller section I put 85g of the broccoli.  Feel free to add salt, pepper, or other seasonings that you like.  I found that the teriyaki sauce tasted really good so I only put a little bit of salt and pepper on the broccoli.  I'm guessing that it will be best to heat this up for about 3-5 minutes on 50% power.  If it turns out different, I will come back and edit this post.  The one I had for lunch today I popped in for a minute on high since most everything was still fairly warm from the initial cooking.

This was really easy and I was done before I knew it!  The most time was spent waiting for the microwave to finish cooking.  Four healthy lunches ready to go!!

Nutrition:
Calories: 390
Fat: 9g
Carbs; 62.5g
Protein: 19g

Time is Flying!

Can you believe it's already May?!?!  I can't!!  I finished out my juice fast at about day 11 but my hubby is still going strong!  I've lost track of how many days he's been juicing now.  He took a meal off here and there when we had something going on but for the most part it's been pure juicing for him.  He has lost 20.6 just since he started juicing and is down 27.6 from his highest in October.  I'm so proud of him!!

I lost 11.9 in April through a combination of juicing at the beginning of the month and ending the month with calorie counting (WW Freestyle just doesn't work for me!) - most of the loss was through juicing though.  Unfortunately, I had a gain of 1.3 this week even though I was right on target with my calories.  When I decided to stop juicing I cancelled my WW app subscription and started using iTrackBites to track my calories.  It works really well for calorie counting and I highly recommend it.  However after my gain this week I started doing more research into how I could have gained when I knew I had a calorie deficit.  I read up on macros and how different body types react differently to certain combinations of carbs, fat, and protein.  Long story short - not all calories are made equal!  I know, so simple but for some reason my brain just clicked on that reality that probably everyone already knows.  It really made a lot of sense to me so I have decided to give macro counting a try.

I looked and looked through iTrackBites trying to find a way to easily track my macros and while I could see the macro counts for each individual food, I didn't find any area of the app that would add them up for me.  I am way too lazy/busy/opposed/whatever to using math to that extent!!  I knew there had to be a better way since so many people are on the macros bandwagon.

One of the blogs I researched for info on macros was Roni Noone's blog.  She shared that she uses My Fitness Pal.  I used MFP years ago and I still had it on my phone so during my lunch break I opened it up and started looking through the options.  I put in what I had eaten today so far and then put in what I planned for dinner.  I quickly realized that I was way too low on protein and way too high on carbs - hmmm...could that have been my problem all along.  I made some adjustments to my dinner plan and ended up getting pretty close to perfect at the end of it all.  I will definitely make some different decisions tomorrow!!

I really like MFP so far.  I put in my weight and goals and it figured my macros and my calorie goals for me.  I'll be completely transparent here - I'm 5'7" and I weight 234.7 (ugh!).  The goals the app set for me in order to be able to lose 1.5# a week are:

Calories: 1,390
Carbs: 174g
Fat: 46g
Protein: 70g
(and a bunch of other ones too but these are the ones I plan to watch the closest)

I love how the app tells you what you have left to use rather than showing you what you have used - again more math that I do not want to take part in!!  Here are how my numbers turned out today:

Calories:  31 left
Carbs: 9g left
Fat: 3g left
Protein: I went 5g over on this one

I feel really good that I did well on these numbers today.  I did have a little more sugar than I should have but I'll work on that tomorrow.  I think the granola bar I had for a snack is probably what put me over in that category.

I sure hope this new way of eating is the key to getting to a healthy weight range!!