Sticking to a budget

When I’m in a bad mood and feeling resentful of the Weight Watchers treadmill, the main stick-to-beat-it-with that I can come up with is that it tends to deprive your eating life of spontaneity. I mean, obviously you could choose to approach the day with a laissez-faire attitude, and hope that intuitively your food choices fall within your points allowance. Me, I tend to develop a condition known as “points-blindness” when I do that. The only way for me to succeed is to plan out meals and snacks to within an inch of my life.

This seems to take an inordinate amount of time and I sometimes wonder if I make the whole process too difficult for myself. For instance, I read somewhere recently that the majority of people have a standard repertoire of no more than twelve dishes that they eat in rotation. That would make meal planning very easy, but I suspect I might keel over with boredom. Of course, there are dishes that I cook regularly but I don’t think, in all the four and a bit years that I have lived with D, that a week has ever gone by where I haven’t tried out at least one new recipe. I may well be a little obsessed. As well as subscribing to three food magazines a month (well, one of them is the Weight Watchers magazine which would perhaps best be described as…lifestyle. But it has recipes in it) I am frequently to be found surfing the net and bookmarking recipe sites as well. Oh, and I adore recipe books. I can sit and read them cover to cover like a novel. With all those choices out there, how could I ever restrict myself to twelve – or even a hundred and twelve – dishes for the rest of my lifetime??!

And hey, meal planning has perks other than point related ones. I find I actually spend a lot less money at the supermarket now because I have a plan and a subsequent shopping list and I tend not to deviate. So I’m learning to budget my points as well as my pounds. Hence the post title. Yes, cheesy.

In other news – I took my first Body Combat class in aaaaages last night and survived! Of all the Les Mills classes this is my absolute favourite – it’s basically a cross between aerobics and martial arts all set to very loud, thumpy music. Nothing better for stress relief than punching at empty air to a persistent drum beat.