Planning: Kicking Procrastinators in the Head, One at a Time

I procrastinate.

It's a fact of life.

I have been known to write papers the night before they were due (or even a few hours before.) Stayed up late because I didn't feel like going to bed. I consistently wait until my laundry basket is overflowing and I have no jeans to do laundry. I even sometimes pack a few boxes and then wait until the day I'm supposed to move to finish the majority -- and then sit down to write a blog about planning instead of doing it.

Don't look at me like that, I don't own very much. But still. Irony lives, right?

So given this premise, planning how I eat seems like a life-altering blow to the head. And who knows, it might well give me a self-inflicted concussion - not unlike how when moving during college, I dropped a box on a handtruck while bending over, thus allowing the heavy metal bar to smack me right in the temple. (Yes, I did have a mild concussion from this.) On the other hand, it might be a positive change.

So I'm officially putting myself on a month-long challenge to plan what I eat each week.

The breakdown:

On the weekend, I will take an hour of my time to put together a list for that week.

1) Determine, given your plans for the week, how many meals you will need and categorize them by breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack.

2) Looking at your schedule, see what kinds of meals you will need. Are you going to be needing a sack lunch at work? A nice dinner at home?

3) Examining your recipes, determine what meals you want to have on what days of the week. If you want, even include a meal that you will cook once and then break it down into smaller portions for several meals (note: be sure to break it up right from the get-go, or if you're like me, you will fail.)

4) Make a grocery list based on what you planned and go shopping.

Then, if you like, you can always switch a meal with another meal if you just don't feel like having baked tilapia on Wednesday night. And on the plus side, it means that most of the food worth eating in your house will be based on a plan that you made beforehand, meaning that you'll (possibly) be less prone to buying excessive amounts of junk food and grazing on it all week.

Sure, it probably won't work out perfectly. Life inevitably happens. Friends come over last-minute and your dinner plans won't work anymore. You go out to an impromptu lunch with a co-worker. You get stuck behind a cattle drive on a twisted narrow road going up a hill for three miles and by the time you get home from work, you're tired and annoyed and the traction on your tires is filled with cow crap and damnit, you just don't feel like cooking.

But adapting to that is just being flexible. It doesn't mean that we can't stick to a plan, especially when that plan means that we might start eating smarter. And I'll gladly take any opportunity to change my habits around.

So I'm challenging myself, and you're welcome to do it. Several smaller changes add up to large results.

...but I'll start later. Because right now, I have to finish packing.