Figuring Out Dinner

While I am still trying to figure out a workout that works for me, I have started to tackle the diet portion of my getting healthier plan. I don't think that it's a coincidence that I was my healthiest when I was diary- and soy-free from breastfeeding Munchkin when he had an allergy. I basically had to cut out all processed food and I ate lots of whole foods, fruits, vegetables. But as great as I felt, there were things that I missed, such as cheese, and even though I've said I was going to go back to the diary-free (or at least diary-lite) diet again, I haven't been able to commit.

I am no good at meal planning, we always seemed to have extra ingredients at that end of the week that we just ended up tossing, and I didn't like having to come up with meals that everyone liked. It always just seemed easier to go out which wasn't great for the diet or budget. So back in January, when Jill from Baby Rabies asked her Facebook followers for meal planning ideas, I was very quick to jump on a popular suggestion, The Fresh 20. I absolutely loved it. I was getting delicious recipes that were not hard to make, not wasting tons of food, money and time. We weren't eating the same things every night, and even Munchkin was trying new things. While it wasn't dairy-free, there wasn't a lot and often I could leave it out.

A few dinners I made from the Classic plan

Then at the end of February, Peanut was born. I thought that the plan would make it easy for my husband to take care of dinner while I took care of the new baby, but he decided that it made more sense to use a food delivery service for the first few months. It was nice to not have to deal with cooking, but it was a paleo service, not really budget friendly and not feeding Munchkin.

So it wasn't too long before I started back on cooking dinners again. Unfortunately, my husband had gotten used to a paleo lifestyle, and while The Fresh 20 is good, I wasn't always able to remove the dairy. So for a while, we had the same few meals over and over again. I was getting very tired of it, and started to research other meal plans when The Fresh 20 released their dairy-free plan. It isn't exactly paleo, but it really was what we needed. A few weeks ago I started using it, and it has been great. It is everything that I fell in love with back in the beginning of the year, just without the dairy. Bringing me one step closer to my goal of healthier living.

This is not a sponsored post, I use and love The Fresh 20, have purchased the Classic and Dairy-Free plans and recommend them to anyone who asks. Also, right now for subscribers they have a Thanksgiving plan that looks amazing. If I wasn't already going to my mother's to celebrate, I would probably be making this dinner.