My official start date is for next week after I get a meal plan together and go shopping. But Ihave to eat something for lunch, so I figured I would make something.

So I take out the leftover chicken breast. Lunch is for 3 blocks. So I weight 3 oz. Check. I measure a teaspoon of olive oil into the pan. Check. Protien and fat. Lovely. I then go try to make up 3 blocks of carbs out of veggies.

4 CUPS of mushrooms for a single block? I skipped that.

I had no chickpeas in the pantry. Going to stock up on those dontcha know. Cannellini beans are not listed. So... I have grean beans. So 1 1/2 cup grean beans. 2 CUPS of red pepper?!? This is the hugest plate of food I have ever attempted to eat in one sitting.

So Ok. I can plan better to make sure I have the ingredients I need with less volume, like the chickpeas and add a fruit for dessert (wish I had thought of that before making my plate of doom. :)

But my questions are:

- Did I read this correctly?
- How do I use foods that are already part of my family's repetiore? For instance, I have marinated chicken that I took out of the freezer for tonight's dinner. Sure I can measure out 3 oz of the chicken. But what about the marinade?
- How do you figure on condiments? Like I threw some asian spicey sauce on the plate of doom.

For the last 2, I think my genetics are such that I may have a high "slop factor." I am sort of inclined to just roll with those small additives and not sweat it. I did look at the condiment. It contains no added sugar. My marinade does not either. (I do not EVER add sugar.)

Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome to the Zone!

As you are finding out, you will have huge meals when you use all veggies in your meal. Using beans of some sort is an excellent way to decrease the volume. I also use tomato sauce/puree, salsa, things like that to decrease volume. You can also use a block of fruit as one of your blocks and count that as "dessert".

Keep in mind, your 4 cups of mushrooms will cook down considerably, as will most of your other veggies.

You should also count the sauces into your block count. If you used a bottled marinade, check to see how many carbs are in that marinade. Maybe no sugar, but it may have some carb content. Same thing with the asian spicy sauce. Just because it doesn't have sugar, or you didn't add sugar, doesn't mean that it doesn't have carbs in it.

Thanks for the help!