Cooking for the family/ meal planning apps after WLS?

Does anyone know of or use a good meal planning app for an after WLS diet? I'd love to find an app that allows me to meal plan for my family but somehow tweak a portion for food intolerances and protein requirements after surgery.

My husband and I both work long hours outside of the home and on particularly gruesome weeks, we've come to rely on menu-creating applications (The one we use now links to a local grocery delivery service so we can order the week's ingredients in a few clicks. Technology is awesome!). I can change settings somewhat to go vegan or Atkins for example, but that would subject my family to the same restrictions.

What do others do for family meal planning? Do you cook two meals?

I just go online and find recipes and save them to my "recipe keeper" app.

My husband is not picky, he will eat what I put in front of him. Usually I make just one dinner but sometimes I make him something different if I'm in the mood for just a chicken and cheese roll up.

My daughter is 23 yo and a vegetarian which doesn't match up with my eating. Interestingly, she lost 30 lbs since my surgery and my weight loss. I'm actually wearing her hand me downs!

I do not know of such an app. (I wish I did though because meal planning has always been the one part of the cooking process I wish I could skip. I love cooking, I don't mind grocery shopping. I really dislike meal planning!)

Here's what I do - I follow a number of paleo blogs as I've found that paleo recipes are very sleeve-friendly. I bookmark the ones that are appealing so I have a record of them.

When I meal plan, I only plan to cook dinners - the rest of our meals are leftovers (or my breakfast protein shake.) I cook for three adults - myself and my two partners. I rarely cook casserole-type stuff anymore, maybe twice a month these days, so dinners tend to be either (protein+veg) with carb side or protein with veg side and carb side. Sides of either the veg or carb variety tend to be basic - sautéed veg, roasted veg, roasted potatoes, plain rice, plain pasta, etc. Once in a blue moon I'll feel "generous" and I'll make a risotto or composed pasta dish, but, like casseroles, this is rare.

I only cook one meal, but I stick to the protein with a little bit of the veg. The guys eat the protein, veg, and carb. There's always rice in the fridge for lunches.

Initially I had cooked protein + side every night, but found that the sides weren't getting eaten before they needed to be tossed because I wasn't eating "full bowl of side dish" as a second lunch anymore.. And Lance tends to only take protein + rice for lunch instead of whatever exciting side dish was in the fridge. We also found that there was just too much food in the fridge, since halving recipes is annoying and I wasn't eating as much. So now this is my rough meal plan outline for each week:

Monday - protein only (sometimes I'll do an easy veg)
Tuesday - leftover night
Wednesday - protein only (sometimes I'll do an easy veg)
Thursday - leftover night
Friday - full meal (protein, veg, carb)
Saturday - full meal (protein, veg, carb)
Sunday - full meal (protein, veg, carb)

When I make protein, I tend to make a LOT in order to cover everyone's lunches and the leftover nights.

My family has adapted well to this. Basically, it boils down to this - the stuff that isn't healthy for me to eat really isn't healthy for my family to eat either. They can eat unhealthy stuff when we eat out if they want, or when they're out at work or whatever, and they're always welcome to make requests when I'm meal planning if they're missing something. (I made a big batch of an old favorite pasta dish over the weekend since it was requested. I made chicken as well and I just had a bite of the pasta dish.) I'm not going to cook two meals, although I will, as noted, make simple carbs for them to have with whatever VSG-friendly food I've made.

I'm almost 3.5 years post-op and this has worked super well for all of those years. With some tweaking while I figured out how to avoid making too much food :) I should also note that my family is a healthier now than they were when I was pre-op. So clearly my way of eating has not harmed them.

I hope this is useful!

I really like this plan! It never occurred to me to rotate like this. I am going to try this out. Thank you!

You're welcome! It works well for us because it has me cooking the simple things (protein only) on days when I'm usually busy and then the more complicated things on days when Art (my sous chef) is around to help with meal prep. And leftover nights are nights when everyone is busy and we can't all eat together due to scheduling anyway.

It just took some time to figure out how to adjust everything since I'd spent the previous 20ish years cooking a "complete" meal every night.

I use Paprika Recipe Manager. You put you own recipes in and create your weekly meal plan and grocery list.

It is not designed for weight loss but it took the hassle out of deciding what to cook and what to buy every week. I make one grocery trip, have everything in the house and just pull everything out when it is time to cook.

Staying out of the grocery stores saves me a lot of money.

I second Paprika. Worth noting that it is a paid app, albeit low cost. I have actually purchased the PC, iOS and Android version! I absolutely love, love, love this app. It is so extremely effective at downloading recipes from virtually any site. And like you mentioned, the grocery list (including fairly decent aisle matching) makes getting in and out of the grocery store about as painless as possible.

I have never heard of this app and now I am super excited :)

I do cook meals for a couple of days. It makes life easier. I love my crock pot. I bought one that browns the meat and can slow cook also.

Mostly everyone eats what I eat. I am lucky.

The World According to Eggface has a lot of recipes.

I second the crock pot. Throw in some meat and a bit of sauce and you're set. Then if someone wants a veg, that's easy to whip up and I can just stick with the meat. We do chicken breasts with a can of Hatch green chile enchilada sauce and it comes out fantastic. Put the liquid in a pot with some cornstarch and instant chile gravy. This way we have versatile protein for a few days. Another good one is the seasoned tri-tip from Costco with a pouch of Frontera red chile sauce.

Jen