I’ll be honest with you — we’ve known for a long time that we needed to do something about our weight. It’s not like this is news to us. I actually did lose a significant amount of weight about 15 years ago, got down to around 200–210 pounds, felt great. But I didn’t sustain it. Life happened, the cooking and eating I love so much happened, and over the years I climbed back up to 240, then 250, even touching 260.
She’s been in the same boat. We’ve tried the fad diet thing — a week of high protein here, an Atkins-style push there. Nothing stuck longer than two weeks.
So this time she did something different. She asked AI to build us a plan.
The first version it came back with was aggressive — we’re talking 10 pounds a month. She asked if that was sustainable and the AI flat out said no. So we dialled it back to something realistic: around 1,800 calories a day for me, around 1,300 for her. Same meals, different portion sizes.
A few things about this plan genuinely surprised me.
The grocery list alone is worth talking about. I’ve always built my shopping list dish by dish — chicken parm goes here, broccoli beef goes there — and everything ends up scattered all over the page. This list is organised by store section. Proteins together, produce together, pantry together. I know it sounds simple but it genuinely changed how I shop.
We also had to push back on the plan a little. There was more fish than I was comfortable with — I’m just not a fish guy. She went back to the AI and had it remove most of it, keeping salmon and shrimp since those I can work with when they’re seasoned right. That kind of back-and-forth is something I didn’t expect — the ability to actually shape the plan around what we like.
The food itself isn’t as different as I thought it would be. It’s more about using spices instead of calories, swapping white flour for whole wheat (which we actually prefer now), and eating a smarter mix of grains instead of plain white rice. Less bread, less pasta, but nothing that feels like punishment.
The one thing on my mind going in? Hunger. Last time I lost weight I was uncomfortable a lot of the day and that’s a big reason I didn’t stick with it. We’ll see if this plan is different.
The full Week 1 meal plan PDF is attached below — every meal, both portions, the complete shopping list.
Let’s see how this goes.
