The Weight I Didn’t Expect to Carry
Let’s talk about the uncomfortable topic of weight and wellness.
For most of my life—well into my late twenties—I was lucky. I stayed fit and thin without putting too much thought into it. I ate what I considered a relatively balanced diet, and I ran regularly, including periods of marathon training. That high level of activity made it easy to maintain my weight without much effort.
But everything started to shift in my 30s.
Around my 30th birthday, I developed subacute thyroiditis, a painful and confusing condition where the thyroid—an essential gland that regulates metabolism and hormones—essentially went haywire. At first, it overproduced hormones, leading to a temporary hyperthyroid state, and then crashed, leaving me with permanent hypothyroidism. I’ve been on daily thyroid medication ever since.
Layer on top of that a global pandemic, the emotional toll of postpartum depression, and the physical changes from pregnancy—and I found myself nearly 35 pounds heavier than I had been in my mid-20s. But when you're in survival mode, the last thing on your list is calorie counting or structured workout routines. I simply didn’t have the mental or emotional bandwidth to focus on getting healthy.
It wasn’t until I hit an especially low point that I started to take steps toward recovery. Over the last nine months, I’ve been working on rebuilding in many areas of my life—including how I approach food.
To be honest, I struggled.
I tried bulk meal prepping—too repetitive. I’d inevitably turn to DoorDash instead of eating the same leftovers again. I cycled through Trader Joe’s freezer meals (not exactly health food), and gave HelloFresh a go, but it felt wasteful and overpriced for my needs. Nothing stuck.
Then I stumbled upon something on one of my favorite podcasts, Best of Both Worlds: a meal-planning service called PrepDish. And—no exaggeration—I’m obsessed.
It’s brilliantly simple. Each week, I receive a three-page PDF:
A shopping list
A prep-day task list
And five quick, healthy recipes
I use their SuperFast plan, which emphasizes nutritious but manageable meals. No over-complicated steps or 30-minute ingredient hunts. Just straightforward, whole-food dinners that I can prep ahead and actually enjoy cooking.
It’s only five dinners a week, but that’s more than enough. Here’s how my routine usually breaks down:
🥣 Breakfast
I rotate between homemade muffins, scrambled eggs, waffles, or cereal—always with a side of fruit. On Mondays and Fridays, I follow intermittent fasting and wait until lunchtime to eat.
🥗 Lunch
My office offers free lunches (perk of working for a food service company!), so I take full advantage. The food is fantastic. On fasting days, I usually do a breakfast-for-lunch approach. Weekends are more flexible—we typically eat out or keep things simple.
🍽️ Dinner
We typically cook four of the five PrepDish meals each week. One night is something simple like frozen pizza or pasta with salad, one night is delivery, and the other is either leftovers or an easy meal out.
It’s not perfect, but it works. And more importantly, it’s sustainable. We’re eating more fresh and minimally processed foods and getting a solid variety of fruits and vegetables in our diet—without me losing my mind trying to make it happen.
Right now, I’m reading Ultra-Processed People and diving into the science of how mass-manufactured foods are impacting our health. It’s eye-opening—and it’s making me rethink which products in my pantry are masquerading as “healthy.”
This journey is far from over. But for the first time in a long while, I feel like I’ve found something that fits my life instead of fighting against it.
