I enjoy spontaneous cooking and eating, but meal planning is the only way I've been able to maintain a reasonable weight. The way I do it is that I cook meals (

I enjoy spontaneous cooking and eating, but meal planning is the only way I've been able to maintain a reasonable weight. The way I do it is that I cook meals (breakfast and lunch) for the work week on Sunday. I cook dinner the day of, mostly by keeping a set of staples around that I use to create different dishes. This last one has a little more spontaneity to it, but is still generally about selecting from meals I've already pre-calculated to work. It is a lot less fun, but I've lost in excess of 50 pounds with meal planning + exercise. It is definitely more boring, but that's been an acceptable loss in the bigger picture.