I really like the way Kyle & I are coming at our wedding diet & exercise program as more of an overall lifestyle change that we want to take far beyond the date of our special day. After popular Instagram Story demand, I wanted to share it with all of you.

We started by progressively eliminating high sodium from our diets back in July and saw an immediate decrease in weight (mostly water weight). This was a really good first step because it was easy to do without feeling like we were actually on a diet. We took a couple steps backward over the holidays (who doesn’t), but overall, our goal was never to deprive ourselves from things we love in an effort to not want to binge on them in the future.

Now that we’re in our wedding year though, and to keep on trend with all of the January resolutions, we decided to kick things into full gear by reaching out of our comfort zone & into some new recipes and regimes that we can make part of our routine. We’re both big on planning & lists, so I think structuring our meal & work out plan in that way has helped a ton.

This is our WWTW (#WellWorthTheWait) weekly meal plan that goes on our fridge. We’re trying (almost) one month straight of Instant Pot meals that are high in protein/ low in calories, so we have enough each night to meal prep with it for lunch the next day.

If you follow me on Instagram, then you know we started the first night of this last night and let me tell you… the Instant Pot was TERRIFYING.

There’s all these warnings & locks & seals & steam releases, but… all of that said… I could not have been happier with our healthy take on a pasta comfort food.

HERE’S THE RECIPE FOR HEALTHY TUSCAN CHICKEN PASTA that we followed! I love it because she gives alternate ways to make it if you don’t have an Instant Pot, or just don’t want to mess with how scary they can be. I will say, it was so worth it to make it in ours and the cook time was 4 minutes. You heard me right: 4 minutes!!!

I always like to make recipes my own, so in an effort to keep our sodium intake low, I replaced the chicken broth in the above recipe with water and replaced the sun-dried tomatoes with roasted butternut squash (following all the same steps).

Tonight on the menu is this recipe for Cilantro Lime Pulled Chicken (minus the cilantro because I have that weird condition where I think cilantro tastes like dish soap). Follow along on my socials for an update on how tonight goes.

The Chicken Al Pastor will be the pulled chicken from tonight, combined with chipotle seasoning & grilled pineapple served over rice & beans. The chili is a secret recipe that if I give you… I’d have to kill you…

In addition to the cardio you see listed on our meal plan above, we also have this workout plan that we’ve been implementing in between cardio days, or sometimes in addition to (depending on how ambitious we feel):

As you might notice by the title of this post, I’ll try to post some guides periodically with the new recipes we try, discover & actually like (no use in sharing the flops if there are any), as well as the type of results we’re seeing with this. My goal is to make sure that people go about weight loss and eating well in a healthy, non-obsessive way and personally I think this is an awesome way to achieve that.

Let me know if you have any healthy Instant Pot recipes or if you try one of these!