Hey KRH! Welcome. We're at nearly the same place right now weight wise and goal wise and it would be cool to have someone like you to go on this journey with. Is 1961 your birth year? Mine is 1960. I'm trying to combat type II diabetes as well as trying to get healthy and I'm having great success so far with easy to make meals. My main thread is here:
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=478021
For the first week of induction, eggs were my best friend and BACON! YUM! Eggs are easy. Steaks of all sorts are easy, (beef, pork, chicken, fish). Just don't eat more than 20 grams of carbs per day. Count your carbs carefully. I have lost 24 pounds so far in just three weeks. You can just google:
beef steak nutrition facts
Or what ever it is and it will list the carbs making carb counting easy.
I love Salmon and got a frozen bag full of Salmon steaks from Walmart, wild caught, for under $10 and I just put those in my toaster oven at 350 for about 15-20 minutes. I ate them with a little tartar sauce.
If you can get through the first week, it gets easier and easier as time goes on. For me, it was like breaking an addiction - I even went through withdrawal symptoms, (Atkins Flu).
My thread above has what has become a typical day for me as well as a few easy things to make.
A Not Bad Mashed Potato Substitute:
If you can get a medium sized stove top steamer you can steam cauliflower heads, (I cut out the bottom center with all the leaves) and cook it on a low boil for about 30 minutes it gets really soft. Then you take a potato masher while its still hot and mash it all up, add half a block of cream cheese, half a bag of shredded Monterey Jack or some other cheese and mix it all up real good. The left overs keep in the fridge.
Eggplant Pizza is easy and is better than I thought it would be. I basically use this recipe but I cook the slices of eggplant a little longer and flip the half way through and let them get a little crispy. Then I add regular pizza sauce, (just watch the carbs), and Mozzarella cheese and pepperoni on top and back in the oven until the pepperoni's start to curl up.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/230249...eggplant-pizza/
I also love Mexican food, here's an easy recipe for low carb Chli Relleno:
https://recipes.sparkpeople.com/rec...p?recipe=395960
Just google for quick easy low carb recipes and stick to a plan that is 20 carbs or less per day and NO CHEATING! Good Luck!
Bill