Breakdown of my points

I was really struggling about 2 weeks ago with going way over my points plus budget. I would get to the end of the day and would have over spent by about 10 points.

Every week at my meeting our leader asks us what small change we will try to implement for the week. Really - for 2 months straight I wrote down that I would start tracking. I had really tried to track online. I have a monthly pass so that comes with the e-Tools. But it's just so..... exact! I couldn't just quickly jot down what I had eaten, it had to be exactly what I had eaten. And that's so not me - there is really nothing about me that is exact.

Random page from last week - pretty standard 

This is last week's tracker - this is what I put on the front so that I can see what the stats were.

Just a random tracker that I could find - see - not complete!!

Then I hit on the brilliant idea of just using the paper tracker - old school. So I put it on the island in the middle of the kitchen and I could just jot it down. Much more my style because I could just come back later and figure out the points plus values. And that is when it got interesting. Lunches are a HUGE problem for me. I never plan for them and half the time I would just end up eating popcorn! And quite often that would lead to binge eating.

So then I decided to get a bit more organized about what I was eating. I thought about just buying some Smart Ones or Lean Cuisines, but because I am gluten free, there are not too many that I am able to eat. So then I did what any self-respecting web addict would do - I Googled!

I found heaps of ideas about creating my own meals for lunch - and this rocking recipe for an orange-ginger sauce for them. So I put the rice cooker on, baked some chicken and whipped up the sauce. And I made 16 of them! All for the great budget friendly price of 5 points plus!

Then of course I started thinking about budgeting my points plus budget and came up with this formula -
Breakfast = 5 points plus (that's what my oatmeal costs and I am not willing to give this up!)
Lunch = 5-7 points plus
Dinner = 10 points plus
Snacks (3) = 9
All for the grand total of 29 - 31 points plus for the day. My daily target is 27 at them moment (it will go down to 26 after I lose another half pound!) but I have found that I need an extra point or 2 to keep me feeling full. And I do try to eat a few of my exercise points on days when I exercise.

How do you break down your points plus budget?