Meal Planning, Is it for you?

One of the keys to a successful week for me is in the meal planning, especially for my health.

The perks of a meal plan:

• increasing your kitchen sanity by organizing your meals for the week
• to aid in helping keep the budget in check
• allowing you to plan to eat healthy, balanced meal to reach optimal health
• shopping becomes easier and your time is not wasted wandering the store
• it can really hold you accountable for what you consume for the week 

Here are some simple steps to help you create and prepare you meals:

Organize your meals for the week and choose a variety of foods. Keeping in mind you need to have starches aka those carbs so that you can prevent the sense of deprivation and don’t end up elbow deep in a bag of chips or jar of peanut butter. You cannot live off entirely vegetables.. your body needs starches: the root veggies, whole grains, and legumes. Strive for balanced meals.

Develop your shopping list for the week based on the planned meals. This will make your shopping easier and alleviate some of the stress in the prep because you will know that you already have everything on hand. One of the things I really like to do is save those lists and meal plans for a week when I am even shorter on time and haven’t had a chance to create a new one! 

Plan a meal prep day! I love my Sundays for this. I can cook all the food for my meals on one day because my week gets kind of crazy. There are some nights I “plan to cook” where I will leave the ingredients planned but not cooked. With meal prep you can keep all the prepared food in large containers and portion them out as you need them OR pre-portion and place them in containers all ready to “grab and go.” I like to do a variation of this where I can plan my lunches for work to “grab and go” and allow some mix and match for breakfast and dinner meals. Even cooking a larger dinner can leave you leftovers for the next day’s lunch. 

In your meal prep process, pick a night to enjoy a dinner out or maybe its a dinner at a friend’s house. This will let you relax a little bit and not feel chained to the meal plan.