Some one reached out and asked me to talk more about meal planning. Yesterday on my social media I posted a reel with my top three tips and today I am going to break them down for you. To start I want to talk a little about my journey of meal prepping. First, I always associated meal planning with eating healthy and/or dieting. Meaning that if I meal planned I would have to cut out my ice cream and cookies. I found this is not true. I also associated meal planning with people wanting to lose weight, again false. The last false information I believed in meal planning was I had to cook everything before hand, you can but you don’t have to to have effective meal planning experience. Over all my experience with meal planning has helped me to find my way that has worked really well, whether for losing weight or for having a form of order. So here are the tips and how I applied them to my life. Tip one was have a goal or purpose behind the meal planning. Tip two don’t wait for Monday to start. Tip three be okay with eating alone.
Tip one; have a goal or purpose when meal planning. The first time I meal planned, my husband and I were looking to lose weight and find a solution to my husband’s migraines. Though we didn’t find a solution for his migraines, we were both able to lose 30 lbs. For the first week our coaches created a meal plan based off of what we were eating already, they just portioned it for us. It was a little annoying the first week to portion out everything we ate but we eventually were able to stop and eye ball our food, or recognize when we had our fill. But the goal was weight loss and so I kept that in the forefront of my mind, I wanted to lose weight so I put the work in to achieve my goal. I knew it didn’t have to be forever. The best lesson they taught us while meal planning was the 80/20 rule. 80% of the time follow the meal plan but 20% of the time is for grace, parties, date night, and other important events that enjoying the moment is more important than the long term goal. But after we reached our goal we stopped following a meal plan and I found I missed the consistency or predictability of knowing what my next meal was gonna be. I didn’t have to think I could just look and be like, awesome, we’re having that, giving you time to pull meat out to thaw or be like, ok, if I am making meat loaf and it takes so long to cook I need to start making dinner at this time.
Tip two; don’t wait for Monday to start. It’s super easy to be like I screwed up and it’s Wednesday I’ll just throw everything out the door and start over Monday or even I’ll start again tomorrow. Give your self grace and be like okay I decided on a different snack or had too much of a snack just accept it and get back to it. Eat the dinner you were planning, and if your goal is weight loss eat the amount you were planning. Just because you made a mistake halfway thru the day or week does not mean you can’t get right back on the horse and recommit to your meal plan. I get it, It’s super hard to not take the extra cracker your kid didn’t eat, or share a snack of goldfish with your kids, or better yet, say no to your sweet 4 year old who is wanting to share. But you have to ask yourself will it throw off my goal?
Tip three; be ok with eating alone. The first time we meal planned we both were looking to lose weight and we only had three kids and none of them knew they could say no to what I offered. So it was easy to meal plan based off of my needs and my husband’s. This time, because I am meal planning right now, it’s harder, my kids are getting pickier in what they eat and my husband doesn’t need nor want to lose weight. So there are nights when I do not feel like cooking and I am eating leftovers from one of my meal plans for dinner, my husband and kids eat cereal. There are times when my snack is an apple and my husband is munching on chips. It’s hard, it sucks and I sometimes give my husband the stink eye. But then I remember my goal and I know that it is just for a season. It’s not forever. This might also mean creating two separate meal plans.
Over all there is no right and wrong way of meal planning and there is no easy way. Depending on what your goal is and why you want to meal plan is a going to depend on the level of hardness because no level is easy. My few extra tips though, if your goal is weight loss, hire a coach, even if its just to help keep you accountable. There is power in knowing that someone is going to check up on you and when you put a price on your goal. If your goal is a peace of mind and knowing what to cook every day, have the same meals often. Personally, I eat the same breakfast and lunch for a week(sometimes longer if I like it) and I rotate through 3 dinners for a week or two(again depends if I like them or if my kids eat them easy enough) and once you get bored of them find new ones. The other thing is your can have three breakfasts and lunches you rotate through and 5-7 dinners you rotate through. Final tip, if your goal is knowing what to grocery shop for I recommend getting the app Mealime, its a free app with tons of recipes you can choose from and then it creates your grocery list for you. It’s really awesome.