Meal Planning 101
Is there a difference between meal planning and meal prepping?
What is it?
When you think about the word meal prepping, you get overwhelmed. You get anxious. You start thinking about how you don’t want to eat the same thing for 5 days straight. You don’t want to have to measure out and weigh all your food. The thoughts are endless.
Although I live and breathe the meal prepping lifestyle 70% of the time, I also get tired of eating the same thing 5 days in a row.
The solution? Meal planning.
Meal planning, as opposed to meal prepping, is staying conscious of the food and amount of food you’re going to prepare and consume for a given meal. Ensuring that you have the right ingredients and enough time to prepare and cook the meal is the most stressful part of meal planning. But that’s life anyway isn’t it?
You can still make the same foods that you would when you’re meal prepping that you can when you’re meal planning. The only difference is you’re not looking to box them all up and shove them in the fridge or freezer as soon as you’re done cooking.
Below is a guide for how to successfully meal plan healthy meals for both you and your family:
Think of meals, meal ideas, and recipes that you know you’ve tried before and have loved, you’ll want to find 3-4 for the week.
Do some research and find 1-2 meal ideas that are new to you that you think you’d like to try.
Create a grocery list of items you’ll need to prepare these meals. (Ensuring you take into account the number of people you’ll have to feed for the recipe- doubling or halving the recipe if necessary. Or plan for there to be leftovers!)
Go through your pantry, fridge, and kitchen and cross off the items that you already have stocked up.
Go shopping!
Begin planning your meals for the week, Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and any Snacks you might like.
The nice thing about meal planning is you can still track your daily nutrition, caloric intake and macronutrients without having to do a bunch of work on the front end.
Meal planning is a much simpler solution for the family setting as well. There will be no more worrying about “what’re we going to have for supper”. Keeping your family involved in the decision making of the meal planning can help ensure that the meals will be enjoyed to the fullest!
An example meal plan might look something like this:
This might seem like a lot at first, but with a little perseverance you’ll get the hang of it. Meal planning, in the long run will help you save both time and money and maybe even a little sanity as you wont be struggling to think of something to make for your meals!
