In my field of weight management, I frequently hear how busy people’s lives are and how despite knowing the basics of home cooking, they don’t have the time to cook or the inspiration to meal plan. Unfortunately, there is more at stake than just to our waistline when we rely on eating out. It’s expensive and as you may have noticed doesn’t provide long-term sustenance; leaving you hungry quicker.
Eating home cooked meals is a tried and true strategy not only for weight loss, but for preventative health and wellness, and saves money as well. When you spend the time and effort to cook at home, you control the ingredients and cooking method. What an empowering notion! You control what kinds of nourishment to provide for your body. This is self-care at its finest!
So, where does one begin?
Over the next several weeks, we will take a journey through local resources, food and cooking tips, and recipes to assist you with taking control of you and your family’s health.
For the first part of the journey, let’s focus on meal planning. We’re all busy and exhausted at the end of the day. If we have not planned what’s for dinner before this point of exhaustion, McDonald’s or other easy options become a no-brainer. Let’s commit to meal planning for the week as an experiment.
Meal planning tips:
- Shop your pantry first! Make a list of items in your cupboards, fridge, and freezers for what staples are currently available i.e., fish, poultry, meats or vegetarian proteins. This will help you reduce food waste by searching for recipes to use the items you already have on hand.
- You can also try using a meal planning app. One to try is MealBoard ($3.99 on Apple). This app holds all of the meals you input, grocery list, pantry inventory, and more! MealBoard will look at your meal plan and grocery list and recommend meals based on the leftover ingredients from your list. You can also create meals in MealBoard and import recipes from web sites and blogs directly into the app. MealBoard keeps your grocery list from your meal plan in it's digital pantry. If you're wondering if you have enough of a certain spice, MealBoard will let you know (and even alert you when you're running low).
- When you’re first starting to meal plan, you’ll need to set aside 2-3 hours to sufficiently plan. As you get more comfortable with meal planning the time it takes you will lessen. As you pick recipes, choose ones that you and your family will actually eat. It seems obvious, but it can be a major stumbling block when you’re getting started to choose recipes that are unique and interesting, but not realistic. Take a moment before you start choosing recipes to decide what you want this week’s menu to do for you. Do you want it to meet your diet goals? Have less meat and more vegetarian options? Be quick because you have a big week ahead? Or maybe you have some ingredients that you need to use before they go to waste. Use these points to select this week’s recipes.
- Check the ad circulars for your local grocery stores to shop and plan based on what's on sale for the week.
- Here's a link to a fun cookbook for super simple and affordable recipes you may not have thought of: https://books.leannebrown.com/good-and-cheap.pdf
- Once you’ve defined your goals and determined what your schedule looks like for the week ahead, tailor your plan. Don’t be afraid to start small, maybe cooking only 1-2 meals this week. Give yourself time to figure out what’s going to be sustainable for you and your family long term. And don’t forget you can always revise your plan! Nothing is set in stone.
- Stock that pantry with basics! Seasoned meal planners know that the key to long-term success with meal planning is making sure to keep a small stash of versatile staples on hand. This will allow you to improvise easier! Strategically stock your pantry with basic ingredients like olive oil, stock, rice, and canned goods. On days when you feel like there’s nothing to eat, these classics turn eggs into frittatas, pasta into delicious three-ingredient dishes, and rice into one-pot wonders!
- To help stretch your budget, look for recipes that you can use twice, such as roasted whole chicken one night. Using the carcass add vinegar, water, onions, carrots, celery, and water, to make a chicken bone broth in your crock pot the next day. Come home and add noodles and you have homemade chicken noodle soup.
- Save your recipes and notes! Post your weeks menu so everyone knows what meals to expect for the week. You can even assign kids to specific days for age appropriate help. It doesn’t have to be fancy or even digital … it can be as simple as a scrap of paper tacked to the fridge.
- Don’t skip meal prep! This is likely the most important part of meal planning. This is the critical piece that saves you time. Skipping this step leaves more work for you later. Set aside 30 minutes over the weekend to prep ingredients, or even prepare a full meal for the week ahead.
- What’s in your back pocket? What’s your plan B? Seasoned meal planners know that even the best laid plans get way laid by a long commute, overtime at work, a sick kid, etc. Have a cache of super-simple go-to meals in your back pocket that you know by heart, that come together in minutes, and are a family favorite, i.e., pancakes, spaghetti, mini pizzas, grilled cheese and soup.
I have found that if I spend a little time meal planning, the grocery bill is lower, there’s less food waste and it’s one less thing I must think about (once the meal planning is done).
I look forward to hearing how your meal planning experiment went this week. Send us a fb message and tell us about it!
