Meal Planning has been a topic of conversation with several of my coaching and personalised meal planning clients over the past week and what’s absolutely true is that there is no perfect way to do your meal planning but that some level of planning is absolutely essential to help you meet your healthy eating goals.
My history with meal planning
- Pre-2010 which is when I joined Slimming World, I’d never planned a meal in my life. I shopped daily for food, lived off takeaways, fast and junk food and predominately snacked rather than ate proper meals.
- When I started to take my weight loss seriously and realised that a whole lifestyle change was needed to make any sort of significant change, I started batch cooking at a weekend to ensure I had enough dinners in the freezer to get me through each week. I didn’t have a specific meal plan, I ate pretty much the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day and then every morning, I’d take out one of my pre-prepared tupperware pots for dinner that night (namely a chilli, a curry, a pasta sauce or a portion of cottage pie) and then when I got home, all I’d need to do would be cook the accompanying rice or pasta. I was perfectly happy to eat the same thing day after day because at that time, weight loss was my priority and my working pattern and commute meant that I needed quick and easy minimal cooking every evening.
- Fast forward a few years, my work life changed and I no longer commuted several hours each day, I got married, I discovered that I actually really loved cooking and my diet was no longer just about weight loss but also about enjoying healthy nutritious meals, trying new dishes and getting a well balanced diet every day. I started working in weight loss helping others to change their eating habits and discover healthy and filling meals and my meal planning stepped up a gear. Variety was important. my work schedule had changed and I needed to be a lot more organised. I still had to batch cook for the busier days in my week and when I’d be out of the house all day and evening but we now wanted to enjoy different meals and try new things. I now did a lot more detailed meal planning – planning breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks for a whole week (and during the various Lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, I often was planning two whole weeks at once to avoid shopping as much as possible.
For me, now, meal planning is a fun activity in my week, its scheduled in my diary and it’s something I really enjoy as well as ensuring we eat healthily every day and enjoy our meals.
Which of these describes you best?
The 'Detailed' Planner
The 'Rough' Planner
The 'Wing It' Planner
- Sits down and plans all meals and snacks for a set period of time (3-4 days, a week or even 2 weeks)
- Loves following a plan to the letter, love the structure and organisation and makes it easier for you
- Decides in advance what meals you are having in the week but decide on the day exactly what you’re having that day
- Following too detailed a plan is too much structure and often causes extra stress or guilt
- Likes to just go with the flow
- Happy to shop frequently to get food in for what you fancy that day
- Planning is too structured
- Trusts themselves to make healthy choices daily
- Often happy to eat similar things – ‘go to’ dishes for ease
As I said above, there’s no right or wrong and it’s important to figure out what works best for you. Some people love structure and knowing exactly what they are going to be eating each day, for others, having too rigid a plan causes stress, unnecessary guilt or anxiety when things don’t go according to the plan.
From my personal experience and over 8 years of working with people to help achieve their weight loss or healthy living goals, what I would advise is having some sort of plan really does help. Meal planning has lots of benefits and not just weight loss!
Some of the benefits of meal planning
- Saves you money!
– How often do you throw food away? You get to the end of the week and there’s a drawer full of wrinkly vegetables that you’d bought but not used?
– How often do you get home from work late, tired, the kids are starving and you just don’t have the energy to think about what to eat, let alone prepare it so reach for the takeaway option or grab something convenient on the way home?
– How often are you tempted with impulse buys when you ‘pop to the shops’?
If you’ve meal planned for the week, you are only buying what you need each week so no waste as well as knowing what’s for dinner or having some batch cooked fall back meals in the freezer saves you the pounds spent on the convenient option. By planning ahead, you shouldn’t need that daily trip to the shops to pick something up for dinner when you may find things just fall into your shopping basket that you hadn’t intended on buying! - Eat more healthily
By planning ahead and spending a bit of time thinking about the meals for the week, you are more likely to plan healthier options and buy the ‘good stuff’ at the supermarket. We all know that being starving and wanting something NOW often leads to choices that are counteractive to our healthy eating plans. - Saves time
By planning ahead and doing your shopping list whilst preparing your meal plan you save time actually doing your shopping, you save time by only having to do one food shop a week rather than having to pop to the shops daily to pick up something, you can also cook several meals at once, plan a batch cooking session in advance of a busy few days so all you need to do is stick dinner in the microwave. - Spend less time having to think about food and make decisions every day
Having to constantly think about ‘what’s for dinner?’ every day on top of all the other things you have to think about in your life can be tiring – having a plan means you spend a bit of time once a week making those decisions and then for the rest of the week, you don’t have to think about it! - Variety
If you get bored eating the same things week after week, doing a bit of meal planning allows you time to try new dishes and recipes on the days when you may have a bit more time.
Some of my top meal planning tips
- Put some time in your diary each week for ‘meal planning’ and stick to that appointment you’ve made with yourself. See it as important, make yourself a cuppa and dedicate half an hour to your plan. If you wanted to get fit and joined a gym, you wouldn’t expect to see results if you signed up for a class but didn’t turn up! It’s the same with your healthy eating goals – finding time to plan your meals will make such a huge difference to your success.
- Do a food audit. What do you have in your cupboards already? What’s in the freezer? You’d be surprised at how much you probably already have and this can save you loads of money! I bet everyone of us has got multiple tins of chopped tomatoes and duplicate jars of herbs and some forgotten stuff in the freezer. Can you plan this week’s meals around what you already have in? That’s going to save you money right away!
- Keep a notepad / shopping list in your kitchen so that during the week, as you use things up, you can make a note of what you need to restock on your next shopping trip. I also make notes of any recipes or ideas I want to try for next week so I don’t forget them.
- When starting your meal plan, check your diary (and your family’s too) – are there days when you simply won’t be able to cook? Can you prepare a couple of days in advance? Do you need to cook stuff at the weekend to go in the freezer for mid week dinners? Are there any meals out planned? Having an idea of the week ahead and what you’ve got on really helps with what sort of meals you can plan for.
- Check your meal plan each evening to see what’s on the plan for the next day – do you need to take anything out of the freezer? Do you need to prepare lunches this evening? Is there anything that you can do tonight to make tomorrow easier?
During my weight loss journey of 11 stone, I’ve been asked many times about how I stayed focused and motivated and there’s no simple answer to that but what I do know is that getting into the habit of planning my meals is probably the most important change I made to my lifestyle. It’s what I call one of my ‘non-negotiables’ and something that no matter what I have going on in my life, I find time to do each week.
If you find meal planning daunting, don’t forget I do have a range of ready to go meal plans available in my shop or if you like a personalised meal plan tailored exactly to your dietary and lifestyle requirements, I also offer that service and more information can be found in the services section of the website.
Fantastic advice thank you
Thank you and glad you found it helpful!