Last week on PLW.com Lyndsey Bobola talked about why meal planning is such an important part of a successful health and fitness routine.
I completely agree with Lyndsey! But, not only for health and fitness reasons. Meal planning is an essential stress-management life tool for me! Not having a meal plan was very stressful to me. 4pm would roll around and I still had no idea what I was going to fix for dinner.
Then I would figure out what I wanted to fix, just to find out that I didn’t have all the necessary ingredients. Hmmm run to the store or order pizza?
Then one day, I had had enough! I decided I was going to become a dedicated meal planner. I turned to Pinterest (of course) to find an easy way to meal plan.
What I found were dozens of different ideas and ways to meal plan. So I began to experiment.
I printed out a blank calendar and created sticky notes with different meal options that I could stick to any night of the week and change as I pleased.
I tried to sit down every Saturday evening and create the next week’s meal plan.
After several attempts with several different methods, it seemed that creating a meal plan would also be very stressful for me.
I actually ended up coming up with my own method to meal plan that I find incredibly easy, which I will share more about below along with 4 other things you need to be a meal planning pro!
Method
Finding the method that works for you is the biggest part of this battle. You can definitely scour Pinterest or ask friends for ideas. I came up with a system that will plan your meals for months!!! I created a blank 6 week meal plan that I fill out once for summer and once for winter. Then I cook the meals I’ve planned week 1 through 6 and rotate through 3-4 times. You can get my blank 6 week meal planning calendar below.
The second method I’ve used, love and recommend is a done for you meal planning service like RealPlans. RealPlans is AMAZING! They have over 1500 recipes in their database, but you can also add your own family favorites. You can 100% customize your meal plan based on your dietary preferences/needs. And you pick which days you want breakfast, lunch and/or dinner planned for you. They also have a free app which creates your shopping list from your meal plan. It makes it super easy to take your shopping list to the store. Check out RealPlans here.
Cookware
Cookware is obviously necessary to cook with 🙂 Because I’m a big toxins nerd, I always like to share how we can easily avoid toxins. Unfortunately, a lot of cookware out there contains many harmful toxins. These toxins mix directly with our food as we’re cooking in these chemical covered pots and pans.
Knowing what all the toxins are can be overwhelming, which is why I like to make it easy. In a nutshell, ANY piece of cookware that claims to be ‘non-stick’ is toxic. Sad, I know.
I was very resistant to switch out my non-stick pots and pans, but I have made the switch to cast iron pans. I avoid Lodge cast iron because they season with GMO soybean oil. I like Victoria brand because they’re still very affordable and season with non-GMO flaxseed oil. The trick to having food not stick to cast iron pans is to use grass fed butter or healthy oils (which is ok because we need healthy fats at every meal anyway).
Food storage
Please make life so much easier for yourself by cooking once but making enough for 2-3 meals. By making enough for leftovers you are not only saving time, but you are saving money.. When I was younger I hated leftovers. I thought they were so gross. As an adult, a wife, a mom – I LOVE leftovers! They make it so easy to quickly heat up a healthy meal in a super short amount of time.
Food storage is really important because we should aim to avoid plastic as much as possible. Yes, even BPA free plastic. Plastic still contains many toxins that leach into our food whether you’re heating the plastic or not. I love these glass food storage containers.
Shopping List
Once you have your meals planned for the week, you need a list. This is another advantage to my 6 week meal planning process – once I have each week filled in, I list every single item I need for each week on a re-useable list and then just note what I already have before heading to the store.
You can definitely use paper for your shopping list, but I like to use the Cozi app. Cozi is really a calendar app, but it has a ‘lists’ section. My husband and I both have Cozi on our phones and they’re synced! Which means when I put something on the calendar or the shopping list, we can both see it. I love that he knows exactly what we need if he happens to make an unplanned stop at the grocery store.
Display
I find it’s also helpful to have the meal plan displayed somewhere that is easy to see in the kitchen. There have been MANY times where I’ve meal planned and bought all the ingredients, but forgot what I planned because I didn’t have it written down anywhere.Or, I wrote it on a list that I threw away.
You can find many ideas on Pinterest or just get a dry erase board with magnets on the back to put on the fridge.
I hope these tips help you become a meal planning pro! Let me know in the comments if you meal plan or if you’ve struggled like I used to.
As we know better, we do better –
Brianne Pruitt is a wife, mom, Registered Nurse and Certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach. After winning the battle with her own brain fog, Bri became passionate about guiding mom’s through the journey of busting their brain fog so that they can be the energetic, happy mama they crave to be. www.hippiedippiemom.com
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