NUTRITION - Meal Planning Made Simple

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Summary - 

Meal planning is supposed to simplify healthy eating … but what if the idea of just sitting down to plan out your meals feels stressful and overwhelming though?! I’ve spent years trying to make this tedious task somewhat bearable and enjoyable and I finally feel like I’ve accomplished that. This is meal planning but it’s meal planning made simple! 

Things I Mention - 

  • How to easily include a variety of flavours and cuisines into your weekly meal plan

  • The exact formula I use to simply and meal plan 3 meals per day (+ snacks) for a family of four as an on-the-go working Mum

  • How to get your hands on my free meal planning template which you can edit to suit you

PLUS, I share some of the biggest game-changers when it comes to reducing the cost of food and how much valuable time you spend in the kitchen preparing meals. 

Links & Helpful Resources - 

Make sure you hit SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss out on any of my practical tips & tricks and if you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a rating and a review? Thanks! 

Argh meal planning - it’s a necessary evil in my house and I have a real love/ hate relationship with it. Although I love cooking, I used to hate having to constantly think about what to feed everyone in my family but looking back now, I can see that because I couldn’t stand the tedious task of having to come up with ideas all the time, that it forced me to actually try and make the process a hell of a lot easier which I’m now so thankful for. Einstein famously said that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result” so I guess you could say that it was insanity that pushed me to come up with a solution. 

In today’s episode, I want to give you a few tips & tricks that have helped make meal planning more simple and therefore as a result, has helped me stick to healthy eating as an on-the-go working Mum. You might find some of these tips too structured and repetitive but they work for me and have certainly helped to reduce some of the overwhelm & cost that comes with having to prepare & cook 3 or more meals each day for a family of four.

First things first and on the topic of making things simple - KEEP BREAKFAST SIMPLE

In our house, we eat the same few breakfasts mostly because the mornings are quite a rush with school & work during the week. Depending on the season, we’ll usually alternate between a cold breakfast (a smoothie or some berries with protein yoghurt) and a pre-made breakfast (some boiled eggs or overnight oats). I keep things really simple and I might make breakfast more exciting on the weekends when we have a little more time up our sleeves. 

LEFTOVERS FOR LUNCH 

If you’re a regular listener, this will come as no surprise but for me personally, eating leftovers for lunch has been the biggest game-changer for me. It has hugely reduced the amount of money that I spend on food but better yet, it’s significantly reduced the amount of time I spend in the kitchen. Time is the most valuable resource we have so I love to cook double batches for dinner and eat leftovers for lunch most days. 

COFFEE AS A SNACK

This one’s for all my fellow coffee enthusiasts. When I first began learning more about my diet & health, it was the calories in my daily coffee/s that perhaps surprised me the most. Most women that I’ve worked with have a coffee alongside a mid-morning snack which can quickly bump up the overall calorie amount of your humble snack to that of a meal. I’m not suggesting you focus or turn your attention to calorie counting here but I now choose to have just my coffee as my mid-morning snack which then also kills 2 birds with one stone because it means one less snack to have to think about.

USE THE SAME MEAL PLAN FOR 2-3 WEEKS

When you know you’re onto a good thing, it makes sense to stick with it so instead of having to think of a new meal plan each week, I like to use the same weekly meal plan for up to 3 weeks. (This meal plan includes all of the tips I’m suggesting in this episode - a simple breakfast, leftovers for lunch, coffee as a snack and a different dinner each night). I’ve found 3 weeks to be the sweet spot with my family - after 3 weeks, we start to get bored of eating the same dinner on a Monday Night.

DEDICATE A CUISINE TO EACH NIGHT 

Speaking of dinner, I find dedicating a cuisine to each night helps narrow down potential recipe ideas yet keeps things interesting throughout the week. For example, we like to dedicate Monday to #MEATFREEMONDAY so we’ll have a plant-based dinner to kickstart the week. Tuesday might be Mexican, Wednesday a BBQ, Thursday - Indian, Friday - Italian, Saturday is take out in our house and you might like to dedicate Sundays to a roast so you can then utilise leftovers for lunch on Monday. 

To help make meal planning as stress-free as I possibly can, I’ve gone ahead and created a template for you to download. You can save this template to your computer and then go through and edit it to suit your own tastes and preferences but it should simplify the process for you. You can grab this one now at www.elishacasagrande.com.au/mealplan

Elisha CasagrandeBrisbane Personal Trainer, Brisbane Health Coach, FEEL BE LOOK, Womens Confidence, Confidence, IIN Health Coach, Healthy Eating, Womens Health, Diets, Womens Weight Loss, Diet Culture, Meal Planning, Meal Plan Template, Easy Meal Plans, Healthy Meal Plans