Nutritianna

Meal planning is a great tool to help keep yourself on a healthy eating track and save you time and money. Meal planning can help you prevent eating less healthy options. Meal planning gives you the opportunity to choose healthy food that you like to eat. It also helps you save time since you can make a grocery list and make less trips to the store by planning ahead. You can also make larger dishes that can be stored in the freezer for additional meals you can eat at another time. You can prepare a meal ahead of time and re-heat it when you need it. You can double a recipe so that you can freeze it and use it on a day you don’t have time to cook. Include leftovers into your meal plan schedule. People are often busy and do not have a lot of time to cook, so choose simple meals that you’ve made before or ones that have short preparation and cooking times. Meal planning helps you save money since you can use foods and leftovers instead of letting them go to waste. Choose meals with some overlapping ingredients so you can minimize what you have to buy. For example maybe some of the same ingredients could be used in a salad or casserole recipe. Use a meal planning template on the computer or an erasable white board to record your meals and snacks. Here is an Excel spread sheet of a Meal Plan template.

Tips for meal planning:

• Choose a healthy meal or recipe you already know and enjoy.

• Choose a vegetarian alternative (beans, tofu, or vegetables) often for a recipe over a meat or seafood.

• For variety and adventure, sometimes choose an ingredient or a dish you want to learn how to prepare. 

• Choose an ingredient that is in season or on sale.

• Choose foods that are already in your fridge, freezer or pantry that need to be used up.

• Use recipes that you find online, in cookbooks that you own or at the library, or ask friends and family for recipes.

• Once you have your meal chosen and your recipe, make a grocery list of what you need.