Why Everyone should Meal Plan

Introduction – Why Everyone Should Meal Plan

Whether you are an enthusiastic amateur chef, have a large family or feel meh about cooking, you should be meal planning.

Meal planning will make your food more varied, improve your nutrition, prevent food waste and preserve your sanity by creating less stress.

Vahista Ussery, in her article Meal, Planning for Beginners: 10 Steps for Success – To Taste, lists six advantages of meal planning. Below is a summary of what she has to say:

• ‘Saves money: When you meal plan for the week, your grocery trips will become more focused, and your cart will be filled with foods you planned to buy instead of foods you picked up on impulse. Meal planning can also help limit the number of times that you get food delivered or dine out; cooking at home is usually a less expensive option.
• Saves time…
• It provides more variety…
• Creates less stress: Wouldn’t it be great not to worry about what you’re going to make for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day? Meal planning takes the guesswork away and gives you a plan for what to cook for the week.
• Ensures healthier eating: When you plan your meals, you are in better control of the ingredients you put in your body.
• Prevents food waste: …’

Let’s elaborate further on the above to get a fuller picture of what meal planning entails.

What is meal planning?

Let’s begin by providing a simple definition.

In essence, meal planning is deciding what you will eat for the week ahead and buying all the ingredients in one go.

‘What it is: Meal planning is asking the what’s for dinner question once for the whole week, instead of every night, and then shopping for and prepping the ingredients before cooking.’ (Halo Bey Madene)

Of course, there is more to it, but it is not as complex as it may seem. You won’t have to spend hours poring over recipe books or become a mini-Heston Blumenthal.

Once a week, sit down with your diary and your partner’s if you don’t live alone and make a simple list of when you will eat what. Coordinating your meals with your life’s commitments ensures that you are not scheduling a three-course meal on a day when your wife is at a work event. It would get quite lonely eating three courses alone. Roster quick and easy meals or takeaways on busy days and more elaborate meals or new recipes at the weekends.

Sounds stressful to come up with seven dinner recipes each week? Well, there are a few tricks to help.

Recycle your meals by creating several weekly meal schedules once and reusing them on a rota. For example, you won’t remember that you had scrambled eggs for breakfast precisely four weeks ago or that it was pasta night on the first Tuesday evening of January.

Cook staples and easy-to-prepare meals that you know how to make blindfolded. Choose one meal you have never done before every week to increase your repertoire. Don’t experiment nightly unless cooking is your passion and you have a lot of time.

Pencil in some meals out or takeaways; you don’t need to cook daily. Most people plan about five main meals a week. Make larger quantities of food than you can eat in one go and take to work the following day.

Once you have decided on your meals, write down a list of all the ingredients you need. Check your pantry beforehand to ensure you are not duplicating what you already have. For example, at my last spring clean, I found ten tins of tomatoes that I didn’t know I had!

Go to your nearest supermarket with your shopping list. Doing this weekly ensures you don’t constantly waste time in supermarkets. Having a list ensures you only buy what’s on it rather than random items you might otherwise get on a whim. This saves you money.

I hope the above has shown:

That meal planning doesn’t require you to be a great chef.

It can help save money and is not a lot of work once you get into the swing of things.

It allows you to be more mindful about what you eat, thus creating more varied and healthy food.

Many years ago, I had a partner who would meal plan for the entire week on a Saturday. We used to tread around the local market and buy stuff for Thursday’s dinner. I could never do this when alone as I didn’t want to decide on Saturday what to eat on Wednesday. So when we split up, I shelved the idea of meal planning.

Too restrictive, or so I thought! The good thing is it doesn’t need to be. You can plan meals for the week without allocating a specific day. Perhaps prepare meals with ingredients that keep in the fridge? Plan meals for only part of the week and eat leftovers or takeaways during the others.

It’s true what they say, meal planning saves time, and money, and improves nutrition! Once you start, you’ll be hooked! (Suburban Simplicity)

Conclusion

To get further ideas on how to get organised and more productive, check out my other posts here.

Contact me here if you need help getting organised, and I’d be delighted to work with you.

trabantbettina

Bettina Anna Trabant, Founder of Life Organised, your professional organising and decluttering service in East London. Eco-conscious minimalist and avid tea drinker,