“Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.”
– Alexander Graham Bell
Meal planning provides countless advantages and personal benefits but may pose some disadvantages. When deciding if meal planning is correct for you, it’s essential to weigh the pros and cons and choose a method that works with your unique life situation. Like everything else we teach at Living LEAN, there is no right or wrong way to meal plan but rather a wide variety of options available.
If incorporating meal planning is one of your New Year’s resolutions, we hope this post provides open and honest information to help you develop a meal planning system that works perfectly for you. Before we give a few meal planning tips, let’s look at the pros and cons of a meal planning practice.
Here are a few advantages to the practice of meal planning:
You are more apt to reach health goals when you establish a meal plan in some form.
You save money and reduce food waste.
You are more likely to practice portion control.
You tend to enjoy healthier food options and avoid choices that do not contribute to your overall wellness goals.
You gain more control over what you choose to eat more often.
You simplify decisions around meal choices and prevent decision fatigue.
You create healthy grab-and-go options making your health your priority.
The advantages of meal planning far outweigh any disadvantages, but it’s essential to discuss them because these are a few reasons many choose not to meal plan.
You believe meal planning takes time, and you don’t want to spend hours in the kitchen.
You believe meal planning takes a lot of discipline, which is something you don’t have.
You don’t know how to meal plan, and it seems overwhelming.
You don’t cook and don’t feel like cooking after a long day at work.
You cook but need a few recipe ideas to get you started.
You don’t know where to start.
You don’t want to eat the same thing every day, eat preplanned food you don’t like, or reheat prepared food.
When deciding whether meal planning will work for you or not, you want to weigh your pros and cons list to determine if this lifestyle choice is something you want to try. If your pros list outweigh the cons list and you are ready to start a meal planning practice, we advise you to start small and go slow.
To avoid overwhelm, you do not and should not go “all-out” with a massive meal planning project from the start.
Here are a few mindset tips when beginning to meal plan:
Tip #1:
Go slow and grow from there – start with one meal at a time.
Is breakfast tricky due to a busy morning schedule, what to eat for lunch is a real pain, or discussions around dinner adding stress and anxiety to your day? Start planning for the one meal providing the most pressure and make some choices about simplifying it.
Tip #2:
Slowly build a healthier kitchen environment.
It has been proven that if unhealthy food is in your kitchen, you will eat it! If healthy food is in your kitchen, you will eat it! You have the most control over your environment. Slowly removing unhealthy food temptations while replacing them with healthier options is one way to plan for better health through the foods you purchase at the grocery store and have available in your home. If you need some assistance supplying the kitchen with healthy options, let us help you with our Pantry Makeover session!
Tip #3:
Don’t overwhelm yourself will the idea of precision-perfect macro plans, but instead, strive to eat real food to promote optimal health and reduce the risk of disease.
Avoid rigid and “made for you” meal plans that tell you what you should eat. The evidence shows that strict meal plans forcing you to eliminate specific food groups do not work in the long term and will not contribute to goals of sustained optimal health. Instead, develop a food prep ritual that provides real food options in your home and allows you to make food choices based on what you feel like eating at the moment. Food, tightly intertwined with social connections, events, and emotions, may benefit from loser meal plans.
Tip #4:
Work toward better management, not rigid rules
Strict meal plans and keeping food journals certainly have their place in specific situations, such as improving health (inflammation or elimination diet) or collecting data about just how much you are eating. Still, these should be short-lived for a brief time and not lifelong practices. Use them to gain knowledge, learn new skills, and start making health-benefiting decisions.
Tip #5:
Think in terms of slow transformations.
To achieve long-term sustainable healthy eating habits, you don’t want to strive to reach perfection. For one, perfection doesn’t exist. Instead, think of meal planning as an ongoing learning process on your lifelong journey toward improved health and wellness. A practice that will evolve and grow as you learn and experience new things.
Whatever your reason for establishing a meal planning practice, this lifestyle choice benefits physical, mental, and emotional health. The trick is to find the meal planning system that works best for your individual needs, and the health coaching team at Living LEAN is here to help! Please look at our meal planning workshops and strategies or reach out to us via email or schedule a FREE 30-minute consultation session.
Success is found in preparation which involves a bit of intentionally planning, and we are here to help!
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