It’s been drilled into our heads right from the time we stepped into school – Plan your day, plan your activity, plan your study, etc. To all that, today I add, plan your meals i.e. create a custom meal planner.
Proper planning of meals is a necessity when you are on a weight loss diet.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner are the most important meals of the day and planning for each of them for the whole week is quite a task. Although time consuming, a meal planner is worth all the effort in the long run. If you have a meal planner ready at hand, you needn’t fret at what to cook for dinner each night and your family will enjoy healthy meals.
Besides these obvious advantages, a meal planner also helps you save money on your daily groceries
allowing you to stay within your planned food budget. It also prevents you from impulse buying. With a meal planner, you know exactly what groceries are already in stock in your kitchen and what you need to buy during your grocery shopping trip. Thus, a meal planner saves time in more than one way – you don’t waste time thinking up a meal to cook and you don’t waste time at the grocery store.
To the meal planner tips from the previous blog post, I shall add these new ones to make meal planning simple:
Make time for your meal planner.
Choose a day to make your meal planner and stick to it. Ensure that you have the time to prepare your list. You’d also be able to prepare your grocery list alongside if you check out your stock of provisions in your kitchen.
Use the internet to plan your meals.
It is a good practice to check out the grocery store online to get an idea of the discounted prices and offers being made. You could also check out for recipes online to include in your meal planner.
Keep an eye on the staple items.
Keep a ready list of the staple items that need to be re-stocked into your kitchen. Don’t leave this till the last moment, or you may have to dash off to the grocer’s just to pick up a single item.
Take stock of your grocery items.
Check your pantry for all the items on your shopping list – you might just find that you need not buy the particular item you thought needed to be stocked. Also, while looking through your cabinets you might find some ingredients that may need to be finished quickly. Plan a meal around these ingredients so as to use them up.
Make your meals interesting.
Variety is the spice of life. Make changes in the usual recipes to make them interesting. Look out for ideas to prepare the dishes differently. Experiment with new cooking ideas while ensuring a balanced meal.