Wondering why you should be meal planning? Here are 6 reasons meal planning will help save you time, money and your sanity too!
Meal planning, in it’s simplest form, is taking some time to plan out any number of meals. You might plan a few days at a time or a few weeks.
- You might plan to cook meals or perhaps to eat out.
- Perhaps you will plan your lunches so you aren’t tempted to purchase takeout.
- You might plan your dinners so you can come home to something prepared.
A meal plan can be any of these things. The idea behind it is to not have to start from scratch for every meal. If you’ve been thinking about meal planning there’s lots of good reasons to begin.
6 REASONS FOR MEAL PLANNING
1. Make Healthier Choices:
If you wait until the last minute to try to figure out what to eat there’s a better chance that you will grab whatever looks good at the moment or make a stop through the local fast food drive in. If you’re shopping while you are hungry you are more likely to toss a bunch of items that are fast and easy to eat into your cart.
Planning meals helps to keep you focused on making healthier food choices.
2. Improved Nutrition:
By planning in advance you can make sure to plan your meals around your own personal nutritional needs.
Looking to include more vegetables in your diet? You can plan for it!
Looking to reduce the amount of salt or sugar you eat? You can plan for it!
No matter what type of dietary needs you have meal planning can help you stay focused on these needs. Improved nutrition means better health.
3. Eat higher quality foods:
Homemade meals often contain fewer calories, salt and fat than take out, ready to eat or freezer meals that you find at your local grocery store. When you make your own food you have control over the quality of the ingredients. Your meals will be more nutrient filled.
4. It saves you money:
Having a meal plan in place helps you to save money by avoiding the need for take out, restaurant meals or even higher priced frozen meals when you find you have nothing planned to eat.
It will also save you money with your grocery store purchases. You will be able to purchase exactly what you need for meals and not end up coming home with a bunch of items that will never be used for anything. It also keeps you from throwing out ingredients that were purchased in the hopes that you will think of something to make with them but never do.
Having a meal plan allows you to create meals that use up the ingredients that you have on hand.
5. It saves you time:
Meal planning can save you time in several ways:
By planning on doubling or tripling a recipe you save time by doing your shopping and prep work only once. Example: If you are making meatloaf will it take you any longer to make two or three of them? Probably not. When it comes time to eat those future meals you will have saved time because you won’t need to shop for ingredients, cut and mix them or prepare the recipe. You will simply take the meatloaf out, thaw it and then bake.
Planning also saves you time at the grocery store. You don’t be wandering around the store trying to think of what you need only to remember that you need an items several rows back.
Planning also saves you time during the week. You know your schedule best and know what days you are busier than others. You can plan in fast and easy meals such as soup, frozen pizza, overnight oats (chia pudding if you are keto/low carb), muffins or quick meals such as rotisserie chicken with a bag of salad mix for these busy days.
6. It can decrease stress:
Do you get up wondering what you are eating for breakfast? How about lunch at work or school? Do you come home at night asking yourself or having your family asking what’s for dinner? Knowing what you are going to eat can help to save your sanity. Imagine how much easier your morning or evening will go when this question is not only answered for you but you even have something prepped and ready to be cooked.
These are 6 great reasons for meal planning.
Save yourself even more stress by saving and reusing past meal plans and grocery lists so you cut down on planning time too.
Learn even more about meal planning and meal prep here with out Mastering Meal Planning and Meal Prep Course. Discover how you can quickly and easily begin meal planning to help save you time and money while cutting back on the stress of trying to figure out what’s for dinner each night.
Looking for an easy way to collect and store recipes and then use them to build your own meal plans? Our Ultimate Guide to Meal Planning With Trello can help you meal plan quickly and easily. Plus it will build a grocery shopping list for you!
If you are looking for some delicious recipes that are perfect for meal planning and meal prep then check these out:
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