How to Start Meal Planning

Once you get home from work, make dinner, eat it and clean up you can pretty much guarantee your ready to dive into bed – not so fun. However bring in meal planning and you can now easily grab a homemade dinner out of the fridge, heat it up and enjoy it with your feet up and Netflix on. 

You now might be wondering, what in the heck is meal planning? Well meal planning is the act of preparing meals to last you through the Apocalypse! Kidding! Meal planning is simply preparing all of your meals for the week ahead of time. It’s similar to having those frozen dinners you purchase from the store, except that you prepare them yourself, with better, healthier and unprocessed ingredients. 

Meal planning is very beneficial for your bank account, your waistline and also your quality of life as it allows you to have more free time that you can fill with activities you enjoy doing. Want to get involved in the meal-planning trend? Well read further for the tips and tricks to start meal planning. 

Pick Your Commencement Day 

The first step in meal planning is to pick the day you want to prepare all your meals. Most people choose Sunday as you are off work and have the whole day to get the job done. In the beginning you don’t want to prepare meals for the entire week. You want to start off with no more than three meals so that you don’t feel overwhelmed. Therefore your meal planning days could be Sunday and Wednesday. 

Pick Your Meals 

Now you need to decide which meals you are going to prepare. Are you cooking lunches and dinners, breakfast and dinner, just dinner? Figure out what is going to work best for you. Most people do lunch and dinner. Once you have established what meals you are preparing you can now decide on what recipes you are going to prepare. You probably don’t want to have the same meals three days in a row because BORING. Mix it up. Get some inspiration. 

Use Good Quality Containers 

What makes a container good quality you may be wondering; well firstly you want to be able to divide each part of your meal so that the foods aren’t cross contaminating each other. You also need an airtight container to keep your food better, fresher and crispier. Trust us, good quality containers are worth the investment in the long run. 

It’s Cooking Time

As mentioned above you don’t want to overwhelm yourself in the beginning by cooking a whole week in one day. Opt for three days at a time while you start out. Take your time with this part of the meal planning process. First starting with prepping everything, for example, season your protein, cut your vegetables and prepare your carbs (rice, pasta etc.). Do everything in batches, for example, place all of your chicken on a tray and place it in the oven. Do the same with your vegetables but on a separate tray. Put your rice in a rice cooker and BOOM now all you have to do is wait. To cut down on cleaning we highly recommend aluminum cooking trays. It’s a win-win.