Are you a meal planner or do you just fly by the seat of your pants? When I started the healthy eating journey, I had to learn the skill of meal planning. Friend, everything is a skill. Meal planning has nothing to do with personality. If you as a toddler learned how to control your bowels, you can certainly learn the art of meal planning with grace and ease.
3 Meal Planning Hacks without Spending Hours
Bonus Tip: Yep, lets start with a bonus tip first! It’s all about mindset! If you believe meal planning is a chore then you will dread it and put it off. If you believe meal planning is a way to serve and honor your family, by golly it will become an act of love for them. It’s an honor to get to serve my family in this way.
Pull Out Your Calendar
Yep that’s right, your calendar! You could plan amazing mouth watering meals, but if you aren’t going to be home at night it will not serve you. You would end up in the drive thru. The drive thru will not help you reach your goal. Look at only the week ahead of you, don't bite off more than you can chew here. See what nights you need to have a meal ready to go in the crock pot for when you get home from work, which nights you can cook at home, and which nights will you need to pack your dinner to head to your child’s sporting event.
Shop Your Cabinets
You already have food in your fridge, freezer, pantry and sitting on the counter. What can you make with the food you already have in your house? Those meals get put on the meal plan first. It’s also one of the greatest ways to save money at the grocery store. The less you buy at the store the more you can put it towards paying off debt or saving for that fun family vacation.
Have themes
It’s easier to come up with dinner ideas when you have a theme. Have you ever heard the saying “Taco Tuesday”? Every Tuesday have a Mexican dish. Every Friday could be pizza. Every Monday could be breakfast for dinner. You get the idea? Make up a theme then start searching for a dish.
Combine the three tips together and you are ready to plan your week for successfully trimming your waist line while serving your family in love. Start by looking at Monday night: Hubby's home for work plus you have time to cook a meal and you already have stuff to make spaghetti in the pantry? BOOM BABY! Now on to planning Tuesday night, it’s always Taco Tuesday at the Dale house!
Want a 5 night meal plan to trim your waist line?
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