There are many benefits to meal planning, including saving money, reducing food waste and eating healthier.
Research has shown that meal planning is associated with food variety, diet quality and body weight status. Planning our meals means we are more likely to cook fresh food at home, which has been linked with improved diet quality and lower odds of being overweight.
When you’re busy, it can be difficult to eat healthy late in the day when you’re hungry. Lack of energy, time, inspiration or ingredients often results in making food that doesn’t nourish your body or make you feel good.
Meal planning is an easy and effective way to help you discover and experiment with new ways of eating. This is an opportunity to learn what healthy eating means, how you can incorporate it into your life and how easy it is to make healthy decisions.
Perhaps you are looking to lose weight, detox your body, eliminate certain foods, identify if a particular type of food might be causing unwanted symptoms, or maybe you just want to learn how to cook healthy meals on a budget.
Whatever your goals, having a meal plan, shopping list and recipe book can help you achieve them.
Meal planning maximises ingredients and minimises waste. It also saves guess work at the grocery store, which can otherwise result in buying unnecessary items.
When you know what you will be eating for the week, you are less likely to let foods go bad in your fridge or pantry.
The meal plans and recipe books in my shop contain;
- Delicious, healthy recipes which have been nutritionally-analysed to account for calories, fats, carbohydrates, protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals.
- Downloadable recipe e-book including a print-friendly version ready to stick on your fridge
- Itemised shopping list
- Snack ideas
- A link to access the plan inan interactive, mobile-friendly format
You may not want to plan your meals forever, but as a starting point, following a plan can help you break through all the conflicting advice about what you should or shouldn’t be eating. Once you’ve followed it for three weeks, you’ll have a much clearer sense of how to eat right for your body, how to maximise ingredients and time, minimise waste and save money.
Resources: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5288891/