Meal Planning
I’ve always loved being creative in the kitchen, but meal planning was never my thing.
It’s taken me years to really take meal planning more serious and see where it fits in my life. Now I know how it can help me save time and eat the foods I desire versus grabbing food on the go or snacking my way through the day. For years I grocery shopped on the weekend, but it was common for me to grab a few things on my way home from work 2-3 times a week. I never really knew what I was going to make when the week started, but I knew there was room for creative expression with my fridge stocked and that felt good (until it didn’t). I called that Meal Planning.
When Dan and I first married, we would get home after a full day of work and likely time on our bikes or at a yoga class and still need to feed ourselves. We would find ourselves in the kitchen, ravenous. We’d open a bag of chips, crack open some salsa or slice up some cheese and nibble on it with our favorite crackers. We might split a beer or a glass of wine and take a moment to stare into the abyss of the refrigerator between noshes. We’d grab a bunch of veggies, maybe a grain and whip up a sauce and sip, chat and chop our way through a creative endeavor in the kitchen.
Sounds romantic, right? Not really.
My digestion was off, I wasn’t sleeping well and I’d wake in the morning feeling groggy and lethargic. After too many late nights scrambling in the kitchen to feed myself after a long day, I knew there had to be another way. It took years to shift and Ayurveda to point me in a new direction.
The turning point was committing to making a plan that had more specifics. For example, deciding which days I would eat certain meals and then carving out time the time to prepare food in advance. This practice of meal planning has saved me hours each week in the kitchen and hours of mental energy. I realize now how much time I spent thinking about what I was going to eat. I can now use that mental capacity to be thinking about other things. I no longer am asking myself what I’m going to eat. I think about it once a week and bam, it’s done. I used to think this sounded constrictive and limiting and lacking creativity. Not true. This was clearly an outdated rule I was living by, that was holding me back from a more expansive experience of time. It may sound simple, but this practice seriously saves time and I’m eating better than ever. For me, it’s the difference between consistent, nourishing meals or constantly thinking about food and snacking my way through dinner.
Then I learned to really meal plan. It’s taken years of practice and I feel like we’ve got a really great rhythm around here. I no longer stop at simply making a list of ingredients I need from the store and put them in the fridge. I take it a few steps further. Below are a few reasons why meal planning makes such an impact, followed by some tips on integrating it into your week.
Top 5 Reasons to Meal Plan:
- Spend Less Time in the Kitchen
- Food prepared in advance saves time and mental energy.
- There is little wiggle room for unhealthy cravings to run the show.
- Eat seasonally with ease.
- There is plenty of time to enjoy the evening and time with family outside of the kitchen.
How To Integrate a Meal Plan:
Plan Nourishing Meals
Make a list of your family’s favorite meals for the season and their ingredients. It’s important everyone feels satiated. Food is one of those things that can be a huge morale booster after a long day. Like having a bowl of warm soup waiting for you when you get home on a cold day. Or knowing your kids are eating well, since you packed their lunch with consciousness versus on whim in a morning haze. Having warm oatmeal ready to go in the morning with warming spices is a great way to start the day. The planning phase, is a great time to pull in seasonal fruits and veggies in a conscious way, instead of buying the same foods each week. Aligning our diets with nature will help with our overall ease. Nature knows what is good for bodies, for example roots are abundant in the Fall. They provide a sweet, grounding energy when the weather changes to more dry and crisp. This is also the phase of the process to integrate a new recipe when you are motivated.
Make A Grocery List
Take your meals and assess what you already have in the house. What additional ingredients do you need to pull this off? We tend to make a list and hit the Farmers Market first. If we can’t find it there, then we make a run to the grocery store. Buying in bulk can be helpful at times, but be careful of nuts, seeds and oils going rancid over time.
Plug-in Meals to Planner
Now, pull out your calendar and look at what the family schedule is like for the week. What nights are you expected to be out late or running the kids around. In Ayurveda, it’s recommended you eat your biggest meal in the middle of the day and eat an earlier and lighter dinner. Schedule your lighter meals for dinner and more protein and grains at lunch. You want to eat your biggest meal in the middle of the day for maximum digestion. Then start plugging in your meals.
Add Notes/Reminders
I add notes to my planner to remind me to soak or pull certain things together the night before. An example might be that you want a hearty stew for lunch the next day, so you can put everything in the crockpot and have it cook through the night. I’ll make chia cereal the night before. We soak all our grains, legumes, seeds and nuts, so soaking is something we are doing most nights. Soaking is great for digestion. It may seem like an unnecessary step, but your gut will thank you.
Schedule Kitchen Batch Tasking
Batch tasking is when you link together similar tasks at once. This is about carving out, a set amount of time (I prefer Sunday afternoon) to hunker down in the kitchen and food prep. This is the time for cleaning veggies, chopping, roasting, and blending. Put on some good music or listen to a podcast and start chopping. I usually crank the oven and roast different kinds of veggies so I can add them to salads or quinoa during the week. I make a few salad dressings that can be used on raw or cooked veggies. I might bust out a batch of hummus or pesto and turn on the dehydrator to make some kind of sweet treat for the week.
Once I do all of this, the fridge is stocked with food and I’m ready to go for the week. I don’t have to think about what I’m going to have and I’m less likely to reach for snacky foods as I pull it together the night before. I can’t even tell you the last time we busted into chips and salsa or crackers and cheese while making a meal.
While I love to be creative in the kitchen, I really enjoy meal planning. I spend less time in the kitchen during the week and find more time to connect with my family away from the kitchen. It’s also such a great reminder that the more simply we eat the easier it is to digest, which is important for our overall health.
Download the Free Meal Plan Template below and plug-in to the plan and play.
Free Download!
Meal Planning Template
Use this meal planning template to create structure and ease around mealtimes.
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Rachel Peters is a yoga teacher, yoga health coach, lifestyle and habits expert, easeful living advocate, and lover of wild places. She leads others towards Embodying Ease through a yearlong wellness & lifestyle journey to dissolve perfectionism, embody daily habits that promote mental clarity, overall ease, and deeper connection to life on this wild ride of modern living. Learn MORE today!