Meal Planning

This summer has been a testing season of sorts for me. Although I am still living on campus, I’m much more on my own than ever before. I have had to make time to grocery shop each week, comparing prices and nutrition labels like a responsible adult. And in an effort to maintain as much order and efficiency as possible (hello, Type A personality) weekly meal plans have been a necessity.

Meal planning keeps me on track with my spending, but it has also been a huge help staying on track with clean eating. Here’s how it works for me…

I typically start planning on Fridays (that’s when the new weekly challenges come out for my summer challenge group). For each day of the week I make a line for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, workout, and water. I also write down what hours I work that day. Then I start filling in meals. Honestly, this is what takes me the longest. Breakfasts are easy because I’m totally okay with eggs and oatmeal every day. Lunches look different from week to week, and sometimes day to day, because there are some days when I need a quick lunch while working and other days I have more time to prepare something. Salads and/or leftovers are pretty typical lunches for me.

Right now, since I’m working on a limited income and only cooking for myself, I will usually choose just one or two options for dinners each week. I don’t need something different each night of the week. It’s pretty easy at the beginning of the week to bake some chicken and sweet potatoes. Add some veggies and dinners are set for the week.

When it comes to snacks, I don’t really plan those in advance in terms of what I will eat specifically each day of the week. I just make sure I have a bunch of healthy, portable options on hand so I can grab and go. I’ll stick to the plan for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then go back into my notebook each day and write down what I ended up having for snacks as well as how many ounces of water I had that day.

After finishing my meal planning on Fridays, it’s pretty easy to write up a grocery list. So grocery shopping happens sometime over the weekend, and then Sunday nights or Monday mornings are spent preparing food (cooking chicken and potatoes, cutting up veggies, measuring out serving sizes for snacks). After all of that, I have found that sticking to healthy eating has been almost a no-brainer.

I do have to admit that I am not perfect at this. A couple weeks ago I realized that I tend to “cheat” in social settings. If I get invited out for dinner with friends or someone offers me pizza/ice cream/junk out of hospitality, I have a really hard time saying no. Having come to this realization, I am really trying to work on bringing good food with me or suggesting healthier alternatives in the next few weeks. Clean eating is important to me, but it’s not so important that I’m going to shut myself in my room in order to stick to the plan. In order to make real, lasting changes, you have to find balance. That’s why I allow myself to go out. I allow myself to have treats. But if I do go out, I try to make the best food choices that I can.

I’m still trying to find what works for me when it comes to this new healthy lifestyle, because I truly do want it to be a lifestyle change, not just a diet I tried for a month or two but ultimately didn’t work. Turns out that meal planning works for me.

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

Brittany