Meal Planning–want to ease the stress of figuring out what to eat?
By planning and preparing some meals in advance, you are able to save a lot of time during the week. If you have a busy schedule on weekdays, then meal planning might just be for you! Children have sports, homework and other activities where you need to drive them around so having time for making meals might not seem doable.
Having a plan is very beneficial in countless ways so if you are looking for guidance with business transition planning this is your sign to look for help now. You can say that planning things in advance isn’t for you, but you never know unless you try. You might be pleasantly surprised.
Benefits To Meal Planning
One benefit of planning out meals or snacks is that you save time cooking during your week. This can allow you to spend more time with your family or running errands. If you typically figure out what the dinner plan is right before you make it, that can be very stressful if you don’t have much to work with in your kitchen. There is less stress involved when you already have a meal planned and prepared so you already know what you’re going to eat for that meal. Not to mention, it helps you and your family to spend more time together or someone else besides you is able to warm the meal up.
Challenges With Meal Planning
On the contrary, meal preparation can take several hours in a day to prepare all of the food for a week or two. It’s very time consuming on the day you set aside to plan and prepare, so it can be something that is not fun to look forward to. Depending on your motivational levels, it can even be difficult to get started.
Included in the meal planning and preparation, you have to take into account figuring out the correct portion sizes and make sure everyone gets full. If you have children that you’re trying to meal plan for, the dynamic changes. Some children are picky eaters so it can be very challenging to find meals that everyone in your family will enjoy.
The first few times you do meal planning and preparation, it will require a bit of trial and error, but will become easier with time and practice.
Tips Moving Forward
If you are still hesitant on the concept of meal planning, here are a few things that you can try.
- You don’t have to prepare all of your meals during your meal preparation session
- You can choose to plan lunches or dinners, whichever you have less time for during the week
- Turn on something entertaining to have in the background
- Meal prep with someone else so you can do the work together
- You can start small by meal planning out snacks for the week
- You can meal prep a few lunches and have dinner leftovers for the remainder of the lunches
- Start simple and if this becomes a regular part of your routine, you can gain more skill as you go
