Want to begin a diet but can’t find the time to weigh food and cook during the week with the busy schedule? Do you start a diet and then leave it midway because you’re always running around? Life gets busy and we often don’t find time to accommodate cooking healthy meals; leave alone weighing each raw ingredient before cooking.
This is where meal planning comes to play. Meal planning simply means planning ahead of schedule. It is a great practice to stay on track with your diet plan, stay disciplined, prevent food wastage, and feel your best. So successful meal planning is an investment for your future health. Without further ado let’s have a look at what goes into making a successful meal plan.
What goes into Meal Planning?
Create a Shopping list – Make a weekly shopping list and keep a day to go grocery shopping or order it online. We don’t want to find missing ingredients to cook in our already busy week and find a reason to go off track.
Create a weekly menu – It is important to create a menu of the foods to be eaten in the week. Whether you’d prefer the same thing for lunch/dinner every day or a variety to play with, jot it all down. We can find many apps for meal planners which make our lives easier, help us with recipes and create our shopping lists.
Frequency of meal preparation – Depending on your schedule, decide how many times a week you can meal prep. It could be only on weekends, or every night or even alternate days.
Week flow – Are there days that are particularly long and crazy or some days that are comparatively relaxed? Keep simple and quick fixes for meals on busy days like an egg sandwich/ pre-cooked chicken sandwich for lunch or overnight oats with fruits and whey for breakfast. On the contrary, if there are relaxed days you can make something that would take a little extra time for cooking like soya/chicken manchurian with fried rice. Making a note of these little things can avoid boredom from having the same food every day.
Make good use of weekends – Weekends are meant to chill and party but use it efficiently by getting ingredients in place and pre-weighing raw foods – like making 100gm chicken packets, marinating them and storing them in the freezer for the weekdays, or measuring raw rice and pulses, etc and making day-wise packets for the same. Also cutting vegetables in bulk and using them as required in the week is useful.
Bulk cooking – Cook a meal for two or more days at once and divide it into equal portions. Label it with the name of the dish and the date and freeze this for another day.
One-pot meals – Lookup easy one-pot meals that require adding all ingredients together.
Support from a partner – In case you choose to begin a diet to improve health issues or just to improve the quality of life as you age; support from your spouse plays a major role. If both partners work, it is important to divide the meal planning among both depending on certain days that the other may be relaxed or dividing certain tasks like buying groceries, measuring ingredients, etc. Spousal support improves dietary adherence.
Also, couples are more likely to be successful when they change lifestyle patterns together. This is because one partner influences the other one if they decide to stop healthy habits.
Join groups – Women tend to need more social support. It is good to join social media groups for meal planning where people share their tips and tricks for better time management and give support to go on with the practice.
Do people who plan meals have an edge over those who don’t? Let’s refer to the table to know.
| Category | Meal Planners | Non-Meal Planners |
| Adherence to diet | Greater with a meal plan | Inconsistent |
| Nutrient-dense | Better when pre-planned | Average to poor |
| Frequency of eating food outside diet | Comparatively less | Greater |
| Physical activity level | High | High on some days, low on some |
| Eating home-cooked meals | High | Inconsistent due to schedule |
| Sense of achievement | High when you are disciplined | Low due to guilt of being inconsistent |
| Goal attainment | High | Low |
So, people who plan meals definitely have an edge over those who don’t. The rate of being overweight or obese also significantly reduces when we stick to the diet. We learn new recipes and ways of cooking, learn better time management, and feel a sense of attainment.
Tips to simplify cooking
- Quantify raw materials and store them in packets or containers.
- Keep chopped vegetables for instant use for stir-fry dishes, pulao, omlette etc.
- Prepare dough for chapati at night.
- Boil dals/pulses/rice/pasta and store in the freezer for later use.
- Grind soya chunks (can be added to wheat flour to make chapatis.
- Finely chop green leafy vegetables to make parathas during the week or in puree form for palak paneer.
- Sprout rajma, chana, etc during the weekend to make salads during the week.
- Clean and cut chicken and marinate if needed for use on weekdays.
Ways to store food and increase its shelf life
- Raw/marinated meats can be stored in small airtight plastic containers (preferably BPA-free) in the freezer. Raw meat can stay good for months in the freezer but if you store it in the fridge then it should last for around 2 days.
- Chopped vegetables can last for a week if stored in airtight containers in the fridge. If you store them in the freezer, they may hold ice particles so would not be very suitable for all dishes.
- Pureed tomato/greens can be kept in ice trays for small quantities and then transferred to a bigger box to store together. You can then use the cubes as per requirement.
- Boiled dals/rice can be stored in the freezer in plastic containers and can be good for a week or two.
- For carrying meals at work there are two to three compartment containers available in the market/online [like Bento box]. Depending on your choice you can go for glass/plastic/steel containers.
- Fully prepared meals can be stored in glass containers for direct heating in the microwave.
All this meal prep may look a little overwhelming but start small – take one day at a time and keep making little changes as you move ahead. With time you will get better at it.
“If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail – Benjamin Franklin”
Author – Mariam Chandra
References:
- Ducrot, P., Méjean, C., Aroumougame, V., Ibanez, G., Allès, B., Kesse-Guyot, E., Hercberg, S. and Péneau, S., 2017. Meal planning is associated with food variety, diet quality and body weight status in a large sample of French adults. International journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity, 14(1), pp.1-12.
- Albanese, A.M., Huffman, J.C., Celano, C.M., Malloy, L.M., Wexler, D.J., Freedman, M.E. and Millstein, R.A., 2019. The role of spousal support for dietary adherence among type 2 diabetes patients: a narrative review. Social work in health care, 58(3), pp.304-323
