Meal planning means sitting down once a week to write out a meal plan that is balanced and healthy so that you don't guess all week, buy extra groceries trying to come up with meals on the fly, or resort to eating out at fast food places because you aren't prepared. Here's how I go about meal planning on a budget while still eating healthily:
1.) Sit down and plan out your dinners. I start here because it is the biggest struggle, easiest to skimp on, and instead just order pizza or Chinese takeout.
Budget tips here: incorporate the cheaper pieces of meat if you can! Cook it in a slow cooker so that you can shred it, or grill it. It takes a little bit of extra time, but meat is expensive and this is an easy way to save here. Also, try to use as many of the same ingredients for your meals throughout the week in different ways, and eat leftovers a few nights a week! And, try to use recipes that don't require a lot of ingredients.
2.) Plan out your lunches and breakfasts. Here, I tend to keep it the same all week so that I'm not buying 50 different ingredients when I shop. This can get boring sometimes, but you can add a little variation with extra things that you already have in the house without shelling out extra cash. For example, different veggies or dressings on a salad.
3.) Now plan your snacks for in between the 3 meals that you just planned. These will be a little bit smaller than the 3 main meals, but will keep your metabolism revved up, and are easy to eat on the go. I also keep these the same all week on the schedule, but to minimize boredom, I switch up when I actually eat them during the day.
Always remember to pack meals for the day that you will eat while you are away from home so that you can avoid the drive through temptations!
Here is an example of one of my meal plans: You'll notice that there is a lot of overlap with my meals.
More tips:
When you meal plan, you know exactly what you need throughout the week, so this will minimize the grocery bill. It has for me drastically. No more "hmm, I could make this" while walking down the grocery aisles and then ending up with an entire cart full of things that you can't make into meals when you get home. Oh! This also cuts down the time in the store by a HUGE AMOUNT.
After meal planning, go grocery shopping, get what you need, and prep what you need for the week when you get home. I actually spent about 2 hours last night cooking chicken for my salads, washing and chopping up fruits and veggies, and hard boiling eggs. So now during the week when I'm busy I can just reach into the fridge, grab what I need, and go. This is a huge time saver, and it keeps you stress free.
As for dinners, I tend to make those on a day by day basis, but I usually only plan 3 dinners a week and the rest of the nights are leftover nights. Not only does this save time, but it saves money and ensures that I'm not being wasteful.
If you are super busy during the week, I would suggest prepping the meat for your dinners ahead of time, or even putting together meals in a freezer bag for the slow cooker and just plopping them in to cook while you are gone. When you come home each night, dinner will have cooked itself (and the house smells AMAZING). If you don't have a slow cooker, I would suggest getting one or borrowing one from an older relative who might only use it for parties and holidays.
My breakfast is always Shakeology. It gives me a constant source of superfoods and dense nutrition. It takes about 1 minute to prepare, and 10 minutes to drink (for me anyways because I'm a slow drinker). This is super convenient before class to make sure that I'm starting off my day right, so that saves me time there too.
Okay, well I think that those are all of my tips for this week! Go forth and meal plan! Let me know what your experience is with this, and comment if you have any other tips to share!
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