Meal Planning

meggwtw

Do any of you meal plan, and if so, what is your strategy? I'm trying to figure out a way to plan meals in advance because I think that will help me from making impulsive eating choices, or that's the hope. This means I would make some meals in advance on, say, a Sunday evening so I have food for the week all ready to go in the freezer.

Canuckgirl77

Yup! That's the only way I can be disciplined with my food. Otherwise when I come home and I'm hungry, I'll make very wrong decisions.

I try to grocery shop and cook on either Saturday or Sunday. I like to get it all done in one day so that it's out of the way. During the week if when I think about what I might fancy eating so then I can look up recipes and/or see what ingredients I may already have.

I usually make 2 or 3 meals plus my oatmeal or breakfast muffins. Everything is weighed or measured so I can plug it in to MFP to calculate calories. Once I know what it works out to, I portion it out and put some portions in the freezer to eat in a couple of weeks. That way I'm rotating foods every week and don't get bored.

kommodevaran

Yes, I meal plan. It creates predictability, reduces waste (and cost), and provides variety and balance and I always have tasty meals.
Keywords: Weekly dinner themes. Running inventory. Main shopping twice a week for ingredients. Freezing in portions, taking out to thaw the night before. Keep it simple.

KateTii

I meal plan because 1) I'm lazy & 2) I work two jobs and have very little time to be making my lunch fresh every single day. If I don't meal prep, I buy food because I don't have time/effort to make lunch every single day. I grab out my pre-portioned ziplock bags and off I go. With my lunchbox I don't even need a fridge - just a freezer as it defrosts fine in my cooler bag.