Meal planning!

Meal Prep saves me during the work week. I do it for lunches, that way I can grab it and go which saves time and I'm not tempted to grab something high calorie or fast food. I have a rough plan for dinners each week, a few recipes that I've shopped for that I can choose from. Breakfasts I have a couple reliable go-tos. And snacks are pretty consistent after finding ones that work for me. The last few weeks I've actually made some low-cal treats that last the week and are something I look forward to. Something else I do is fill in my meals the night before, that way I can map out my calories and then adjust as the day goes. These are all things that have helped me be successful so far, 51 days in, 24lbs down. And for the first time I feel like I'm not restricting myself, just being responsible. Hope you find what works for you!

I've meal-planned for years, though originally it was more for budget reasons than health. I take a browse through the fridge, freezer and cupboards, note what we're low on, see what needs used up in the next few days and start to structure meals around that. When planning a meal, consider all the ingredients and what else they can be used for to make a cohesive plan without too much waste. Also don't forget to account for breakfasts, lunches and snacks.

It never felt restrictive, any more than planning out a holiday day-by-day feels restrictive. Some days I don't feel like eating what's on the plan and that's fine.

(If you're asking how physically to do it, I use the computer. Then it's easy to quickly look up a recipe to double-check the ingredients. At the end the plan gets distilled into a shopping list.)

I meal plan. I do 7 days at a time, then I order the food we need to make those meals. I don't plan lunch, since there's a lot of left overs and it's nice to have some choice so I make sure there are some options. Breakfast is more or less the same every day. This means I only buy what we need, and buying/ordering online means I'm not wandering around a store with lots of nice yummy food on offer that I absolutely don't need! I don't usually stick to the meal that I've planned for that day. Sometimes it doesn't fit with leftovers, evening plans or what we fancy. It's just a list of 7 meals that I know i have the ingredients for

I've meal planned off and on for several years. What I find best is to just pencil things onto a calendar - either get a weekly pad or put some space in your regular planner for meals, or I've even done it digitally using google calendar - I made a calendar for meal planning and would add all-day events labelled with which meal and food. That way also offers the flexibility of being able to copy meals over to other days for leftovers, or to drag and drop them if your plans change.

What I find helps most with meal planning is having a list somewhere of the kinds of meals you like and know how to make (I actually have two lists, one for regular meals and one for meals that are easy for when I'm too tired to actually spend effort cooking or know I'll be having a busy day), so that when you're deciding what to eat, you have a handy list to reference of ideas for meals.

Another option is just to input your planned meals straight into MFP in the notes field - go a few days ahead and just note down in that box what you plan to eat.

I tried meal planning over the years and never could really stick to it. If I had baked chicken on the plan for Wednesday, I'd get to Wednesday and want anything but baked Chicken. This often led to making less healthy choices. "Oh, heck, I really don't want that chicken so I guess I might as well pick up a double cheese burger, large fries and shake on the way home." Therein lies disaster.

What worked better for me is to have multiple alternatives available in the freezer. I'd cook up a bunch of chicken, a pork butt, a batch of meatballs, etc. and make sure the freezer was well stocked with meal-sized portions of those and frozen veg. That way, I would go home and be able to decide among the healthy alternatives. Some things like ground meat, fish fillets, etc., I would keep raw in the freezer for making burgers, chicken, and fish meals but for those I had to at least plan ahead to thaw.

Bulk cooking even works for some veggies. Beets, for instance, can be roasted in foil before peeling. They'll sit that way in the fridge for several days. Take them out of the foil, slough off the skin, and serve them hot or cold, plain, Harvard or pickled. Roast a whole butternut squash (with holes poked in it to prevent explosion) and then scoop out the flesh for the fridge or freezer.

I also got pretty good at "sheet pan dinners" which are easy ways to make a healthy meal. Throw everything on a foil lined sheet pan and throw it in the oven; there are gazillions of these online for inspiration.

Having ample stock of seasonings and sauces helps. That way, you can take the cooked pork or chicken or whatever and decide how you want it to be. Italian? Chinese? Barbecued? Just add sauce.

I meal plan my dinners for the week but for breakfast and lunch I just make sure to have some basic staples on hand and have whatever I feel like that day.

For dinners I just pick seven meals to make for the week. Sometimes I’m not thrilled about what I have planned but I just make it anyway.

I meal plan weekly. I also do all the cooking as well. I love to use Copymethat for new ideas all the time. It's a great Chrome extension/app to easily copy any recipe from the internet and store it in your own recipe files, along with all your own recipes.

We try to eat one seafood, one or two chicken meals and the rest plant based. To further complicate, my wife is allergic to cow dairy and I'm celiac (I've had to reinvent all my recipes and cooking style over the years), but don't feel sorry for me, I'm a really good home chef, so eat really well. Actually have a hard time finding restaurants that make as good as food as what we eat at home. So my wife has become incredibly picky about restaurants now.

My biggest issue/problem is my wife is a meat and potato girl at heart. Actual conversation that just happened. Wife -- "what's for dinner tonight?". Me -- "Cauliflower Buffalo Wings made in the air fryer". Wife -- "Ah, that's a hard hell no, maybe with some chicken wings on the side...". Me --

On Saturdays, I cook for the next 6 days(Sun-Fri.). It's just my sister and I in the household and i cook all of our lunches. We both typically fix our own breakfast consisting of oatmeal, veggie sausage, and eggs.

Saturday is the cheat day and my one rule is that we have to make the cheat meal ourselves. We used to go out, but the self control was basically non existent lol and I'm also trying to save money.

To get creative, we made a cheat meal jar full of our favorite fast food or indulgent meals. Every week, we randomly pick a meal out of the jar to recreate on Saturdays.