Meal planning and preparation made easy!
Making a significant dietary change is difficult and takes time. Adjusting to your new eating patterns after surgery can be challenging, especially once real life sets back in and you are busy again with work, families and children. Setting aside a few hours at the start of the week to plan, shop and prepare your meals can help take some of the stress away and save you time throughout the week. It also ensures you always have appropriate and healthy choices on hand for those times when life is just too busy.
Benefits of Meal Planning
- Saves you time during the week wondering what to have for dinner and stopping at the supermarket each night on the way home from work to buy ingredients.
- Saves you money as you will only buy the ingredients you need and nothing is wasted.
- Helps you avoid becoming over-hungry and overfull. Meals and snacks are prepared and ready to go when you are busy, and already portioned out to ensure you do not eat too quickly and become overfull.
- Helps you to make sure protein and low-starch vegetables are the priority, as you can plan your meals around this.
It can seem daunting to plan and prepare a whole week worth of meals, which is why we have shared our tips for simple meal planning and prep below.
Meal planning and prep tips!
- Allocate a few hours on a Sunday (or whichever day works best for you) and plan breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks (if required) for the next 7 days
- Write a corresponding food shopping list so you can be sure you only buy what you need. Use our ‘Weekly Meal Planner’ below if you like!
- Spend some time preparing a few meals and snacks to make the week easier. Making recipes in bulk and freezing is a great option. Also allows you to freeze meals in a smaller portion that suits you so nothing is wasted.
- Feeding a whole family? No problem meal prep can still be helpful for you! For example, making and freezing a bolognese sauce will save you time, as all you have to then do is defrost, boil some pasta for the family and prepare a quick salad to have on the side.
Ideas for ‘make-ahead’ meals and snacks
Check out our Pinterest page (https://www.pinterest.com/melbweightloss) for lots of great meal planning recipe ideas!
