Top 4 reason you struggle with meal planning.
Let’s start this off with the top reasons it’s hard to meal prep/plan, and also help you make it easy for YOUR life. Many fitness professionals and other on top of it moms blog about the reason to meal prep. WELL OF COURSE! We all know why it’s great to meal prep but that doesn’t help me do it. It makes me feel less than because I am not a mom that has it all together even 25% of the time, are you?
Listen I used to be that person also that had it all together and prepped every weekend after grabbing groceries. Back when we had one child it was easy! I am not even going to lie after we had our second and I stayed home for the first six months it wasn’t hard at all. Fast forward when our oldest started school, I finally landed a full time job in the fitness & sports industry, My husbands career has really taken off, we both got involved with committees, lets not even talk about the activities our kids are now in. Now it’s crazy difficult!
So those are my reasons lets talk about everyone else’s reasons
Sports/activities
The meme circling around social media is true. We can eat dinner at 4:30 or 9pm because everyone has practice. You are running around like a crazy person or uber driver dropping all the kids all over town.
So how do we handle this… I love a good brain dump. What do I mean? So all your activities and things on your to do list write it down then put it on the calendar. We have calendars everywhere I used to put it on an excel template but I have found the phone one works better as I can share it with my husband so he gets notifications on his phone as to what’s going on.
So on the nights you have nothing (I know few and far between) try to plan something that will give you many left overs. I like to do a casserole, like enchiladas, chicken & rice, chicken pot pie, etc. you get the idea. You can have the time to let it bake on nights you have nothing going on. Now you have quick left overs for nights you have things going on.
Now the nights you have things going on think quick! Like wraps or sandwiches, not like cold sandwich think grilled a step up from the boring version but still just as quick. Better yet homemade pizzas, spaghetti, taco bar, DIY salad bar. Most of these types of meals take 30 mins or less to whip up! It’s super easy to sub out the types of proteins so you don’t get board with them either.
2. Where to start?
I get this road block all the time where do I even start? There are so many different ways to meal plan how do I even get started! Well like I mentioned before brain dumps help with this one! You can do this with all your recipes you have on hand and go back through and organize them by types of proteins or minutes it takes to prepare.
There are a couple of ways you can go about meal planning I have seen books that list it by the same protein all week, but its all over the place on the type of cuisine you end up eating it never gets boring. I have seen salad jars (hahaha we all have haven’t we) over night oats and a ton of other prepackaged type things you can do.
Now I have found if you start small it makes it much easier to stick to. When you are looking to start meal planning I would begin with the meal you have the hardest time with. I find my self working around the house in the morning along with getting our kids around and I end up going without breakfast then grabbing something later on. So I have decided to prep my breakfasts so I can grab and go. You may have a hard time with dinner. So you can either prep your dinner ahead of time to where all you have to do is warm it up. Or you can get all the ingredients ready to cut down on the time you.
3. Left overs all week?! Ugh leftovers gross.
I get it a fresh dinner is always better. It doesn’t have to be left overs all week. I have mentioned it earlier and I will go into depth with it here. You can cut down your actual cooking time by portioning your meal ingredients, say you have Sundays for cutting veggies and positioning out your proteins with out actually cooking them. When it comes to that meal in the week you just pull the kit out and you are ready to go. You may have roast on the menu for one night, you can make a big one and then you can use it again the next night in enchiladas or BBQ beef sandwiches, fajitas. Even though you are using some meat you cooked the night before you have completely switched up the recipe.
4. Time
Right I get it the whole point of meal planning is we never have time, how can we make it easier on our selves when we don’t have time to plan or prep? We don’t have time to spend 2 hours in the kitchen.
Going back to start small, maybe you have trouble with a certain meal if you could prep that meal then just start there. This will then give you extra time in the morning to maybe prep for dinner that night. I will give you an example of what I did this weekend. I prepped my breakfast with some egg bites and now in the morning I don’t have to worry about cooking me breakfast. I now have time to get the protein out and thawed so we can actually have a home cooked meal tonight after everyone gets back form practice! Now that’s two meals I have prepped and it didn’t take but a 30 mins on a Sunday to free up that time so I can prep dinner while the kids are getting ready for school.
There are many different ways you can prep that can fit your family and fit your lifestyle. I hope these solutions help you get started with prepping! Which one of these top four hit home with you I would love to know in the comments!
