Healthy eating is fantastic, but usually, it takes a lot of effort to cook tasty and nutritious meals for everyone in your household… or not? Meal planning is an effective way to reduce the time and effort you spend on cooking while ensuring that your whole family gets all nutrients and vitamins they need.
If you’re new to meal planning and want to learn more about it or just looking for some tips to improve your usual approach, you’ve come to the right place. Check out our recommendations and spend your time more effectively to reach your goals!
Start with small steps.
Abrupt changes in your routine can be stressful, and if you try to achieve too much from the beginning, the chances are that you’ll get disappointed and abandon this approach. Try to create a plan for several days, use simple recipes, and gradually increase the challenge to make your family’s diet more diverse.
Take your family’s schedule into account.
All your family members are probably busy with their jobs or studies, but that doesn’t mean that they have to limit their diet to takeout or half-processed foods. Preparing lunches and breakfasts in advance will help your whole family save time in the morning, and having a ready dinner in a fridge will ensure that even on the busiest days, you all will eat healthy and nutritious meals.
Write down your meal plans for a week (or more)
This recommendation seems pretty obvious, but overlooking it would make the meal planning process much harder. Creating a list of meals will help you in keeping an eye on the foods your family consumes and ensure that they will last you for the expected period of time. You can choose delicious and easy recipes, cook them in batch, and freeze them to have a ready meal anytime you need it. Moreover, this way, you can discuss recipes with your family members, select dishes that everyone will like, or try new interesting foods.
Keep an eye on the ingredients in your pantry.
Sometimes when you buy food in bulk to cook meals for the whole week, some items expire and go bad. Preventing this issue will help you reduce both your expenses and food waste, and it actually isn’t that hard. To avoid forgetting about some products in your fridge, create a list of foods you have and need, and base your meal plans on it. This approach actually makes your cooking skills more versatile and your diet more diverse since you’ll look for recipes that use these specific ingredients.
Turn food preparation into a family activity.
Cooking doesn’t have to be a challenging chore: in fact, it can be a fun and bonding activity for the whole family. Preparing tasty food together from scratch along with your loved ones will create a lot of happy memories and make the meals taste even better! By the way, if you have children, that would be a perfect method to teach them the basics of cooking.
Prepare food in bulk
Cooking a lot of various meals for each day seems hard, but what if you don’t have to do this? Big batches of the same dish can be wondrously transformed by using different sauces, spices, and side dishes. This way, you’ll be able to save time and provide excellent meals for yourself and your family.
Use apps to plan meals more effectively
If you have little to no experience in planning and preparing meals for your family, why not use outside help? Modern technology allows you to make the process much easier: you’ll just need to choose a specialized app, insert your requirements, and receive a thorough meal plan that takes into account your and your family’s needs. The functions of some of these programs allow you to choose meal plans for a generally healthy nutrition style or for specific diets you follow.
Planning and prepping meals for yourself and your family might be a challenging task, but with some tips, you’ll make this approach seem like a piece of cake (though much healthier!). For example, rushing things might lead to ineffective results – but slowly working on your skills, making detailed plans, and shopping lists will help you to keep the whole process under control. Moreover, don’t hesitate to make meal prepping easier and more exciting: with support from your family members and specialized apps, you’ll save a lot of your energy and time!