The Impact of Meal Planning is Huge
Written By Kelly Dodds
Meal Planning Can Improve Dietary Quality and Health
Meal planning doesn’t have to mean cooking, it means you know when, what, and where you will get your future food from, so you are more in control of the quality of food that goes in your body.
Studies show that meal planning is correlated with making healthier food choices, eating a greater variety of foods, and can save money; plus, people who plan their meals are less likely to be overweight. Meal planning is also a great way to ensure you’re getting enough protein (0.8-1.2g per lb. body weight).
If you don’t cook often, this is still a great time to establish new habits by meal planning and prepping at home – but it has to be something sustainable for it to work for you. Since I actually don’t like cooking, I find healthy, ready-to-eat meals at Central Market, Whole Foods, and other easy to prepare healthy options to keep at home and on the go. Having many convenient, attainable, healthy options in your repertoire is necessary to prevent less healthy foods from making their way into your day.
For those who like to cook at home, there are helpful apps where you can find healthy recipes, make convenient grocery lists, and get the nutrient breakdown for each meal. Cooking large batches with several servings of a recipe at once, or making several different recipes at a time, can be very convenient for the days when you don’t have time to cook during your week. Some people will divide the food up into individual servings (for instance, in glass tupperware containers) and store them in the fridge or freezer, so that each portion size is predetermined, they’re convenient, quick, and easy to heat up or take to work.
Though it takes some time to plan, shop, and prepare meals, it is best to meal plan and prep when you do have more time (for instance, on weekends or certain days of the week when you can set aside time) rather than when time gets away from you during the week… when you may end up skipping meals or grabbing a more convenient, less healthy option. Skipping meals can trigger our hormones (like ghrelin) to lower our metabolic rate and increase our appetite, causing us to crave less healthy food options, over eat later on, and store body fat. We all live busy lives, so using our time wisely by planning meals can have a huge impact on our dietary quality, health, and wellbeing.
The Protocol
Make a meal plan for a week, and do as much preparation as you can to ensure you are getting enough protein, fruits, vegetables, healthy fats, and other “nutrient-dense” foods – limiting highly processed foods that we know we should probably stay away from. If you find meal planning helpful for you during that week, stick with it! Life is always full of surprises, so being prepared with meal planning and prepping will take some of the uncertainty out of one of the most important things we do – feeding our bodies!
Make a meal plan for the week - write down:
what you are going to eat for each meal,
when you are going to shop, and
if you need to cook, when you are going to cook.
Each morning, review that day’s plan.
At the end of the week, review and look for ways to make this process easier. This will help make your process smooth and sustainable.
Locate 3 convenient on-the-go options that you can use as a back-up plan for when you don’t have time to prepare foods.
Pay attention to the benefits you notice from meal prepping during the week… and try to stick with it to see lasting changes in your eating patterns!
Interested in more nutrition information! Regardless of whether your goal is performance or fat loss, check out MovementLink’s full article series here: Lifestyle and Fat-loss Protocols.
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