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Old 11-11-2008, 11:25 AM   #1  
Getting fit and healthy!
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Cool Tips for meal planning?

As the saying goes, an ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure. I've heard from many sources that meal planning is a huge factor in success on a diet. While that makes sense to me, I have it in my head that it's a monumental task, and I know that can't be true... but I'm not sure where to start.

Personally, I need to plan South Beach Diet meals for myself and my sweetie and I have lactose intolerance (me) and gluten intolerance (him) to contend with. However, any general tips are good, since I'm hoping this will be a thread lots of people can get ideas from.

So, share with us! How do you plan your meals, snacks, grocery shopping, etc?
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Old 11-11-2008, 11:30 AM   #2  
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i started one day at a time, so it didn't feel that monumental. just decided the night before what i was going to eat the next day. i logged it as my meal plan and made sure i had what i needed.

after a while, i could do it weekly, and the shopping and cooking sort of fell into place as well. it's much, much easier now! i have a set of options for each meal and snack, and i just make sure i have enough of whatever to get through a week or two at a time. don't think much about it anymore.

as long as you think of it as a monumental effort, it'll be hard to do. just start with one day at a time - it gets easier!

HTH!
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Old 11-11-2008, 12:41 PM   #3  
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I go crazy if I don't plan my meals the day before!!!

I actually use a diet journal on another website but I always take 10-15 minutes sometime the day before to plan what I want to eat for my meals and snacks and what I am going to do for a workout. I feel absolutely lost and unsure of my calories if I don't plan my meals. Also, if I don't plan my meals I usually over-eat because of underestimation.

So planning my meals keeps me on task and I don't find it to be bothersome or monumental in any way.
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Old 11-11-2008, 01:19 PM   #4  
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Basic components of my meal planning strategy:

1. Cook enough of any one meal to feed me and my partner for dinner, and lunch the next day. I don't have time to plan separate dinners and lunches, and this helps spread my calories more evenly throughout the day.

2. Keep a rough idea of calories per meal in mind. For example, you might break your meal plan into about 200 calories for breakfast, 400 each for lunch and dinner, and 300-400 in snacks, for a total of 1300-1400 calories. Then you can eat whatever breakfasts/snacks fit into that range.

3. Plan your menus for the week ahead on a once-a-week basis. I buy my meat in bulk at a specialty supplier, so for me, this means looking to see what I have in the freezer, planning my dinners, and making a grocery list with all of the things I need to make those dinners. Also on the list are my weekly staples - the stuff I eat every week for breakfast and snacks.

4. Shop according to the list.

My last step is to write the dinner menu for the week on a whiteboard, right next to a running grocery list (so, for example, if you notice the foil is getting low, you write it on the list).
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Old 11-11-2008, 02:46 PM   #5  
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For me, meal planning is a HUGE time saver. If I didn't plan meals once a week, I'd spend so much time coming home, thinking "what am I going to fix", then spending time figuring out what I have, then going to the store for what I'm missing ... etc. etc.

Instead I plan my weeks meals on Sunday afternoon/evening - usually while sitting on the sofa with DH watching football.

I start with a quick check of what I have in the fridge/freezer - not a hard count, just an eyeball that I have some chicken, I have some ground beef, I have lentils, I have rice, I have pasta, etc. Then I sit down with my laptop and my spreadsheet and start entering meals.

Here's a screenshot of this weeks spreadsheet, which then gets printed and posted on the fridge. You can see that I make notes to myself about some meals and I have a dinner out planned as well.



So as you can see, breakfast is the same thing - either oats or yogurt, fruit, and coffee. So that's easy.

Dinner is next: I plan dinner for 6 days, allowing one day for eating out. My DH is all about meat and potatoes and veggies ... so I base most of my meals around a meat. I might do a veggie meal a week, but even then, I try to make it optional for DH to add a grilled chicken breast or some sausage if he wants to cook his own. I keep a list of recipes that I'd like to try and sometimes I have pages torn out of my Cooking Light or bookmarked on the web that I will add to the list. I also try to plan meals that there will be leftovers for lunch the next day.

Once all the dinners are filled in, I plan my lunches based on the previous nights dinner. If the previous nights dinner doesn't have leftovers, then I'll plan sandwiches or I'll make that the day I eat lunch out with a friend or collegue.

Weekends are a little looser, since we might wind up eating out or I might wind up snacking on veggies and popcorn during the ball game, so while I plan the weekends, usually only the dinner part stays consistent.

Then I go back through everything I've planned on my grid and add whatever we don't have in the pantry/fridge/freezer to my grocery list below. I take it meal by meal and then x2 something that I'll use for more than one meal.

You can see there's nothing under the Sam's/Costco heading, since we went to Sam's less than 2 weeks ago and bought chicken, salmon, burger, pork loin, rice, a case of canned diced tomatoes, a case of tomato paste, etc., etc. As those things run low, I'll add them to the list and in about 2 weeks or so, we'll make another big Sam's Club trip.

You can also see that most of what I buy each week winds up being veggies and fruit. I'll also, while I'm at the store, pick up whatever other veggies and fruit is on sale for snacks. Or, if I find something that's on sale that looks really good, I might change the menu around it ... but I'll have the whole thing with me when I shop, so I can make that decision on the fly.

The whole process takes me about 30-40 minutes at home - to check the pantry/fridge, fill out the grid, make the shopping list. (Unless I'm fooling around with recipes, in which case it might take me longer, but that's mostly cause I'm having fun.)

Then the grocery shopping part takes me another hour including driving time.

But the best part is that every night when I get home, I know exactly what I'm going to fix, and I know that I have everything I need there. And I know exactly what to pack for lunch the next day, so after dinner I can pack my lunch and put it in the fridge and just grab it and go the next morning.

It makes my life SO much easier.

.
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Old 11-11-2008, 03:36 PM   #6  
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I'm not nearly as organized as PhotoChick and Mandalinn - and DH likes the illusion of spontaneity so dinners have to be just a little "seat of the pants-y" - but if you are making the right selections at the grocery store, you can still make things work really well.

I'm a calorie counter so it might be a little easier for me than it is for someone trying to follow a published plan but, what works really well for me, is to use FitDay to keep track of my daily calories. I do pack up all my 'daytime' food the night before so I can do the grab and go in the morning but am super diligent about logging any extras - like if I feel energy flagging and grab a couple of raw almonds to perk me up - those calories get entered before I actually put a nut in my mouth. Dinner is where having made the right choices at the store comes into play big time. DH likes to have input about dinner so I usually ask him what he feels like having before I start cooking. As long as I don't have anything scary (frozen pizza ) in the house it keeps his choices a little bit limited but I can fix him whatever he wants, we can eat the same meal together, and the only thing I have to do is check and control my portion sizes so I stay in my calorie range.

Last edited by yoyonomoreinvegas; 11-11-2008 at 03:38 PM.
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Old 11-12-2008, 08:43 AM   #7  
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Nice spreadsheet PhotoChick--can I adopt it?
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Old 11-12-2008, 11:33 AM   #8  
Getting fit and healthy!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jen415 View Post
Nice spreadsheet PhotoChick--can I adopt it?
Ditto! I'm not very good with spread sheets but for that I might have to learn.

Thank everyone, loving these ideas... if anyone else has anything to add, feel free.
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