How to Make Healthy Meal Planning Easy

How Do You Begin Weekly Meal Planning?

If you want to heal your gut and your arthritis, you have to eat healthy.

Since you are bombarded with unhealthy food choices everywhere you go, healthy eating only happens when you plan ahead.

Let’s learn what meal planning is, what the benefits are,  and how you can make healthy meal planning as easy as possible. ?

The Benefits of Healthy Meal Planning

First, what is meal planning? Typically, meal planning entails coming up with specific meals to eat for an entire week in advance, and then getting all the ingredients needed in a single shopping trip, and possibly preparing some of those ingredients ahead of time.

There are many benefits of meal planning, including:

1. Save Money
2. Eat Real Food
3. Don’t Waste Food
4. Less Stress
5. Save Time
6. Add Variety

How to Start Meal Planning

There are some simple steps you can follow to get started with your healthy meal planning for you and your family.

Here are 9 steps to make healthy meal planning easy!

1. Look at your schedule for the next week.
2. Decide what days will need very simple solutions (15 minute meals, freezer cooking meals).
3. Choose simple recipes with few ingredients to fill in the dinners.
4. Choose two or 3 options for easy lunches and breakfasts.
5. Create a shopping list of ingredients you will need for your menu.
6. Fill out your menu, indicating a recipe source and a time needed to cook.
7. Post your menu plan on your fridge, or in a schedule book that’s accessible to you every day.
8. Refer to it daily to make sure that you’re following it and that food is thawed from the freezer at the right time (about 2 days before use).
9. Choose pantry meals and post them on the fridge in case you need them.

If you need even more help getting started, follow these in-depth guides to meal planning:

How to Meal Plan — The Ultimate Guide to Meal Planning | Wellness Mama — wellnessmama.com 
Meal planning makes a big difference in sticking to a healthy diet. These tips can help you and your family stick to it!

Essential Guide to Meal Planning | MyFitnessPal — blog.myfitnesspal.com 
Meal planning is one of the easiest things you can do to set yourself up for healthy eating success. Whether you plan a few days at a time, a week or …

Meal Planning Mistakes to Avoid

Make sure to check these mistakes to avoid before you get started! Identify all the points where meal planning can go wrong and find smart solutions to avoid each and every pitfall. ?‍?

The Top 10 Mistakes Meal Planning Beginners Make (and How to Solve Them) | Kitchn —  www.thekitchn.com 
Part of meal planning success is knowing where it can go wrong.

Pick One of These Easy Meal Types to Master Simple Meal Planning for Beginners

Personally, I love preparing a big meal in the slow cooker, and then dividing it up into individual meal containers (glass, not plastic!) to store in the fridge and freezer for the upcoming week.

To keep things exciting I mix things up by adding different soups, salads, or fruit to accompany the meals. ?

Pick what works best for you!

1. 15 Minute Meals
2. Slow Cooker Meals
3. Freezer Cooking
4. Freezer Dump Cooking (Freezer to Slow Cooker)
5. Backward Meal Planning
6. Plan to Eat Out

Simple Meal Preparation in Your Slow Cooker — Healthy Recipes with 5 Ingredients or Less

For me, meal planning and preparation has to be simple.

That starts by choosing recipes that have only a few simple and healthy ingredients, and cooking in bulk in a large slow cooker, crock pot, or pressure cooker. Here are some ideas:

Healthy Crockpot Recipes —  www.thirtyhandmadedays.com 
15 Healthy crockpot recipes that are easy to make. These 5 ingredient crock pot recipes are healthy and make for easy family dinners.

Five Ingredient Or Less Healthy Slow Cooker Recipes — ameessavorydish.com 
I’ve pulled together 15 five ingredient or less healthy slow cooker recipes from some of my favorite food bloggers for your meal planning inspiration.

Let’s answer a few more questions you may have about meal planning, like…

What Are the Best Meal Planning Apps?

There’s an app for that. Never run out of ideas, recipes, or ready to go shopping lists to plan and prepare your weekly meals with these top meal planning apps:

Best Meal-planning Apps to Save Time or Lose Weight | Digital Trends —  www.digitaltrends.com 
Check out the best meal-planning apps to help you save time, prepare family meals for the month, create grocery lists, lose weight, and more.

Mealime (Free)
FoodPlanner (Free)
Mealplan ($4)
MealBoard ($4)
Eat This Much (Free)
Lose It!
Paprika ($5)
Yummly (Free)

What Are the Best Meal Kit Delivery Services?

No time to shop and prepare ingredients? In these modern days we thankfully have ready to go meal kit delivery services. How cool is that? ?

The Best Meal Kit Delivery Services of 2018 — Reviewed.com Cooking — cooking.reviewed.com

From Blue Apron to Purple Carrot, we tested nine of the most popular meal kit delivery subscriptions available. Here are the best of 2017.

Green Chef
Home Chef
Purple Carrot
Hello Fresh
Blue Apron

I wish you good luck ? on your meal planning journey, and hope these tips and ideas will give you a head-start.