Successful Meal Planning Basics for Beginners to Lose Weight

I have been asked many times how I do meal planning and how I manage to make several different meals every day for every 2-hours for all days of the week. 

Now I completely understand where and why this question has arisen. I can imagine the plight of a wife who wants her husband to reduce weight or a woman who wants to reduce weight herself, but who also does not want to spend hours thinking about what healthy snacks or meals to cook every day. To think only about lunch was a task by itself, and now to think about 4-8 meals in a day! It can be crazy. 😖🙏🏻

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The situation further toughens when she is herself working or has kids to handle.

Well frankly, even if she is not working, who wants to spend that much time in the kitchen. We all have a life! and we have definitely not bargained for being in the kitchen all day? 

So then the question is how to deal with this? Because it is also true that to effectively lose weight, dieting is not a solution. You need to eat right. 

The only solution is proper meal planning. Plan for the week and prepare the meals as planned. I decide for my 5-day week by Saturday, and then prepare the meals by Sunday.

My meals planning is for:

• Breakfast (8.30 – 9 am)
• Four (4) office meals: Snacks for 11 am, 3.30-4pm & 6 pm and 1 pm lunch
• 2 Home Meals: Dinner 8.30 pm and 10.30 pm (optional)

And yes I do carry 4-5 meals with me to the office every day and do the same for my husband as well. I am able to do this only by proper planning.

My meals for the entire week are prepared on Sunday. What I would take for my 11 AM snack or for my 3 PM or 6 PM snack, even lunch, and dinner, I plan and prepare all in advance. I go one step further to write it in my weight loss journal, which is one of the first things I started with when I started to lose weight. I use Evernote to write my journal so that it is available to me all the time. 

Learn Useful tips on how you can to Organise your Sunday to Plan your Meals to Lose Weight. Share on X

Once I decide what to cook for the week, I do the weekly grocery shopping accordingly. Thereafter, I take about 2-3 hours in the kitchen to prepare everything. And I am sorted for the week, all I have to do is pack them as per my meals. 

This weekly meal planning leaves me stress-free throughout the week and I have more MEtime. I so make sure to fully exploit this time I have rightfully earned for myself by making the a few lifestyle changes in order to lose weight. I do my yoga and now I also get time to do a lot of other things that I like which earlier I was unable to do due to time constraint. Like this blog, I love writing but never actually got down to doing it due to lack of time.

What happened before: 

Before I started planning my meals weekly, all my time after I reached home from the office used to go in the kitchen preparing the meals. I hated it. There was so much on my mind – office work or own work. But by the time I was over with my kitchen work and picked my laptop, I was already half asleep.

The worst thing was that most of the time I ended up making Maggi or eating bread or some kind of junk food or ordering from outside. Now we eat healthy every day in every meal, as my major meal preparations are already done on Sunday 💃💃. And now it takes me about 30 minutes every day to give a final touch to the meal and it is ready to serve.

I also prepare my healthy snacks in large quantity, enough for the week and pack them on need basis for myself and my husband. Just to give you an example, if I am planning to make Corn Zucchini Fritters as my weekly snack, then I prepare about 15-20 of them and that takes care of the entire week.

What people say about pre-prepared meals:

Some people may argue that food gets spoilt if prepared so much in advance or the nutrients die and so on. In response to that, all I say is, anything is better than having Maggi/ junk food most of the time. Or worst ordering from outside all the time to feed yourself. 

We still order out, but it is by choice, and not by force. We have become the masters now and no longer slaves in this matter🤘🏻😊.

Learn Useful tips on how you can to Organise your Sunday to Plan your Meals to Lose Weight. Share on X

Sunday I call as my day, the day I get ready to face the coming week. Food is a very important part of

 

our lives and eating healthy is a must. Planning helps you to be in control of what you eat.

If you can cook every day and have the time to do so, then, you should prepare fresh meals daily. However, even for that, you will require meal planning. The part of this blog post, where I talk about pre-preparation of meals is for the women like me, who are either too lazy or too busy to cook so many meals every day. 

I request you to subscribe to my blog if you have not already done so. You will get a free weight loss course that will help you start your weight loss journey. 

Summary of Successful Meal Planning Basics for Beginners

1. Decide a day of the week to plan for all your meals for the week.
2. Write them down in your weekly food journal.
3. Check your kitchen stock to see what you have the ingredients to prepare what you have listed.
4. Prepare your grocery list based on your plans.
5. Buy your groceries as per the list.
6. Prepare your meals as per the plan or see if any pre-preparation is required so ease your week.

Are you planning your meals? Let me know what are the difficulties you are facing while planning your meals. Or how helpful it has been to plan your meals. I would love to hear from you.