Welcome to my 3 part series on meal planning for beginners! Our topic today will be “Why Should You Meal Plan?” and how it can work for you and make your life easier.
So Why Should You Meal Plan?
We’ve all been there – it’s 5.00pm and you don’t know what to make for dinner. The kids are hungry, your partner will be home soon and you only have half the ingredients to make anything. After opening the fridge, freezer and pantry for 20th time, you decide it is too hard tonight and drag the kids to the supermarket for frozen pizza. While you are there, you decide to grab a few other items to make dinner the next night. The next night, you feel less stressed because you know what you are making and dinner is on the table without too many problems. But come the third night, you are now back to square one – no idea what to make and not all the ingredients to make a dish. Wouldn’t it be nice to replicate that second night, when you knew what to make and had everything to make it with?
Well you can! It’s called meal planning and all it is is taking what you did for that second night and setting it up for the entire week. You could do it for a fortnight or a month but if you are new to meal planning, I would stick to a week for now. But that is for a later post in the series. Let’s look at some benefits of meal planning:
It Saves You Stress
In an hour or so, you can make your meal plan and then not have to worry about what’s for dinner for the rest of the week. All you have to do is check your preplanned meals and take out any meat or anything that needs to be done ahead of time. 5.00pm will never be as stressful again and my motto is more organization for less stress!
It Saves You Time
Think of all the time you have spent in the kitchen, trying to find something for dinner (or even breakfast or lunch). Think of how much time you have spent making last minute trips to the supermarket or ordering take away or waiting for your UberEats delivery. Instead, you can sit down for an hour or so and plan your entire week of food out. Then simply put together your meal, knowing you have all the ingredients because you knew to purchase them when you went shopping.
It Saves You Money
Think of how much it costs to order take away for your family for dinner. Let’s pretend that it is costs $40 for takeaway for dinner. Let’s say this week you have gotten takeaway four times – once for a special occasion and three times because it was 6.00pm and no one knew what to make for dinner . Now, discounting the special occasion, takeaway has cost $120 so far this week and it only covered 3 meals. $120 could be half or even most of your grocery budget, depending on how many people you are feeding. You spend $150 to cover the rest of the meals in the week. If you planned those 3 meals, you could spend $180 and feed everyone for the week. Now you have saved $90 for that holiday or that house renovation that needs doing.
It Saves Food Waste
By planning ahead and buying what you know you need, you won’t be buying two lettuces because you “might” have salad this week, only to have one go bad before you use it. You can also avoid buying something and only using part of it. For example, you want to make Baja fish tacos this week and you need a tablespoon of cilantro. Instead of the rest of the bunch going bad, you can plan to have Thai chicken salad to use the remainder.
It Saves General Waste
Unfortunately, most take away comes in packaging that then needs to be thrown away. Of course, pizza boxes and other paper and cardboard items can be recycled but other take away packaging simply ends up in landfill.
It Saves Calories
Now, I enjoy pizza as a treat as much as the next person. But if you are looking to lose weight, have certain health conditions or are simply trying to live a healthier lifestyle, eating pizza, McDonald’s and other calorie dense foods multiple times a week will be hindering your health goals. They can be much harder to portion and it can be hard to be mindful of how much we are eating.
So there we have it! Why should you meal plan? Because meal planning can save you stress, time, money, food waste, general waste and calories. Next time, we will look at how to meal plan and ways we can make it fit our lifestyle and work for us. Adios!
