In the world of busy life we understand the struggles of cooking where no one has time to cook food for themselves after all it's not all about cooking, it's about grocery shopping, planning the meals, cutting and chopping of veggies.meal planning is one of those things which they really don’t want to invest their time in , But this is a myth and can be a game changer which leads to less stress and work in the kitchen each day. You will see the difference when you have done the meal planning for the day or a week and you come home and you just need to cook accordingly. To fuel our body every 2-3 hours which is not really possible but with meal planning you can plan how, when and what to eat.
What is Meal Planning?
Meal planning is like the way you plan your day or week for your work consequently, the meal planning is like what to eat, when to eat, what all things should be shopped, make a chart according to the calories required for the body. However, this meal planning template helps you with the grocery shopping which is done once a week.
In addition to this, weight management goes hand in hand but before that Do you all know what weight management is?
Weight management is basically our behaviour towards our body, our eating habits basically a process that contributes to a person’s ability to maintain their body weight. However, a healthy body weight falls under the BMI(Body Mass Index) between 19-25 which is considered to be normal but above 25 is considered overweight and under 19 is considered as underweight. So, to maintain a healthy weight one should always plan its meal and a whole day with a good balanced diet with a few hours of physical activity.
Benefits of Meal Planning:
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Takes away the Indecision and Saves Time: Opening the cupboards of the kitchen every morning and think for like half and hour what to cook which should be healthy and easy to cook but doing meal planning for the week or a day can help you with this indecisive thoughts and saves your time to cook food and invest your leftover time in other things which are more productive.
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Learn Portion Control: Eating proportionally which is done by meal planning can prevent you from overeating and other chronic health issues. Meal planning helps you with eating under daily dietary requirements or the amount of calories your body needs according to our height or weight. Also, on the other hand it helps with the nutritional benefits from the food we are consuming.
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You get More Variety: It is very contrary that meal planning is very boring which mostly people doesn’t like to do so but it gives you the variety by planning the meal for a week/month written down can alert you with the bad eating habits pattern and will also give you the idea to control those things by trying new things with good variety which are good and healthy for them.
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Less food wasted and more money saved: When we go grocery shopping we normally buy extra because everything seems tempting and we oftenly pick those things but organizing meals for the week helps you to save food and money by not buying in bulk.
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Stay Slim: Everyone knows that home cooked food keeps you slim and prevents you from different diseases too. Home cooked food is neither fried nor made of refined flour which is healthy and easy to consume in both ways.
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You get to go Seasonal: Getting seasonal makes you cost effective and you save money too. Planning the meal helps you with going seasonal food or fruits and changes your taste buds too.
Steps to Meal plan
There are a few steps which will help you with organizing a meal plan for a week and make your things easier than before.
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Takeover what you have for a week and plan: There must be something which would be there at home, we should use those things which are leftover and make a meal plan so that the food doesn’t get wasted and also we should look over the expiry dates of the packeted things so that the dates which are coming up can be used in this week which will help you to save money.
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Let's keep a day for each carb/protein: Keeping the day fix for the carbohydrates or proteins can help you with different variety of foods and can’t make you feel bored with this meal planning and also helps you with better understanding of how you can weight loss by being only on carbs or proteins which way is more better and comfortable to your body.
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Weekly based on kids school meals: As you know kids are fussy with the food and have very bad eating habits. Organizing the meals according to their requirements and their taste will save a lot of time for mothers and also it prevents from wasting the food by kids.
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Weekly based on Schools/ time available: In most of the cases we have the plans for the week like shopping, going to relatives home or gym etc. Based on this we should plan the meals for our week and which will stop you from buying in bulk, helps with doing healthy preps for the meals within daily dietary requirements.
“I’ve only been using Cook Smarts for 3 days but it has absolutely changed my life. I am doing the weekend prep and I am loving cooking and learning new things.”
– Jillian G.
