Tips on Meal Planning

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Janice • 8 Comments

Hey everyone! I hope everyone is doing well on “avoiding” those treats we shouldn’t be eating. Keep up the good work – I know it is hard, but you can do it!!

This Week’s Tip is: Meal Planning – In order to eat Healthy and to have 5 to 6 meals a day you need to Plan, Plan, Plan! Avoiding those treats is far easier if you have a plan!

To start – begin by knowing what you eat in a day – therefore you need a food journal to determine what needs to be added or improved upon. After awhile you won’t need this but with every plan you need a start and knowing what you are currently doing is the best start.

In most books and in accordance with the Canadian Food Guide (and the US Food Guide) they talk about meals being:
• 200 to 300 calories
• Meals with foods from each food group
• Snacks with foods from two food groups
• Plenty of vegetables, fruits and whole grains
• 2 glasses of milk per day
• Fish dishes twice weekly
• Bean & Lentil Dishes often

Sounds easy – but it’s not. It takes time, time, time – but like the old saying: “A stitch in time saves nine”. Taking the time to plan out your food means you’ll eat healthier, and eating healthy means you’ll live LONGER! You really need to find what works for you. I don’t like counting calories – I find it confusing and too time consuming, which is why a great site to use for Meal Planning is the US site: http://www.mypyramid.gov/. I know I listed it yesterday in my Food Journal post, but it’s so good I feel it deserves a special mention here. Not only is it a Menu Planner but it also has Foodapedia which you can use to compare foods for healthier choices. The pyramid looks at the same things as the Canadian Food Guide but this site provides more tools to use.

Another tip is to use any of the Food Journals I mentioned in my post yesterday and enter in the foods you PLAN to eat. That way you can see where your diet is lacking and make adjustments. You can easily remove the foods you didn’t eat, and add the foods you ate instead. This way you can tackle two birds with one stone – plan out your meals while journaling your food.

Here’s another meal planning tip from Dr. Mirkin, which I think has the easiest approach – Eat a variety of Colours in your food and do so with portion control.

Do you know of any other Meny Planning Tools to use? If so, leave a link to it in the comments below!