If you’re looking to switch up your diet, set a new goal or do something impossible – meal planning might be the best way to make that initial change and stick to it.
Old habits die hard – as they say, but with a little thinking and preparation – you can make meal planning mindless, easy and even – a little enjoyable.
I use this program for easy meal planning, but if you want to do it yourself – this is the IMPOSSIBLE guide to meal planning.
If you’re ready – let’s get started.
What is Meal Planning?
Table of Contents
Meal Planning typically refers to a weekly planning ritual where you lay out the meals and recipes for each week ahead of time before heading to the grocery store, buying all the groceries and ready-ing the meals for the week.
While you can do this as often as you like, most people do this either once or twice a week.
Why You Should Meal Plan: The Benefits of Meal Planning
Save Time
At first glance, it might seem like you’re spending MORE time thinking about food and cooking by meal planning – after all – you’re taking 60 minutes during the weekend that you could be doing other stuff.
But – if you look closely, you’ll. See that carefully spending 60 minutes one day out of the week will save you FAR more time throughout the week. Time that would slip through the cracks in 10, 15 or 30 minute increments. Instead of having to do emergency grocery runs, or digging around the Internet or your pantry for the recipe instructions – by spending a few minutes every week putting that all together beforehand – you’ll become so much more efficient – it’s not even funny.
In fact, we see most people that meal plan end up saving an average of 2 hours every week simply by thinking ahead.
Save Money
Let’s be real. Besides just time – how much money do you waste by just saying “f-it” – and running to the nearest restaurant or fast food place when you’re hungry because it was easier than coming up with a recipe idea, getting the right ingredients for it at a moment’s notice and putting it all together.
When you plan ahead, you’re not just able to plan and save time, but you can also shop for better deals on food – and you’re less likely to just bail on your diet plan and eat out when you’re in a pinch.
Eat Better
Most people don’t know how to cook. They don’t think it’s worth their time or they don’t believe they can cook well.
The truth is – you don’t have to be a chef to make a good meal and once you realize how easy it is to make a simple dish or two, you’ll realize you can make a better meal at home than you can have at most mid-tier restaurants.
If you stick with it, you’ll find that the average meal quality – both ingredients-wise, health-wise, and taste-wise will go up – and you’ll find it harder and harder to justify eating out.
Eat Real Food
The processed food industry loves the fact that you don’t meal plan. They make easy “heathy” food that’s packed with preservatives, sugar, simple carbohydrates and junk ingredients that don’t help you towards your goals. They substitute health for convenience and lots of Americans will make that trade – which is a bit sad.
Meal planning lets you take that power back. By planning a head just a little bit – you can have the convenience of having all your meals ready and planned to cook without sacrificing quality or the fact that you get to eat real food that nourishes and enriches your body (and your family if you have one) instead of the pocket books of some monolithic food companies.
Less Stress
Being stressed all the time is a mark of pride for a lot of people – but here’s the thing – you don’t have to be stressed all the time.
Sure – being able to handle stress is a good thing. Being resilient is a positive trait. I talk about it a lot and you should be able to endure hard things.
But part of the great thing about doing hard things is that you get to reserve that capability for the things that truly should be stressful and hard.
Eating healthy shouldn’t be one of them!
Meal planning makes it super, super simple to plan ahead, stay healthy and eat well – without all the stress.
You don’t have to frantically rush around trying to figure out if you’re going to be able to put together a meal that everyone will love or have to tell the family you’re doing an impromptu intermittent fasting session.
Meal planning makes things simple + stress-free so you can save your resilience muscles for the things that truly need it.
Achieve Your Goals
If you want to push your limits and do something impossible – you’re not going to be able to always do whatever you’ve always done. By building a meal plan that’s in line with your fitness goals, you’re increasing your odds exponentially that you’ll achieve them. If you want to become an athlete, lose weight or just have more energy – you need to start eating like the person you want to become. Meal Planning can help you do that.
Create Your Meal Plan
-coming soon, I’ll show you how to create your own meal plan from scratch-
Avoiding Critical Meal Planning Mistakes
This is one of our most popular articles on the site – so it’s clear that meal planning is popular and people want to do it. Unfortunately, lots of people fall prey to simple mistakes. Don’t be one of them. Here’s some critical meal planning mistakes you should avoid at all costs.
Plan Ahead
One of the biggest reasons people fail at meal planning is that they forget the second part of the equation – “plan.” They don’t!
Plan ahead. Take 30-60 minutes every Sunday to plot out your week and how it will go. Not only will it save you time and energy, but you’ll begin to be prepared about what’s coming up next. If you can think ahead about obstacles coming up in your week – you can better plan out around them.
The best part is you don’t have to do it alone. There’s a ton of great meal planning services out there around the web – our favorite is Ultimate Meal Plans – which lets you choose between a paleo, Keto, Banting, AIP or a generally “clean eating” or healthy diet.
=> Use promo code “IMPOSSIBLE” to save 20% at UltimateMealPlans.com
Keep It Simple
Don’t make meal planning complicate. Don’t get ambitious with a 15-step, 21-hour hog-roast over an open fire. Don’t jump into a 5-hour recipe that involves ingredients only found in Mongolia. You don’t want to deal with the pain that comes with that and you’ll likely quit and give up immediately. No good.
Instead, keep things simple. Typically, I make most of my meal plans follow this – a protein, a green, and blueberries. Sometimes I add other fruit there, but nothing quiet does it like blueberries.
Even when I switch it up – I’m not making overly complicated recipes or concoctions. I’m maintaining some high quality proteins, quality fats and oils, plus a vegetable or two I know I love.
In fact, most of my meals look like one of thee following:
Steak, Butter, Pepper, Asparagus, Blueberries.
Chicken, Coconut Oil, Guacamole, Strawberries
Some times I’ll swap those out for Brussel sprouts, asparagus or something else, but I typically keep things as simple as possible.
Some people might call that boring – I call it effective – and delicious. Oh, and it’s easy as hell to stick to.
Have Your Go To Meals
Notice how I kept things simple above? I had a couple go to meals. I’m not much of a cook (I’ll be honest), but I can make a mean steak and I know how to sauté the heck of out some green vegetables.
And that’s it. I really don’t make things complicated and in a pinch, I know – the worst meal that I can make myself is steak with butter – that’s not bad. Okay, maybe the worst would be chicken breast and broccoli – but still – I know how to make that delicious and if I’m ready with that – then I’m good to go.
You can also keep a whey protein shake at the ready – in case of emergency.
Clean Out Your Fridge & Pantry
Remove the temptation to eat stuff that’s not on your meal plan by cleaning out your fridge and pantry. You don’t need to have stuff in your house that is going to derail you and your progress – so don’t let it in in the first place.
If you find you currently have a bunch of sweets and derailing foods in your pantry or fridge – have one big “going away” meal where you either eat it before you go in on your meal plan or
Repeat Your Favorites, Switch The Spices
This is my favorite tip for busy or picky eaters. You don’t have to find 1,000 foods that you like – you just need to find a few.
If you like them, then you can switch up how you eat them by using different spices, sauces or other seasonings.
In other words – you can eat the same foods over and over again, without it feeling like you’re having the same foods on repeat. That’s an amazing thing for people who are just busy and want to cook in bulk (without killing your taste buds) or picky eaters who only want to eat a few select things.
Types of Meal Plans
If you’re looking for different types of meal plans – we’ve got you covered. Here are a few meal plans of popular diets and eating styles.
Keto Meal Plan
-sample Keto meal plan coming soon-
Paleo Meal Plan
If you’re sticking with paleo, here’s a super simple meal plan you can start with.
-sample paleo meal plan coming soon-
AIP Meal Plan
-sample aip meal plan coming soon-
Clean Meal Plan
-sample clean meal plan coming soon-
Fasting Meal Plan
Here’s the meal plan for a fasting diet – don’t eat 🙂
I’m sort to kidding, but seriously – that’s what fasting is all about. If you’re interested in diving more into fasting – dig into our complete guide on fasting here.
Meal Planning FAQs
If you’ve got a question about meal planning – you’re not alone. Here are some of the most common questions we get about the meal planning process.
You can meal plan with whatever works with your schedule. We find that most people either meal plan once or twice a week depending on their personal scheduling and cooking preferences.
Follow the steps above. Use a template with one protein, a healthy fat (coconut oil, avocado oil, or grass-fed butter), one vegetable, one low-sugar fruit and one. There are several apps that will help you with this.
In order to lose weight on a meal plan, you need to 1) achieve a caloric deficit (eat less calories than you expend every day) and 2) make sure you satiated to the point where you don’t feel like you will go off the rails. While you can do this on a variety of diets, we find most clients have the best adherence success on paleo or Keto diets as they’re full of healthy fats – and leave them satiated – not starving.
To be honest – the human body is incredibly efficient and adaptable and can survive on a lot of diets. So the best diet is – one you’ll stick to. That said, most people are looking for a diet to help them lose weight. If that’s your situation, you should stick with a diet where you closely track your macros. If you find that too difficult, a paleo, low carb or Keto diet may work best for you.
Most people refer to meal planning as just a weekly planning ritual. Meal Prep is more systematic – usually used with bodybuilders and people following a strict macro-specific diet routine. They will typically “prep” or prepare all their meals for the week at one time, place them in Tupperware or a similar container and then eat them on a schedule throughout the week.
Other Meal Planning Resources
If you’re looking for additional resources on meal planning – check out the following resources:
- Autoimmune Meal Plans
- Paleo Meal Plans
- Meal Planning for Families by Wellness Mama
- The Ultimate How to Meal Plan Guide
- Free “meal plan template” download
The Easiest Way To Meal Plan
To be honest – I like meal planning, but once I did it a few times, I got tired of the repetition every single week. I wanted to save even more time – so I decided to do something about this.
Our sister company Ultimate Meal Plans does exactly this. Not only do you get 28 awesome recipes every week (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack every day), but they auto-calculate your shopping list and even let you order your groceries online in one-click with Instacart or Amazon fFesh. The average customer saves $50 and 2 hours every week. Give it a shot + because you’re an IMPOSSIBLE reader, use the discount code below to get a special deal to make meal planning even easier for you.
Use code: IMPOSSIBLE to save 20% on all Ultimate Meal Plans meals.
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