Organisation Week, Day 1: Meal Planning!

Like it or not, there is no getting around it!  Meal planning is essential to a healthy lifestyle!  Hopefully it will become second nature, but while in the process of change – make yourself sit down and do it! 

Breakfast should be easy.  Although Mish’s 12wbt offers a huge variety of breakfasts and I urge you to try as many as possible, it is much simpler to just pick a couple of easy favourites and stick with them. You will soon find that some make it easy to hang on to lunch time with just a small snack, and others will need a larger snack or early lunch!  I find anything with an egg is a good thing!

Snacks are hard to plan for as often it will depend on how you feel.. sometimes a boiled egg, sometimes a tomato with a pinch of salt and pepper, but usually I have a yogurt, Body-wise bar, or piece of fruit as staples.

Lunches should be a mix of leftovers and easy to make wraps.  Making up a couple of containers with salad in them means you can have an easy side for lunch and a tin of tuna or leftover meat as another option as well.

Dinners should be easy to cook and throw in at least one ‘batch’ recipe a week so you can put in some leftovers.  This means that at least 2 meals (one dinner, one lunch) can be leftovers and you can have variety!  It also means that if you get caught working late and can’t cook, you can just throw something in the microwave from the freezer!

Although the Michelle Bridges 12wbt comes with a meal plan and shopping list already prepped (for 2 adults), it is essential to start setting aside time now so you can get the habit of meal planning ingrained in your lifestyle.  It should become second nature to choose your dinners each week from a host of favourites, to have a pattern to packing your lunches based on what is available at work or home and which days you are going to be where!  It also saves you a shitload of money on takeout and wasted food as well!

My organisation tip of the day.. print out Michelle’s weekly meal planner and fill in your breakfast, lunches, and dinners, as well as some snack options.  Print off your recipes onto A5 paper (or two pages per A4) so they are a nice size as well as saving paper and store them in a folder in plastic sleeves.  Then write up your shopping list, go shopping, and do up as much prep as you can on the weekend including a batch meal!

Remember the seven Ps:

Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance!