Meal Planning Made Easy

 Meal Planning Made Easy 

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If you have ever been part of an organized weight-loss program, you know they place a lot of emphasis on meal planning. I'll extoll the virtues of that another time. For now, I'll share how I set up my menus and a little of the thinking behind it

I'm told, "you crave what you eat." It's true for me so that's the foundation of my menu planning. If you are struggling to lose, you might try, of all things to be more boring!  Here are the bedrocks of my meal planning:

• Eat mostly the same breakfast every week day. Caveat - I only plan breakfast for myself. The kids eat what they want to for breakfast. They also make their own lunch or buy lunch at school.
• Eat the same -- or the same foundation -- for lunch every week day. 
• Plan 3 meals a day; if you skip one  -- maybe unexpectedly eat out --put it in a "leftover" spot.
• Plan at least 2 "leftover" meals a week. 
• Use set "days," like "Taco Tuesday," to guide your planning. 
• Plan healthy meals; save indulgences for eating out and holidays
• Plan a week at a time
• Repeat menus from month to month (seasonally) - no one in my  has EVER* noticed!
• ONLY cook main dishes the whole family will eat. No time for cooking 2 meals!

Why, you may wonder, do I eat virtually the same breakfast and the same lunch 5 days a week? 3 reasons:

1. It greatly simplifies cooking and packing 
2. It's cost efficient, and . . .
3. It saves so much time

For the past two school years, I've subscribed to this plan and never regretted it. I've discovered that saying is true; by Friday I can't wait for the breakfast I know is delicious or the neatly packed lunch nestled under my desk. Here's your challenge: go ahead and try it for yourself. If you don't love how much time and energy it saves, I'll eat my hat! Okay, I'll eat it for the whole week!

As for "set days," it is my main way to simplify decisions. It turns out, my kids have subconsciously absorbed it the plan and it kind of throws them when I serve something "weird." Here are my "days" -

• Meatless Monday (although I do sometimes serve fish)
• Taco Tuesday 
• (Eat out on Wednesday)
• Pasta Thursday
• Fishy Friday

Yes, I get that it's about half the week, but it really makes life easy.  Make your own days to suit your family's sensibilities. When I do my planning, for those 4 days, I have a limited choice field, and, as well, I find those four categories are the ones that stand out when I read recipes. It eliminates "decision fatigue" and ensures a variety of foods through the week. 

Finally, this month's menu is also next month's menu. When something doesn't taste great or work for any reason, I replace it on the menu right away. Next month, it's all cleaned up and ready to go. Repeating the month's menu is a HUGE timesaver. If you are really crazy, like me, you can even save your shopping lists, but that's for another time. 

How do you plan ahead? How often do you repeat menus?  What benefits do you see? I want to hear from you! 

*As soon as I completed this draft, my son said, "Veggie Tacos AGAIN??? Where's the MEAT? " So someone DID notice that I repeated the monthly menu, haha. For the record, I'd only served Veggie Tacos twice before, but he'd just returned from three weeks on the farm and was missing all the farm-fresh meats and milk!