Meal Planning: Tips for Saving Time and Money While Eating Well

This generation is all about hard work, growth, profits, travel and no rest! But what about your body? Is it prepared to go through all this? No. Any machine in this world will require the right fuel in the right quantity to run properly. It is the same with the human body. Consider your body as a machine and the food you eat as its fuel. You need proper meal planning and a fixed routine to make your body work properly.

Let’s talk about meal planning in detail.

What is Meal Planning?

There are two parts to meal planning:

• It is dividing your meal in portions of essential nutrients like healthy fat, protein, dietary fibres and carbohydrates.
• It is also about preparing your diet so that you don’t have to spend a lot of time preparing meals.

Planning your meals a week before will help you be more productive in your work as you won’t have to waste your time looking for a healthy food outlet or end up eating fat food. It is a perfect way to live a planning and well structured life.

Here are Some Tips for Meal Planning

Fix a Time for Meal Planning

Firstly, decide the intervals for meal planning, whether you want to plan your meals weekly or monthly. Now fix an hour or two for proper planning of your meals. A sunday can be a perfect day for this. However, nothing will help if you don’t stick to the plan.

Purchase Groceries As Per the Plan

Once you finish your meal plan, you can purchase groceries in bulk so you don’t have to do last-minute grocery shopping. This saves so much time and money as bulk purchasing is cheaper, too.

Cook in Bulk

Bulk cooking can change the whole game and save loads of money and time. You just have to purchase groceries in bulk and cook in bulk. However, proper storage is the key otherwise you’ll end up wasting the whole food. Find some quick and easy to store meals so that nothing feels like a burden.

Use Leftovers Properly

We often ignore the leftover ingredients or food. But if we simply store our leftover ingredients and food items. We can repurpose them and convert them into new meals. It takes some innovation, creativity and planning. Why waste when you can reuse it?

For example, if you have some leftover fruit salad in your refrigerator, add some dryfruits and seeds in it and make a nice smoothie.

Shop Mindfully

When we go grocery shopping, we all buy useless (very tasty) junk food. Let’s not pretend! We all do that. Well, not anymore. If you want to save time and money by planning your meals properly, then you’ll have to stick to healthy and budget-friendly ingredients. Don’t get excited about attractive packaging and fake brand promises.

Keep it a Little Flexible

Don’t make your meal plan feel like a restriction. Instead, add multiple alternatives so that it remains exciting for you. For example, if you don’t want to eat a boring sandwich someday, try switching it with Indian pancakes (Unpolished dal chilla). You are a free human; why confine yourself to boring meals? Experiment and enjoy it.

Meal planning is a wonderful way to include health in your everyday routine. It not only helps you be active but also improves your mental health. When you are not wasting money, food or time, you tend to feel productive and good about yourself. Here’s to more planned meals and a balanced lifestyle. Cheers, but with a smoothie!