Start Where You Are: A Goal-Based Approach to Meal Planning
These last few days, I have been pondering upcoming writing topics for February and March. After Goal setting, and Routines, I’ll move on to other supports for us and our productivity and to do what is important to us. AND… personally, I’ve been pondering meal planning for myself and our household, for my parents later this month, and for other family members who will need make-ahead / freezer meals for an upcoming busy season of life.
What finally occurred to me, as those two trains of thoughts rolled through my head, is to share the meal planning thoughts as support for all of us in whatever season of life we find ourselves in! A two in one - bonus!!
I presented a Meal Planning presentation in late January to a lovely group at the Wilmington Public Library. It was my first opportunity to present that topic this year. I updated my meal planning presentation a few years ago now, and I start out with a few questions.
The first question I ask in the presentation is “What are your Meal Planning goals?”
People choose meal planning for so many reasons! We have always planned our meals - I wouldn’t know how to not do it - so I ask my participants to share their reasons and goals! Not for me, of course, but for them to be able to state them out loud.
My household’s goals:
The practice saves us money when we lessen our environmental impact and waste less food by eating food we already own, when we can take advantage of sales or bulk pricing on items, and when we don’t have to rely on eating out or fast foods or convenience goods.
The practice saves us time and trouble when I can shop less often, and adjust our plan around events or seasons in our schedule, and plan leftovers for busy week nights and make my own convenience foods, or when I can chop and prepare food for multiple meals at once.
The practice helps us to eat healthier - for me that means, home cooking, scratch cooking, no mystery ingredients, not relying on fast food or high sodium take out.
The practice helps us to enjoy our meals more! We can choose foods we like, we can plan around learning new skills with friends or family, or we can try new foods!
Those are a few of the broad goals for us, and that I hear when I ask clients and class participants about their meal planning goals, too.
But meal planning as a strategy takes time to get up and running, not going to lie! And it helps to have goals in mind for this new practice because those goals, our “Why”, will help us stay motivated to make changes, and also will guide our steps as we plan our meals.
Which brings us to the next question of “What does ‘healthy eating’ mean to you?” That is a popular goal for meal planning, but it means different things for different people!
Perhaps you need to plan meals around food allergies or sensitivities. You might need gluten or dairy free options, or vegan or vegetarian. Perhaps you need to make adjustments like lower sodium or healthy weight loss for medical reasons. Maybe you are trying to broaden the palate of young children and want to introduce a variety of foods. All of these are good answers, but they vary from house to house and menu plan to menu plan!
We start with “what are your meal planning goals?”. We ask what healthy means to us. And then we start making our plan! As we make our plan, we start with what we know and what we have.
Start with what we know.
I’ll use an example: I was chatting with a woman after my recent presentation and she gave me a long list of foods that she can't eat and I am sure that is very frustrating. But we need to shift our thinking and look at what we CAN eat. What do we know we can eat? What do we know we LIKE to eat?! What are our favorites? What are our family's favorites already? What are the recipes that I have made for myself, my household, my parents, my other family members? What has already been successful? Yes, we start with these!
We start with our favorites, the food we already know how to make. I’m sure you have a list of foods that you would eat right now. Make a list, and don’t edit yet!
I did this when my sons were much younger, obviously, and we came up with more than 20 dishes that everyone liked. And the good news is, this is very empowering! We realize we know more than we thought, which means we’re already doing better than we thought - hooray!
After we make note of what we know, we look at what we HAVE.
Without going to the grocery (unless you really have to), what do we already HAVE on hand to cook? Maybe we want to save money and time, right? We don’t have to wait, we don’t have to go out and buy gadgets or make a big production. We choose a few of our favorites that fit in with our goals and what we feel is healthy, we put those on the menu for the next few days, and look at that, you’re meal planning!
Let’s make this happen, friends!
I will use me as an example because I don’t have to ask for permission, and also because I have a few new goals that I’m working on right now. We consistently use meal planning to eat healthy, to cut down on waste, and I specifically use Meal Planning and Batch Cooking to save time and to use our resources well and save money. And I consistently use meal planning for our dinners which also means I often can warm up leftovers for lunch, too, but not every day because I’m not near a kitchen some days at lunch time.
One of my new goals is to use meal planning for breakfast and lunch, too, for the same reasons we meal plan for dinner, to eat healthier, save money, save time and increase enjoyment.
And the follow up question of “what does healthy eating mean” to me guides my planning. For both breakfast and lunch, I need protein and fiber and fruits and veggies. I need to eat enough to fuel my body but not so much that I get sluggish or sleepy. I want quick but nutritious breakfast items that I don’t have to think about. On the days I’m out of the office, I need cold portable foods for lunch that can be eaten during my commute (no soup, thanks!), but I have grown tired of my lunch go-tos and now need more options.
I start with what I know. I already know I have a few breakfasts that I really like and that fit my requirements of protein / fiber / quick and can be made ahead of time.
Off the top of my head, I could make, with a side of fruit to all:
Overnight oats with oats, extra protein skim milk and nuts, which gets me to 20 grams of protein
Greek yogurt with fruit and granola
Bagel thin with bacon and spinach
Cottage cheese with peanut butter toast
Scrambled eggs and toast, if I have the time
Leftovers from other meals, because why not?
If I am also looking at what I have, I have on hand the ingredients to make all of these ideas work. And to work with my requirement of “quick and can be made ahead of time”, I can set up jars of overnight oats in the fridge today for the next few days, or set up containers with serving sizes of greek yogurt and cottage cheese today for a few days to grab in the morning.
With better breakfasts now planned, I can also look at packing my lunch for when I am out of the house, typically 3 days out of 7. I mentioned - they need to be cold, portable, and able to be eaten as I commute.
For lunch, what do I know? My ideas are:
My go-to for work lunches on the road are hard boiled eggs, chopped raw veggies, fruit, nuts, cheese and crackers
I have recently sampled different brands of meal replacement bars because they are so portable
I like sandwiches but we don’t eat lunch meat quickly enough so I don’t buy it, and tuna or chicken salad can get messy in the car.
Wow, I really need to step up my game on this step. Asking the “What Do I Know Question?”, I realize I need more ideas! Sounds like some research on-line for ideas and suggestions!
The good news is that I don’t need many portable lunches, and based on the very short list above, if I start with “What I Have”, I have the ingredients for my go-to work lunch and more bars on hand, so I’ll make a note to ask the internet for more handheld lunch ideas and plan to purchase those ingredients on my next grocery run.
And, when I batch cook in a few hours, I will hard boil eggs and chop extra veggies for lunch.
The other meal planning goal I am working on is finding and then batch cooking and freezing meals that freeze well so I can stock my freezer, and the freezers of my parents and other loved ones who will need healthy foods and convenience in the coming months.
I know my goal, and I know what healthy means to all three households I want to cook for.
If I start with what I know, I quickly realize that I don’t know enough!
I don't know what freezes well. For example, just now, a quick google search told me that rice does freeze well and I have a number of recipes that are great for batch cooking and start with rice and protein and veggies. Thankfully, I have at least a few recipes that I can get started on with what I already know and already have, and I will need to learn more.
Now that I have written this up on a Sunday afternoon, I want to get really specific about what my next 1-2 hours are going to look like as I get ready for my week.
For this week, I’m making
Andouille Sausage with green peppers and tomatoes over cheesy grits with Old Bay (so good!). That will be dinner tonight and likely a lunch or dinner later this week.
Sausage and chicken gumbo in the crock pot, and the rice to go with it, for many other lunches and dinners this week.
Hard boiled eggs for the on-the-go lunches, plus extra chopped veggies from the gumbo prep.
Overnight oats for a couple of mornings, and a few bowls of greek yogurt with frozen fruit which will be nicely thawed when I get around to eating it in a few days.
Coffee, which I will brew and then refrigerate to go with protein shakes this week for protein coffee
Do you have goals this week or month or year that can be met with better nutrition, saving money, saving time, or making life easier for yourself in general? Yep, me, too. Consider giving Meal Planning a try! Start with your goals and what is healthy for you. Then ask the next questions - What do you know? And what do you have? Give it a try!
