If you struggle to balance your busy day to day with planning and creating healthy meals for yourself or your family, you’re not alone! The number one challenge my clients face is feeling overwhelmed by the time it takes to plan weekly menus and meals.
And let’s be real. Meal planning is not really that much fun for most people. For so many, it’s just not happening. This can lead to too many times through the drive through, grabbing unhealthy take-out, skipping meals altogether and generally just not nourishing yourself well.
And yet this tool is incredibly powerful and transformational, for your health and for your life. It’s very difficult to eat healthfully without a plan!
You already know the obvious benefits to meal planning such as saving time and money, keeping you organized and on track, but what about some of the less obvious?
Here are 7 unexpected benefits to meal planning:
1. You stop obsessing over food. If you ever find yourself in a constant state of decision making about food, it’s easy to start obsessing. When you plan your weekly meals, you can take an hour out of your week to make most of your decisions around food and be done with it!
2. Stress reduction. When you’re spending a lot of time and energy worrying (see #1 above) about your food choices, chances are you don’t have a plan. This creates a lot of stress! Stress is already toxic, but if you’re stressing about food, not knowing what to make and falling into bad choices out of convenience, you’re just heaping bad on top of bad for your health.
3. Get a grip on emotional eating. Stress is a big contributor to emotional eating. Reduce stress, reduce emotional eating! If you feel out of control, overeat or binge eat, this is much more likely to happen without a plan. Planning helps you take back control.
4. You can more easily pursue your passions. You have more time and energy for the things that light you up because you’ve gained time throughout the week by planning and shopping only once.
5. It reduces your dependence on “willpower”. A plan creates structure with built in options that SUPPORT YOUR GOALS. You don’t have to spend time and energy making decisions around what to eat, or what you should or shouldn’t eat. You’ve already thoughtfully made these decisions.
6. It helps develop healthy habits. Planning healthy meals gets you into a routine of eating healthy food, three meals a day.
7. You enjoy your food more and digest it better. Your food tastes better the less stressed out you are preparing it. When you have a plan for what to eat and already have the ingredients on hand, you can relax while preparing your meal and are happier when you sit down to eat it. This is key for optimal digestion and absorption of all your nutrients!
I am a firm believer in the power of cooking as a lifestyle practice to maintain vibrant health. Cooking nourishes us on so many levels , but it’s no longer a priority for many people, in large part due to the time it takes to search for healthy recipes and make a plan. People simply get overwhelmed.
I want to be part of the solution. I want to give people the tools they need to change their health for the better. Because when you have a plan, it is relatively easy to follow through with the cooking part.
When your meals are planned properly, eating healthy and feeling nourished becomes simple and fun. You start to achieve the health goals you’ve wanted.
I am a firm believer in planning your meals, but if you struggle, I want to help!
This is why I’ve created a custom meal planning service to help you make it happen.
I’ll work with you one on one to define your goals and learn about your food preferences. I’ll then create a meal plan you’re excited about! A meal plan that will be easy to stick to because it’s delicious and designed specifically to your tastes and lifestyle.
You’ll have a meal plan, recipes, a shopping list and even a prep guide to help keep you on track. Click HERE to learn more about this new service!
Ready to get started? GRAB A FREE SUMMER MEAL PLAN HERE
