Meal Planning Basics

Meal planning can be a hard thing for some. The idea of actually taking the time to think about what you want to eat, what ingredients you’ll need and then making the meal can be quite tedious. But for those of you who do it weekly can attest to, when you take the time on your weekend day, it saves you so much time and potential headaches of that dreaded question “what am I going to eat?”

Meal planning can be broken down into a few simple steps. Find a protein source (whether it’s a plant based or animal based protein), some fibre (through fruits, vegetables and/or whole grains) and add in a little healthy fat to top it off! With these basics, you’ll ensure that you can stay satisfied and feel like you’ve eaten for (hopefully) until either your next meal or your between meal snack.  If you need inspiration for recipe ideas, there are numerous cookbooks available or you can even use websites and social media! If you don’t know where to start, you can always ask your trusted dietitians to help you out ;)

Once you’ve figured out your recipes then it’s time to make sure that you have the ingredients. Make your shopping list and go shopping! Get home with the groceries and decide which recipe to start with and ready, set go!

Meal planning and prep can take as little or as much time you want. Only want to make one big meal and eat leftovers for the week? Then do that. Want to make multiple meals for the week in a day? Go ahead. There is no right or wrong way. All you need to do is start with one meal and go from there.

Today, I’m giving a shout out to a friend and co-worker, Kayla (@kaylarrothe) for her superb lunch today! We were all in awe of what she made for her lunches this week. Shrimp rice paper wraps with a spicy peanut dipping sauce. Yum! It’s a different take on a regular sandwich or tortilla based wraps. And what’s fun about it is that you can put whatever you want in them! Kayla decided to use shrimp as her protein, cucumber/carrot slices and lettuce as part of her fibre and the healthy fats (with a little bit of protein) coming from the spicy peanut sauce.
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What are some of your out of the box lunch ideas?