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Get organized! Use The Holy Mess Grocery List and Meal Planner Printable to plan healthy meals for yourself and your family.
Very simply, meal planning is deciding what you will eat for the upcoming days, typically a week. Once you have a meal plan in place, create your grocery list based on the ingredients you need for recipes. Add any snacks or house supplies you need and you are ready to shop. Meal planning is helpful for any busy family, saves time and money, and is especially important if you have a goal of eating healthier or losing weight.
I’m a big fan of meal planning for several reasons. One, there’s no question meal planning saves money and reduces stress. On the weekends, I write a list of our meals for the upcoming week and then write out my grocery list accordingly. That way I can stick to my grocery budget. You can take this one step further and do a batch of freezer meals. To freezer cook, you will plan out meals for two-four weeks and then take a day to make them all at once and put them in the freezer, ready to go. Another tool that has changed the way I cook recently is the Instant Pot. This safe, easy-to-use pressure cooker makes cooking faster and easy. I especially love the Instant Pot paired with freezer cooking because meals can be made right from frozen. To learn more about the Instant Pot, check these posts: How to Freezer Cook for the Instant Pot Instapot: What the Heck is It and Do You Really Need One? Meal Prep Ideas for Weight Loss Using Your Instant Pot Even though I freezer cook for our dinners, I’ve found that it’s still important to create a weekly grocery list for breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and any items the kids need.
As someone who has lost 100 lbs, I can tell you that meal planning is essential to maintaining my weight loss. Healthy eating is not easy, friend! Eating healthier requires work and advanced planning, but it’s so very worth it. I feel so good knowing I have fresh, whole foods available for breakfasts and lunches, plus a plan for a healthy dinner. Lately I’ve been using Walmart Online ordering and grocery pick up. It’s great especially on big cooking days, because I type in my whole list and then all I have to do is go pick it up. Our orders are always correct and I’ve been impressed with how good the customer service is with this type of system.
I know you are busy. I am, too. That’s why it’s so important to plan ahead. Planning a week’s meals only takes me about 10 minutes and it saves me tons of stress as the week goes on. I don’t have to make any decisions, I just follow the plan.
This is a bit of tough love, but I encourage you to rethink the idea that you should eat what you want in the moment. Instead, plan ahead for what’s healthy and within your grocery budget. It’s really only the last few years of our modern society that people had any food choice at their fingertips. This is nice but it’s really not done us favors when it comes to our health and weight.
Finally, if you create a plan but don’t stick with it, make your plan more realistic. If you typically order pizza one night a week, write pizza into your plan. If you eat out a couple times a week, plan that.
The other nights, choose simple meals like tacos and sloppy joes. Maybe one night a week choose a recipe with more ingredients, but don’t plan for this every night because who has time for that?
Use this planner to get your family’s eating organized for the upcoming week.
Use The Holy Mess Grocery List and Meal Planner Printable to organize all your meals, snacks, and shopping for one week.
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How do you organize your meal planning?
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check out our Meal Planning: Fast Tracked Workshop. You’ll walk away with a simple, delicious meal plan in just one hour.
Meal Planning: Fast Tracked! teaches you how to make meal planning a breeze.
