Learn to Love Meal Planning By Nicolaus Bloom
moment. As homework, I recommended that she work on crafting a meal plan for herself. The client responded by saying, “Gosh, I really can’t think through what I want to eat for the next week or even the next few days. That’s way too much work.” I realized that she had confused a daily menu with a meal plan. It’s a common misunderstanding and I thought it worthy to explain the differ- ences and walk through a meal planning process.
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What is a Meal Plan? A meal plan simply provides a skeletal framework for how
meals play out in your daily life, while a menu is “meat upon the bone” so to speak. For instance, a meal plan may specify a certain amount of “protein” at lunch, while a menu may specify “cheese” on Tuesday and “black beans” on Wednesday. A meal plan can help define when you visit the grocery store on a weekly basis and help clarify when and how food is prepared. Let’s walk through a sample process to demonstrate how it works.
uring a first session, a client complained that her food world was in complete disarray. She didn’t really have any idea what or when she was going to eat from moment to
1.Grocery Shopping: The first question to ask is when can I go grocery shopping on a weekly basis. If you pick a day and a time that you go, it will ensure that you readily have healthy supplies in your house.
2.What Do I Buy: Whole foods, fresh vegetables, healthy pro- teins, and fats (i.e. olive oil, coconut oil, nuts, avocado). Add fresh fruit, good herbs, spices, and whole grains. Avoid products with added sugar, flour products, and processed foods as much as possible. As Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Di- lemma and In Defense of Food, says, “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” Folks often get bogged down in this step thinking that they need a week’s worth of complicated recipes. When renovating your food world, it is totally OK to keep it simple. Seasoned proteins baked in the oven. Steamed or sauteed vegetables.
3.Breakfast: Ask yourself, when do I prepare my breakfast? When should I wake up to allow myself 5-10 extra minutes to make a simple, healthy breakfast? You might declare in your meal plan that you have a portion of no sugar added dry cereal, a piece of fruit, and a portion of protein (i.e. nuts, yogurt, dairy, or non- dairy milk). Or one could have a smoothie. For the purposes of your meal planning, you don’t have to be specific on ingredi- ents, you simply just need a generic idea of what you will have.
16 ELM™ Maine - July/August 2019
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