Thrive Nutrition Practice: Meal Planning Tool
Let me explain…
The Meal Plan is the fastest way for you to make positive changes to your diet in a sustainable way because it addresses the single biggest challenge for healthy eating:
BEING TIME POOR.
I don’t have time to pack my lunch. I don’t have time to make dinner from scratch because I get home late. I don’t have time to have breakfast at home.
These are the battle cries of the nutritionally disenfranchised. It’s hard to push back on the “lack of time” argument because we can all relate.
However, just like little girls have to see women leaders to believe they can be one, so do aspiring healthy eaters have to see their healthy food choices in order to make them a reality. So really – a meal plan is like affirmative action for nutrition.
Before I started to meal plan, I would:
- go to the supermarket 2-4x per week because I never had the ingredients I wanted in the fridge;
- spend WAY TOO MUCH MONEY at the supermarket because I’d shop hungry or didn’t plan ahead so that I could buy online more cheaply;
- skip breakfast because I could never figure out in time what I FELT LIKE eating;
- have a kind of disgusting combination of my kids’ leftover plus whatever else I could scramble in 10min for dinner;
- feel bummed and bored with food because I felt like had the same foods ALL THE TIME.
If this sounds like you, you need get jiggy with a meal plan. One 10-minute session a week can help you eat better, promote variety in your diet, save you money and get you excited about food again! Plus – all the time you get back from countless trips to the supermarket, you can re-invest in making some of your meals from scratch.
Here are my top two app-based meal planners, which help you keep recipes, meal plan and build a shopping list from the plan: www.plantoeat.com and www.pepperplate.com. Pepperplate is free and Plantoeat is just under US$5 a month.
If you can spend the time to populate these apps with healthy recipes and are super organized, these can work really well for you because they help generate a shopping list for you too, which is super useful.
However, there is no meal planning app that I know of that helps you create nutritionally-rich meal plans. I mean – you can have the best meal plan template but if populate it with CocoPuffs, peanut butter & jam sandwiches and mac&cheese — you’re not exactly affirming positive action in the nutrition department.
So, I’ve created a template for building nutritionally-rich meals, which I’d like to share with you today.
THE THRIVE MEAL PLAN TEMPLATE:
- is founded on maximising the inclusion of Thrive’s SLEEPLOVEPOOP foods: high quality protein, fresh fruits&veggies, healthy fats & fibre-rich foods;
- works to help you build healthy meals and make healthy food choices if you’re going out;
- helps you commit to achievable weekly goals so that you feel really good about what you’ve eaten by the end of the week. This is really important because the biggest enemy of nutrition is perfection.
It is also FREE but you will have to email me for it. I’ve already filled out a week for you, so you can see how to use it. I’ve also included healthy lunch ideas for children.
My little gift for you during LOVE month because healthy eating is not rocket science.
It’s just about having a plan.
Cristina Tahoces is a holistic nutritionist and owner of Thrive Nutrition Practice. Please join her Facebook group “Thrive Nutrition Practice” for daily articles, recipes, promotions on professional grade supplements and upcoming workshops.
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