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I need HELP meal planning!


SarahSchroeder

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I am starting my first Whole30 next week & I still don't have my first week meal plan ready to go.  I have most of my pantry staples, a few emergency meals ready to go, and tons of my favorite recipes pinned & saved....but now I am STUCK! 

I really have a hard time with meal planning.  I get so overwhelmed with figuring out what to schedule on the menu for the week.  Its so hard to balance meeting each of my family's unique tastes, convenience & frugality.  I know myself & I need a structured plan to follow, but with a little flexibility for the craziness of my life.  If the meal prep is too much work/time consuming I will get overwhelmed so I want to try and set up my meals to be simple, flow off one another & minimize the ingredients I need to buy at the grocery store.   I feel like I'm making it harder than it has to be....but meal planning has been the hardest thing for me to get a grasp on in any attempts to ever eat healthy....this is why I get frustrated and just end up getting fast-food for dinner....BUT NO MORE!!!

I can't afford the Real Plans (it looks amazing though!  Maybe once my husband see's my results from completing a Whole30 he will not freak out at the thought of spending $30 on a meal planning app), and I've looked at other meal planning apps but they just don't cut it.

I'm thinking of just copying the meal plan in the book for my first week...but that still doesn't help me with my problem of learning the skill of meal planning!

Any ideas??

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I personally don't really meal plan the way most people think of it. I can't tell you what I'm going to eat at each meal throughout the week, but I make sure there's enough food prepped that I have meals for the week. I do something like this weekly cookup (here's an actual one-week meal plan based on this method, if you want something more concrete to look at). It can feel like a lot the day you do it, but it can save you a ton of time later in the week, and once you get it all worked out and figure out how much to cook at once, it goes faster.

For me, what this means is that I'll probably make a breakfast casserole, grill or bake some chicken, cook some ground beef or sometimes a roast or stew, chop a bunch of vegetables (I cook some of them, if they'll hold up well, or I'll make salads, either typical green salads or more likely things like these or others that hold up well and benefit from being premade a day or two before they're eaten like potato salad), and making some mayo and maybe another sauce or salad dressing or two, depending on what I'm planning to eat. There's always food in the kitchen, and it can typically be combined in different ways. So, one day I may have chicken and vegetables, another day I might chop the chicken up to include in a stir fry or pad thai or a salad. The beef may go on a taco salad one day, or be stuffed in a baked potato or sweet potato, or be used in lettuce wraps. The different vegetables get mixed and matched depending on my mood, although I try to eat the ones that are most likely to get soggy or go bad faster first to avoid waste. I try to also keep cans of tuna or salmon on hand for quick meals if I run out of other food or something just doesn't turn out well and I just can't make myself eat it another time. Frozen chicken, burger patties, and vegetables are also good to keep around, since they can be cooked quickly if you need to.

Remember that you don't have to make lots of new recipes. Look for ways to adapt the recipes you already use to be Whole30. And focus on cooking protein, vegetables, and healthy fat -- you don't need almond flour or coconut aminos or any of that. I don't know where you're located, but here, it's starting to get warm, which for me means grilling lots of stuff, because it's easier than messing up the kitchen. You can grill burgers, compliant hot dogs or sausages, chicken, steak, fish, and vegetables seasoned pretty simply with salt and pepper, garlic or onion powder or whatever spices you like.

Look for ways to make what you're cooking for you overlap with what you make for them. If you're grilling chicken for you with some vegetables, maybe they can have that plus some rice, or with some cheese on top of their chicken. If you do a taco night, you can make taco meat that's compliant and have yours in a taco salad, or wrapped in lettuce leaves, or stuffed in a baked potato, topped with guacamole and whatever vegetables you like, and they can have taco shells and cheese and beans if they want, but you haven't had to make two completely different meals, just some extra sides. And always try to cook enough to have leftovers if that's possible -- then you can have leftovers for lunch the next day, or incorporate them into another meal, or even have a day that's a fend for yourself day if all your family members are old enough for that, where you all just have whichever of the leftovers from the week that you want.

 

 

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I found the first week meal plan in TheWhole30 book to be WAY too much food.  It is only my boyfriend and I, so usually we make three or four dinners per week, and get creative with the leftovers to make interesting lunches.  Once a week I make homemade/compliant breakfast sausage (plain ground pork seasoned with fennel, rosemary, sage, thyme) patties and keep them individually wrapped in the fridge.  Breakfasts are my biggest struggle because I don't really plan them out (other than the sausage) I just play it by ear.  Usually I have egg(s), starch (sweet potato or squash), half an avocado, and if my day looks crazy I throw in a sausage patty.  After the first week I felt confident that I could spice up pretty much any leftover for lunch.  The first week is the hardest, and honestly looking back my grocery bill for that first week was significantly more than anyother week; nothing against the Hartwig's but I felt that was a rough and unrealistic meal plan for a two person household. I think it would be better suited for 4 people. 

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