By Heather Nicholds
Today I wanted to share a meal planner and grocery list for a healthy eating plan with you guys.
I know a lot of you struggle with feeling lost in a sea of too many recipes and too little time.
So I want to help you find a strategy
I’m back at home now, after Phil and I have been traveling for about 4 weeks. We’ve been on the road, visiting people and going to conferences.
I love change, so I love going away and I also love coming home and getting back into my groove.
One thing that happened on this trip is that I got off my regular work schedule a bit, so now that I’m home I’m working on getting back into that.
There are two different types of people when it comes to organizing. There are the planners and the fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants-ers…
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And of course all the shades of grey in between those opposite ends of the scale.
Phil is definitely a planner, although he does fly by the seat of his pants sometimes. Myself, I lean more towards the fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants end of the scale.
I do like to have a plan, but I also like to do things spontaneously and just see what happens.
If I plan something once, or even just a general outline, it makes it a lot easier for me to improvise.
I do that for eating, and what I thought I’d share today is a meal planner and grocery list for you guys to help give you that outline and structure of the basics of what you need .
Then those of you who are fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-ers can play with it, mix it around, and change things as you go.
Meal Planner
On the meal planner template, you can write in what kind of recipes you want to try and jot any special groceries you need. I usually just make note of things that I might not normally have on hand, to keep my list simple.
Or you can plan like I do and write in the types of foods you want to eat at each meal for a healthy balanced diet.
Like grains and fruit for breakfast, veggies and beans for lunch, green smoothie for a snack and starchy veg with greens for dinner.
If you have an outline, it can help you plan when you’re going to make meals, when you’re going to use leftovers, and time your prep work around whatever activities you (or your kids) have going on.
I know that if I want to make a soup for lunch, I can start it at 11, and leave it to cook while I check email and youtube comments.
I know that on a day I do a hard strength workout, I’m going to need an extra snack and maybe a bigger lunch to give me energy.
Then when you’re super busy and don’t want to think about what to make to eat, just look at the plan and put it together.
Not having to think about what to eat, and buy ingredients, often helps keep you from resorting to pre-made processed foods.
Food Diary Template
A food diary template is a really awesome way to keep track of what you eat during the day. Lots of people use food diaries to count calories.
I don’t do it to count calories though.
What I do is I like to keep track of what I eat and then relate it to how I feel: how much energy I have, how my digestion was, what my sleep was like, and what my mood was like.
Sometimes if I eat something weird that I don’t normally eat, it makes my mood go crazy. I don’t like that, and I’m sure Phil doesn’t like it either!
Relating how you feel to what you eat can help you see which healthy foods to eat to make you feel awesome.
I don’t keep track of it all the time, it’s not the kind of thing you want to get obsessed with, but it’s just something to keep track of every once in a while to see how the foods you eat affect you.
Healthy Grocery List
I know a lot of you struggle when you go to the grocery store with knowing what to buy. I struggled with it too in the past, but I’ve come up with kind of a system, a way to categorize foods.
I explained it in this post on my healthy grocery list strategy.
So I know exactly what I need and what kinds of things to buy, but I don’t have to sit down for an hour every time I go shopping and inventory my fridge and cupboards and say ‘ok, I need kale and green onions and cashews and…’
I find that kind of boring.
I’m really not that kind of planner. I like to have the general outline, and then go out and get what looks good and what I feel like.
But it helps having that outline so that I don’t have to go to the store every other day because I didn’t get enough green vegetables.
Tying together your meal planner and grocery list makes you even more organized, so if you like that then you’ll have a field day with these planners.
If you do this for a while, your healthy eating habits will be so engrained that even the most hard core planners should be able to improvise a little bit.
If you want to be organized, but don’t have the time to do it for yourself, you might find my 7 day meal plan perfect for you.
It has a specific grocery list and a detailed plan with recipes for making every single meal and snack for a week.
Meal Planner And Grocery List PDF Downloads
Download the PDF: Meal Planner
Download the PDF: Daily Food Diary Template
Download the PDF: Healthy Grocery List
Do It Now
So I hope this is helpful for both the planners and the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-ers.
What I want you to do now is check out these tools, print them off, and try them once. Some of you will love it and want to do it all the time.
Some of you will hate it, and know that you’ll never want to do it. And that’s fine – if you have your own system and it’s working for you, stick with it.
You might just see something in here that could improve your system.
And then there are the in-betweeners, like me, who will do it once and get the framework and an understanding of the process.
And then you can go off and do it in your own way.
But try it once, and see how it goes. I hope that it will allow you to have more fun thinking through a meal planner and grocery list, and yet feel like you aren’t totally lost.
Sometimes I feel like I’m flailing all over the place without a strategy.
So that’s what I wanted to share with you guys today – a strategy for putting your healthy eating plan together. I’m going to go off and get my strategy back in place for work time.
Hopefully I’ll have some success with that.
Any questions? What kind of planner are you?
