As part of Day 10 of our #30VeganDays challenge, I wanted to share with you a key element of our challenge: meal planning! You will discover how simple and practical it is!
What is meal planning?
Meal planning means setting up a list or table of the meals you are going to eat during a certain period of time (usually a week), from breakfast to dinner. As almost everyday we eat the same thing for breakfast and for dinner (with some slight variations) we only plan our weekly lunch.
Advantages
Planning will bring you lots of advantages:
- You tend to eat more balanced meals: it will push you to choose different meals with different ingredients or even to search for different recipes maybe with some unknown products to try!
- You save time: with a list you shop faster. No need to think about what you are going to eat, if it will be enough for the week or to do take last minute detours, etc.
- You save money: when you establish a list of the products you need to buy, you are less tempted to buy some useless things when you go shopping ;
- You waste less: you will only buy what you need and use everything you bought which means no rotten fruits or vegetables in the fridge or somewhere else!
- You learn to be more organized in general: as you know you need to cook this day of the week, you will tend to organize the other days to be able to do all the things you planned for the week!
How to plan your meals?
The best way to organize is using a table. Write down the week days and pick a meal for each day. You can prepare meals that last 2 days if you wish.
We recommend you to use Excel, or Google Sheets, and save them on your Google Drive. That way you’ll be able to keep your meal’s history and you won’t eat the same things often. Also, you will be able open the excel sheet when you go shopping and won’t forget anything.
For some inspiration, take a look at the screenshot of our plan for this week:
And you, do you have any technic to plan your meals?
If yes, please share it with us!
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