Losing Weight With Real Food – Part Four, Plan, Plan, Plan!

Welcome to the next part in my series about losing weight with real food! If you need to get caught up, here are all the different pieces:

• Introduction
• Part one
• Part two
• Part three

If you are paying attention, you’ll notice that these posts are not coming in the order listed in the introduction post. If you are OCD and that’s driving you crazy, sorry. I simply can’t be tied down, okay? Sometimes I’m just not in the mood to do the next one down on the list, and another sounds like more fun. Just roll with it.

Today I want to talk about planning. If you want to go on a trip, you need a map, a route, a plan. It’s the same with any goal in life, especially when it comes to losing weight and eating Real food. This step was HUGE for us!

When Marquis and I first got married, we had an agreement; he would cook and I would clean. It was perfect for us, we each got to do what we liked and could avoid what we didn’t. Each day on the way home from work Marquis would stop at the grocery store, see what looked good that day and what he felt like cooking, and that’s what he would bring home and make for us. Some days it was a decadent , fancy meal that he would spend hours preparing, other days it was frozen pizza. Of course we ate out sometimes and ordered in, but it was all based on the mood of the moment. It was usually very processed, very high in calories, and very low in nutrients.

Here are a few things we have learned about meal planning since then:

• Schedule a time to do it each week. We like to do it Saturday mornings right after breakfast. We usually pick up a CSA basket Saturday mornings so we can plan based on what we receive in that, plus everyone is home and can help. Saturday mornings might not work for you, you have to figure out what works best for your own family, but get the time scheduled on the calendar.
• Once you have your plan, go shopping right away. We make a plan, head to the grocery store, and do as much prep as we can on Saturday, sometimes even some on Sunday, and then we are set for the whole week. If we don’t take the next step and pick up the groceries, we revert to our old ways of grabbing fast food and ordering pizza.
• Involve the whole family. Our little girls are only 5 and 2, and yet we always ask them what they want on the menu. Even if that means having mac’n’cheese yet again, that is less work you have to do, plus they have some pride of ownership when you eat their meal, “Mommy, look, this is the corn on the cob I asked for!”
• Keep the meal plan visible. I have a white erase board stuck to our fridge with the menu written on it. I love that I can glance at it quickly while I’m in the kitchen to see if I need to defrost meat for the next day or decide what time I need to start cooking (there are a bunch of cute menu ideas I found on my Pinterest board). I also put it into my google calendar so I can pull it up on my laptop while I’m working or on my phone while out and about. Marquis can also see my calendar so everyone is always on the same page.
• Keep a collection or list of favorite recipes. I have certain cookbooks that I go back to over and over, but I also have my Pinterest boards that I refer to and I like to go over our past weeks’ menus to remember what we liked and maybe haven’t had for awhile.

I hope this gives you some ideas to improve your own meal planning. I know that for us, any time we don’t have a plan in place, that is when we end up eating something we will regret. Hunger doesn’t make for good, rational thought! When we have a plan in place and the ingredients all ready to go, it’s easy to ignore that voice that whispers, “Pizza delivery!” and instead whip up a healthy, delicious meal for my family.

This post has been linked up to the Unprocessed Fridays link party on Girl Meets Nourishment. Check out the other great posts here.