Minimal Meal Planning for Maximum Benefit

​Most people think of meal planning as some elaborate, hours-long event. In turn, the idea of meal planning itself can be exhausting. Instead of grocery shopping, meal planning for hours, and then making dinner on a Sunday, consider breaking tasks up into smaller, more manageable, and more effective steps.

• Create a simple dinner entrée list for the week, including a takeout or pizza night, allowing yourself to spend no more than ten minutes to create your list. For breakfasts and lunches consider keeping the variation at two to three choices for the week.
• Pick a standard grocery shopping day to get the items needed to create your meals.
• Prioritize another short time frame, no longer than thirty minutes, to do some precooking meal prep. This may include washing, cutting, and storing fruits and vegetables. Meal pre may also involve portioning yogurts and snack bags or writing notes to delegate mealtime tasks to others in the household.

While some of the meals will seem recurrent, having items prepared and knowing what to expect, eases decision making later in the week. This will save time and prevent the added stressor of “having to figure out what for dinner.” The key to getting in variety is in the creation of your weekly list. If that changes, so will the meals. You may also consider alternating grocery stores every other week for variety.

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