Whether it’s just you or whether you’re preparing a meal for a whole gang, it’s not an energizing prospect to imagine planning, shopping for or cooking a meal from scratch at the end of a long day.

That’s probably why the fast food businesses are booming and why our health is suffering from the effects of these “easy” foods.

If you think meal planning is an unnecessary step, or that it would create a strict regimen that you’d be trapped by, read on about how meal planning can free you from worry and improve your health and well being.

REASONS FOR MEAL PLANNING

Less time and money spent at the grocery store

When you plan your meals out a week at a time, your trips to the grocery store become much more manageable. You know exactly what you’ll need and you’ll be less susceptible to “impulse” buying. Sometimes, when I’m feeling REALLY efficient, I even write my list in order of where I’ll find it in the grocery store. Plus, buying the ingredients to cook a meal from scratch usually costs much less than the ready-made version.

Healthier meals = healthier you and your loved ones

When you’re planning ahead, you’ll have much more control over what you eat, and you can consciously choose to improve the health of your meals.

Better-timed meals

If you BEGIN planning and cooking dinner when you get home, it could be quite late before you’re sitting down to eat it. The closer to bedtime it is when you finish dinner, the less likely you’ll have time to properly digest and for your body to absorb what you’ve eaten. For breakfast and lunch, having the meals planned out can help remind you to STOP and EAT them.

Variety

When we choose our meals in the moment, based on what’s fast, easy and enjoyable, we tend to stick to a few standby’s and don’t branch out very much. Nutritionally, this leaves us lacking. We also risk getting bored with our food and looking to fast food or unhealthier options for “excitement”.

HOW TO PLAN YOUR MEALS FOR THE WEEK

1. Keep some spontaneity. You could just plan one part of the meal. For instance, if you know that you always have plenty of fresh of frozen vegetables that you can choose from, then simply plan “chicken, potatoes and vegetables”. Then you can still have some spontaneity in your meal.

2. When you have time, make “frozen dinners”. Make a double or triple recipe; package the leftovers in single (or family-size) servings and freeze.

3. Factor in schedule changes. Maybe the night after the big meeting or the night of the soccer tournament aren’t the best nights to cook a meal from scratch. Plan a quick meal, take-out or your own “frozen dinner” for those nights.

4. Aim for balance. With the week spread out before you, look for balance between heavy and light meals, vegetarian and meat-based meals, and a variety of different-coloured fruits and vegetables.

5. Plan while you’re in the kitchen. That way you can easily check for the ingredients of the dishes you’re planning. If they’re not there, add them to your grocery list immediately.

6. Keep an active grocery list through the week. That way, when staples run out you can add them to list.

7. Grow your recipe collection. Use the Internet, the cookbooks of your friends and family, magazines, etc. and find new things to try. One new recipe a week will keep things exciting!

8. Get some expert advice. Consult a trusted source such as Canada’s Food Guide, or better still get individualized meal and nutrition suggestions from a registered dietician or a holistic nutritionist.

9. Make it a team effort. If you’re feeding others as well as yourself, make the planning a team effort so that everyone gets some of their favourites through the week.

10. Always follow your plan, except when you don’t. There are going to be things that come up, days that you just don’t feel like eating what you’ve planned, or days when you’ve forgotten to do your nightly prep. Create a list of healthy stand-by’s that you can throw together with the staples in your own kitchen. If you’re on the go, be prepared by having a list of healthy choices at your favourite restaurants.

A meal plan is not a rigid “diet” or set of orders. The meal plan serves you, not the other way around.

Start now with tomorrow’s meals. What can you defrost or partly prepare tonight to make tomorrow’s meals easier and healthier?

As it turns out, nutrition isn’t black and white at all. On a physiological level, it can be extremely complicated. Sometimes we do all the right things and still can’t seem to manage our weight, our energy, or our health. Of course, if we could only live on the Biggest Loser Ranch we wouldn’t have any of the obstacles that make eating healthy meals so complicated and impractical in the real world.

If only there were a few simple rules that made eating healthy simple?!

The good news is, there are three simple tips that can make healthy meals more of a no brainer. After all, we don’t all have the time or money to study nutrition, to visit a certified nutritionist, or to order all our meals packaged and ready-to-eat.

If you assess your diet regarding the three guidelines below, you will be doing a better job than most towards getting the nutrients and energy your body needs. (And by “diet” I don’t mean that four letter word that signifies perpetual deprivation but simply, what you consume daily.)

The Three Tips are to
1) keep your meals colorful
2) keep your meals small and frequent, and
3) keep your meals fresh.

As we explore these criteria in a little more depth, it will highlight some reasons you should incorporate them into your lifestyle.

1) Keep Your Healthy Meals Colorful

Our body needs six different nutrients to function optimally during the day. These include carbohydrates, proteins, fat, vitamins, minerals, and water. Most of us don’t have time or sufficient interest to make getting our daily allowance of amino acids and essential vitamins a scientific venture. So how can you make sure you are getting what you need? Answer: by keeping your meals colorful. It is that simple.

Picture a plate containing fish and chips beside a smoked salmon salad with a whole grain roll. One of these plates is monochromatic and the other has reds, greens, browns and whatever else your imagination used to dress it up. The more colorful plate has half the calories, more than twice the nutritional benefit, and will provide more lasting energy. Meanwhile, the monochromatic plate is also more likely to make you feel sluggish and desperately thirsty as a result of excessive sodium levels. The point is, picking healthy meals is a choice you are free to make.

While carbohydrates ( like bread, potatoes, rice, and starchy vegetables) and protein ( like meat, beans, and dairy) should be components of every meal, the more fruits and vegetables you add, the healthier and more colorful your meal will be. Even adding peas and carrots to the fish and chips plate would significantly increase the nutritional value of this dish. Presentation is not just for cooking shows- it is for your health, too.

People who eat mindfully (or in other words, don’t have a weight problem) enjoy food with all of their senses. Practice making your meals and snacks colorful by incorporating a variety of food groups. This way they will be a feast for your senses, your belly, and your body.

2) Keep Your Healthy Meals Smaller and More Frequent

A healthy eating schedule is going to vary from person to person. Three square meals a day is sometimes the only thing someone has time to prepare and enjoy. However, food is fuel. If you are hungry, eat. If you are not hungry, don’t. For many people, enjoying 4-6 smaller meals everyday actually helps them function more efficiently.

Deprivation is not beneficial for your body or mind. You have to eat to lose. However, most of us are used to mindlessly eating portion sizes that are larger than what we really need. You want to be satisfied but not stuffed.

More frequent, smaller meals keep your metabolism revved and make it less likely that you will store food as fat instead of burning it for fuel. It also keeps your energy levels and blood sugar levels steady which decreases the likelihood of overeating at your next meal or suffering crashes in energy that cause you to crave lousy, processed foods and sweets.

Anyone who has ever grocery shopped on an empty stomach knows that creating healthy meals is easier if you don’t let yourself get overly hungry. By making sure you have a healthy breakfast and healthy snacks available for the day ahead, you will be significantly less likely to feel the need to stuff your face and you will find it easier to manage your weight. Overall, focusing on eating to keep your energy up and your hunger under control will help you be a pleasant, healthy person.

3) Keep Your Foods Fresh

Eating healthy meals doesn’t mean buying packaged foods that say they are healthy on the outside of the box. Healthy meals should include fresh foods. If everything you eat is unwrapped, microwaved, delivered, or frozen, you need a serious diet overhaul. What your body craves is nutrients, not preservatives and added chemicals. Processed foods are more calorically dense and harder for your body to breakdown so they are more likely to be stored as fat than natural food.

If the ingredients list on a packaged food item is a bunch of words you don’t recognize or have never seen before, don’t buy it. Instead, build a skill for life and learn to cook the meal from raw ingredients. Ingredients that aren’t in your granny’s pantry, don’t habitually belong in yours. In other words,” if it doesn’t grow, let it go”. While it may seem like a convenient time saver now to buy the ready made stuff, preparing your own healthy meals will help you live longer, easily making up for the time it takes to prepare meals in the long run.

It takes conscious effort to incorporate these rules into your daily routine, but they will quickly become habitual with practice. Your efforts start in the grocery store where you can focus on choosing fresh foods and ingredients that will allow for plenty of nutritious choices for healthy meals and snacks in the days ahead. Then all you have to do is focus on including a variety of food groups to ensure you always add at least a splash of color. When it comes to fruits and vegetables, the more the merrier as far as your body is concerned.

Making color a priority, eating smaller meals as frequently as your hunger dictates, and seeking out fresh foods will pay off. In fact, assessing your healthy meals along these three guidelines might just help you save your health and your money. The more you fill your body with quality nutrients, the less you will crave U.F.O’s (unidentified food objects). After all, having access to and eating healthy meals is a luxury, not a punishment.

In order to lose weight, you need to cut down on your calorie intake. Many diet plans require you to calculate and measure calories for every meal or snack you take and this can be quite tedious. You don’t necessarily have to keep calculating calories all the time. You can use a meal plan that enables you to track your calorie intake in a simple way. Make sure that the meal plan is healthy and contains plenty of good whole foods. It is also important that you get a meal plan that will not restrict you or cause you to starve.

Before you start using any of the free meal plans for weight loss, you should set yourself a calorie goal. Figure out the amount of calories you take daily and try to reduce that to manageable levels by choosing low calorie food. There are several types of foods that are very healthy and low in calories. The high fiber foods like legumes, whole grains and cereals should start dominating your diet instead of the fast foods that are full of bad fats. On top of that, you also need plenty of fruits and vegetables on a daily basis as part of your meal plan.

You also need to make a meal schedule that you will follow to help you with your weight loss efforts. Most weight loss meal plans recommend that you divide your total daily calorie intake into five meals throughout the day. This will ensure that you don’t go hungry for too long thus avoiding the likelihood of binge eating. Try and make sure you eat within two hours after you wake up in the morning, and within three hours before you go to bed. Dividing your meals into five portions throughout the day will also help you in eating smaller portions of food per meal.

Even when you find a good free meal plan fro weight loss that you can follow, remember that exercise is very important when you want to burn calories and lose weight. You can start with simple exercises like walking or jogging on a regular basis. You can get more serious with the exercise plan by joining a gym or hiring a personal fitness trainer to help you burn fat through exercise. Eventually you will only succeed in your weight loss endeavors if you are willing to stick to the plan all the way.

Because many weight watchers do not plan their diet program in advance, they end up consuming meal replacement bars. Sometime they even skip meals to reduce the carbohydrate intake.

First of all, the meal replacement bars can contain hidden sugars that lead to more food craving, which ultimately take away all the benefits of a low carb plan.

The next concern is what kind of benefits one can expect from a low carb meal plan. People want to lose weight for a variety of reasons and desiring a slim waistline for looking good may not be the only one.

Being overweight can mean inviting a host of health problems including hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, sleep disorders and more. If you are suffering from sleep apnea, perhaps the most common form of sleep disorder, you need to be careful while planning your weight loss diet. This is because, you are generally feeling tired, because you cannot have a good nights’ sleep. Your body needs energy to take you through the day. Of course, a plan that is low in carbs can help you lose weight; but you need to be doubly cautious while designing such a plan.

Along with reducing the carbs, you also need to make sure that you have adequate quantities of vitamins, minerals and macronutrients which carbohydrates can offer in plenty.

Here are some important features about a low carb meal plan which every weight watcher should know, especially if you are trying to lose weight to take care of your sleep apnea problem:

• Consistency is the key to success with a low carb meal plan. If you follow the diet 80% of the time, you can not expect to lose weight. This means that you need to create your low carb meal plan well in advance to prevent food cravings and so on.
• Perhaps the most popular low carb meal plan is the Atkins Diet. Though this is one of the oldest eating plans available not many people know how to follow it properly. This type of diet plan consists of meat, diary, nuts and seeds, fish oil, vegetables and fiber supplement.
• Replace your carbohydrate depletion with enough good quality meat proteins. Since lower carbs can lower your metabolism, you run the risk of gaining weight once you stop the low carb meal plan.
• It is recommended to consume 1.5 to 2g of protein per pound of bodyweight.
• There are no eggs in this type of low carb meal plan.
• Limit your protein shakes to 1 per day, preferably after a workout.
• A good low carb meal plan also includes consumption of fish oil every morning with your first meal. If you have 33% body fat (obese) you would need 33 g or fish oil per day.
• Though you are limiting your carb intake to 50 g per day in the plan, you cannot ignore fiber from your diet. This means that you need to eat cooked or raw vegetables for your fiber needs.
• It is recommended to have 5 to 6 small meals per day with lots of protein with every meal.

There are countless people who have lost weight following a low carb meal plan. There is no reason, why you cannot make use of such a plan and prevent or cure your sleep apnea problem resulting from being overweight.

Several prominent weight loss providers commonly hear the desperate cries for assistance from men and women and have wiped out the guess-work involved when it comes to learning points, which include what is a proper portion size and what types of food are permitted with a specific diet plan. These weight reduction organizations have created weight loss meal plans that can be delivered directly to your front doorstep. Each of these diet food items has been perfectly portioned, so there isn’t any guess work.

DineWise
DineWise offers diet meal delivery with a twist. DineWise also includes meals for two and specific holiday diet meals. Weight Loss meals start out at $10. With DineWise, there is no lock-in to a week or more. You just buy your meals from anywhere in the United States, and they are shipped to your home within a few days. You make your own menu selecting from entrees and sides available, and they offer the most freedom in the amount of meals you would like to add to your weight loss meal plan. You could select from predetermined meal plans or decide on as many weight loss breakfast, lunch, and dinners as you want, plus a three day trial plan is offered.

The Chefs Diet
Chefs Diet operates on the guideline that a well balanced meal is one which includes 40 percent carbohydrates, 30 percent proteins, and 30 percent fat. Chef’s Diet allows you to select from either a regular premium plan, a vegetarian and dairy plan, a sugar-free plan for people with diabetes, a vegan plan, a kosher menu and even a child’s menu. You can choose to join either a three day meal sampler, which allows you to test the menu and a meal plan without having to be locked-in. You can choose from a seven day program, a 14-day program, or a 31-day schedule. The seven day program will cost you roughly $50.00 daily, plus tax and shipping.

DietToGo
Diet-to-Go is a company that provides weight loss meals sent to your door everywhere in the continental United States. They provide a choice of conventional low-fat diet plans that are based on 1100-1200 calories for women and 1400-1600 calories for men. These folks also offer low-carb meals and low-sodium dishes as well as vegetarian meals. Their meals are shipped every week and are delivered in coolers with dry ice. Every meal must be microwaved and directions are provided. A five day meal plan of only breakfast and dinner is around $90.00 weekly, while a five day meal program, including the three meals is about $110.00 weekly.

BistroMD
Bistro MD gained popularity right after it had been featured on the Dr. Phil show. Bistro MD delivers packaged food that is microwavable to your home. Bistro MD meals will be designed by a nutritional doctor along with other top professionals. Your meals are available as either conventional low-fat or as vegetarian. You must order at least five days worth of meals. Five days of meals, including snacks is around $145.00 a week. A seven day meal plan is $180. Bistro MD ships to all parts of the United States.

Freshology
Freshology offers all-natural foods for those on a diet. Each item of food is shipped fresh to your door, which is never frozen or highly processed. All meats are hormone free and all fruit and veggies are organic. Freshology delivers only to certain parts of the United States, such as The southern area of California, and regions of the East coast. Diet plans start at the 14 day meal program, and go up to 90 day meal plans. Freshology meals currently cost around $55.00 each day.

Seattle Sutton
Seattle Sutton offers fresh meals readily available for pick-up in some areas of the US and delivers nationally in others. Their meal plan cost varies based upon where you live and how many meals you select. You must buy a 14 day bare minimum amount of meals on this program. The food selection includes traditional low-fat meals in addition to vegetarian meals. Plan fees fluctuate by location and range from $129 to $279.

Medifast
Medifast diet foods are purchased in one-month amounts. These are shelf-stabilized meals that can be purchased a la carte or as a month-long meal plan. They don’t offer vegetarian dishes; they simply offer plans for men or women. The majority of the meals you will receive from them come in the form of powders that you add hot water to. Their meals consist of shakes, bars, breakfast cereals, as well as powdered soups. Medifast can deliver any place in the US and costs roughly $300.00 every month.

NutriSystem
NutriSystem is one of the most familiar diet plans. It has been around the longest and is successful because of their low cost. The food is shelf-stabilized and is microwavable. They deliver anywhere in the US. Meal plans consist of those for females, males and people with diabetes. NutriSystem demands a four week obligation and charges about $240.00 every month.

eDiets
e-Diets differs from the others since it lets you choose which kind of diet plan you would want to use. You have over 20 alternatives, which include well known diets such as the Atkins method and Weight Watchers. The pricing and varieties of food shipped fluctuate depending on your choices. The company does not post prices online but a live chat agent said rates were about $22 a day plus shipping.

With everything from premier gourmet meals to powdered soups, consumers will discover a few significant differences in the prepared meal companies that offer weight loss meal plans. Finding the best value to meet your needs should be based on a harmony of food cost and quality. Reading through customer opinions from individuals that have tried and experienced the various programs is a good method to figure out the quality of the meals you would like to purchase, and at a cost that matches your budget.

Another suggestion would be to be to study the food selection meticulously. Are you getting a tiny muffin for breakfast every day? Some organizations make an effort to keep prices low by offering incredibly modest serving sizes. Look for the ounces of every meal, and review the calories per meal to ensure they are not too low. For the majority of people, 400 calories is an effective standard per meal. Every meal ought to include a protein, carb, and vegetable.

Finally, make sure to read the fine print of any service you would like, including the cancellation process in case you are unhappy. A few companies provide a 100% satisfaction guarantee, which would be considered a key advantage in choosing a weight loss meal delivery program.