Eating unhealthy food can often be a sin of convenience, but it’s so readily available at any given time. It’s something that we are tempted to do on a busy day when the drive through is faster than healthier options. If you live alone, it’s so much easier to order takeout or buy frozen food that’s just not that good for us (high in fat, carbs, and calories).
It’s sad because we all know that cooking from scratch always has the potential to be much healthier than eating out or eating out of a box. Today I want to talk about how you can plan your meals ahead to get the most nutritious meals in the least amount of time by preparing your meals ahead of time so they’re there when you need them.
Quick, Hot Breakfasts
Breakfast is one of the hardest meals to make ahead of time, especially if you are watching your carbs. This is because carbs store and keep the best. Having a bowl of cereal is a classic, quick breakfast. With the right cereal, it can be very filling and very nutritious, but it’s also going to be high in carbs from all that nasty sugar and unwanted white flour. The same thing can be said for pancakes.
You can get the dry mix in a box, but it has a lot more ingredients than a pancake really needs. To make your own dry pancake mix to be ready in a hurry, all you really need is one half-tablespoon for every cup of flour. Then just pour out what you need, add milk and a dash of vanilla, and pour into a buttered pan. With jelly or yogurt on top instead of syrup, this can be another filling and nutritious meal, though it still has carbs. However, if you use whole wheat organic flour, you’re cutting out a little bit of those unhealthy and unneeded carbs.
To plan breakfast without the carbs, make a deconstructed omelet and put it together in the morning. Scramble eggs with a splash of milk in a small covered bowl, and leave it in the fridge. Chop or grate all of the cheese, vegetables, and optional additional proteins, and leave them in the fridge. In the morning, dump the eggs into a buttered, heated pan.
When they stop looking wet, add the cheese and other ingredients. Once the cheese has melted, fold the eggs over. Doing all of the steps at once can take up the whole morning, but planning ahead gives you a delicious and nutritious, high-protein, low-carb breakfast in minutes.
Lunch On The Go When You Don’t Have Time
Lunch is easier to plan for. It’s not hard to make a sandwich and chop some fruit in a container at night to grab out of the fridge for lunch the next day.
If you aren’t watching your carbs, a well-built sandwich can have all of the nutrients of a salad, but it’s easier to take with you on the go. If you are watching carbs, ditch the bread and bulk up your salad with extra leafy greens, like lettuce, and extra protein like grilled chicken and hardboiled eggs. A well-made salad can be filling, tasty, nutritious, and entirely carb-free, but it won’t travel as well as a sandwich.
Dinner is Always Harder to Plan
Dinner can be harder to plan for, but there are more opportunities if you do. Meal planning for dinners often involves making bulk meals as though you were preparing food for a large number of people. I love meal planning because I get to use up the ingredients that I have in my home.
If you don’t know what you have in your freezer or cupboard, then make a list of things that you have. it’s always easier to see what you have, then blindly going through your fridge and freezer to begrudgingly to pull food out that you might not want, but will eat because you’re hungry. Sound familiar? Here’s some thoughts about how you can plan a little bit for dinner
Prepare different cuts of, say, chicken, fish, or steak, from a larger piece of meat and preserving the rest. Yes, it “seem” a little expensive at first because larger pieces of meat are more expensive than smaller pieces of meat, if you look at the cost by weight it is very often cheaper in the whole to buy larger pieces and portion them yourself. Once you have a healthy protein, all you need to finish off your meal is a good salad. Once you’ve stocked up on a little bit of healthy proteins, you can now focus on fresh produce and ingredients.
Soups are another popular meal planning dish. By making a large serving of soup and portioning it out, you can be sure to have quick and healthy dinners for days to come. Because soup keeps longer in the freezer than other foods, by making new batches of soup before your frozen old batches run out you can give yourself variety. Frozen soups also make good to-go lunches that can be heated up in a microwave.
Soups have another meal planning benefit, namely that they can be prepared in crockpot. By putting all of the ingredients in and turning the crockpot on or using an Instant Pot, you can save valuable time by cooking your soups over night or while you are at work.
In trying to lose weight, it just takes a little time to keep yourself focused on your long term goal. It might not always be easy when you’re trying to do meal planning for one person, whether you live alone or not. You’ve got this! Stay focused, and the weight loss and healthier lifestyle will happen.
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