Did you know you can make a healthy meal plan for the week and it doesn’t have to include ‘chicken and broccoli!?’. 

So many women have had the experience of asking for a meal plan and wound up following a soul-less meal plan with all the foods they love GONE, and everything they hate but feel they have to love in order to be healthy. 

You can achieve amazing health with food balance. You just prioritise what you love first, and build the whole food options around it. 

Tips for easy meal planning

1. Firstly, you need some kind of planner to enter your healthy meal plan into. You can use mine as a sample if you like

2. Choose your favourite foods that you can’t live without – eg latte, ice-cream, mini chocolate bar, honey oats (whatever you like) and enter those first. 

If you plan your favourite foods, you won’t feel depressed when you look at your food for the week. 

3. Consider having the same lunches or dinners, or repeating a couple so you can prepare a few meals in one go. 

Bulk prep makes life much, much easier. For example, a lunch of beef mince with sweet potato mash and a handful of corn chips – you can cook at least 4 of these up in the same time it would take you to cook one. 

4. Consider where you want your foods to come from. Are you health focussed, or just trying to get your weight under control? 

Use that information to guide your food choices. If it’s optimal health you’re aiming for, you would increase the percentage of whole foods you eat (example, you might count that beef mince with corn chips as a ‘treat’ meal, whereas if you were eating for wellbeing, or to ensure you get enough calories in, that post-dinner ice cream might be in there, with the beef and corn chips as dinner). 

Note, with the right approach you can also lose weight by eating what you like, within reason. 

5. Eat however many meals suit you, depending on your schedule. 

If you don’t have time to snack, don’t include snacks, just have bigger meals and a desert. You do you. 

6. Try to leave out things that bring about discomfort or symptoms to begin with (if you know what these things are). 

The lower the inflammation, the faster you’ll feel good and get results. The better you feel, the more likely you are to stick with the plan long term. 

Looking for more? In my Female Nutrition course there is everything you need to know about eating a balanced diet, including meal planning, preparation, calories and macros. Literally, everything.