Several of you have asked about meal planning and how I do it. It has helped me to be planful for the week, especially for those weeks that include special occasions and other out of the ordinary plans that will have me eating things I don’t normally. I like to say that this lifestyle is really all about balance, and meal planning helps me do just that.

I started “formal” meal planning about a year ago, with the inspiration of my good friend Tanya over at Not Really Hungry. She has a great excel spreadsheet she shares with her followers that makes it very simple to plug in your foods for the week. Find it here!

Here is a sample meal plan, my meal plan for this week. The numbers in the small columns are the points for the foods listed; I have 30 daily points plus 35 extra weekly points available for use. As you can see, I am kind of a “volume eater”, and just try to make sure that “volume” is healthy stuff to keep me satiated. I have a protein at each meal and snack, which helps to keep me satisfied and not munching as much between meals. I do plan for my snacks, so that I always have something at the ready. Over time my snacks have changed, but currently I reach for a hard-boiled egg in the morning and a container of Greek yogurt in the afternoon. I usually pair this with a bag of veggies that I have prepped in my weekly meal prep.

(Also note on my plan, Mondays and Tuesdays are a little different, simply because Tuesday is my weigh-in day; certainly not a requirement for anyone else in meal planning. And the extra protein shake & banana on Tuesday and Thursday mornings is what I have before going to work out at the gym; I eat my regular breakfast afterward.)

For my meals, I tend toward lean protein and vegetables. I do occasionally have some grains, but for the most part I get my carbs from fruit and vegetables. When I do have them I try to aim for whole grains, such as brown rice or whole grain bread. I love the occasional baked potato as well (with salsa, yum!)

My family eats out a lot on the weekends, and it’s not always very clear where we’ll be eating until just before we leave (and sometimes not even then lol). It can be very difficult to plan for this, but over time I’ve figured out my go-to meals to order at the restaurants we tend to frequent. And when I’m meal planning I allow for a certain number of points for those meals, since I’m not able to plan for specific foods. You could do the same with calories or macros or whatever method you use for tracking your foods. As you can see this is a bit of a crazy week, and I have several meals which will be eaten out. Meal planning allows me to plan for this and still stay within my weekly targets.

Fruit is something I enjoy as a snack as well, but I’ve learned over the last year or so that I need to watch how much fruit I eat in order to keep the scale moving. Fruit does have sugar after all, even if it is 0 points on Weight Watchers and very low in calories. It is certainly a better choice than potato chips or candy, and as I was beginning my weight loss journey I was able to be more liberal with fruit, but it definitely makes a difference now in how much I eat. So I try to limit myself to 2-3 servings per day. You will see fruit only listed on my meal plan once or twice a day; I do throw more in usually in the evening or other times of day as a part of a snack. The other times I would have had fruit in the past I have instead replaced it with veggies. One more reason my weekly food prep is so critical to my continued success.

Speaking of evening snacking, this is one area on which I have worked intently. Being tired is a big trigger for me to think that I’m hungry when really I’m not. And sitting in front of the TV in the evening begs you to snack, it’s a very behavioral thing we are accustomed to doing! So I started a few months ago with instituting a cut-off time for myself of 9:00pm. I do my best not to snack after this time (and more recently have been trying to aim for 8:30, though I confess I’m not always successful with this). Though it is not included on my weekly plan, when I do snack in the evening I try to stick to fruit, Greek yogurt (I love some non-fat Greek yogurt, throw in a little Truvia and some frozen fruit, yum!), or popcorn. Again, these are things that are very filling and help me to feel satisfied and thus less likely to reach for something else.

Also important to remember in meal planning is to plan for foods that you like. No healthy eating plan is going to succeed in the long run if you are feeling deprived. I know that I’m not going to spend the rest of my life never eating ice cream, pizza or bread again. But I have found ways to make it work within my plan, either with substitutions that “hit that spot” for a craving, or with balancing the day or week so that I can have those things on occasion. There’s a great quote my Weight Watchers leader uses that I think is so true: “You can eat anything you want, just not everything you want.”

I hope this has been helpful to you if you want to start formal meal planning for yourself. It has been a lifesaver for me over the last year, taking some time to plan things out and not having to figure out what to cook throughout the week. I do my best to stick close to it every week, but certainly am not perfect and have slip ups.

What questions do you have? Have you meal planned before? What are your favorite foods to work into your plan?