Meal Planning is an excellent way to reach healthy eating goals.
For health professionals, helping clients with meal planning is a great way to guide gradual lifestyle changes. Most wellness professionals understand the power of meal planning, but they don’t always meal plan themselves. It’s time to change that.
As someone who makes their living by helping others change their lifestyle habits, it’s important to maintain good habits yourself. We all get a little too busy once in a while (or far too frequently), and end up neglecting our own health. Meal planning can help you to stay on track with a healthy diet—and set a good example for your clients to boot.
Here are some tips for meal planning success that you can use for your own life (and share with your clients, too).
Open yourself up to trying something new.
By trying new recipes, you can find new and exciting foods to add to your meal planning repertoire. There are many places to try new recipes, from the old-fashioned print cookbooks, to Pinterest, to meal planning software that does the hard work for you. If you’re short on time, going the electronic route makes sense. Choose the platform that works best for you, and choose 1-2 new recipes to try each week for a couple of months. Write down the ones you and your family really enjoyed, and start a list of those recipes that you’d like to add to your meal planning on a regular basis.
Start small
If it feels overwhelming to plan every single meal for several weeks, start with a plan for just one week. If it feels overwhelming to plan every single meal for a full week, start with just dinners. Planning each dinner for one week will help you to stay on track for healthy eating for at least part of your day, and will help you get into the meal planning habit. Once you see the benefits of meal planning for your dinners, you’ll be more likely to stick with it for the rest of your meals.
Get all your nutrients
Meal planning is a great way to ensure that you’re getting all the macro and micro nutrients you need in your diet. Make sure to include fat, carbohydrate, and protein in each meal and snack, and to have enough variety to get all your vitamins and minerals, too. But how do you know if you’re getting all the nutrients you need? You can certainly do calculations for each recipe you add, but these days, no one has that kind of time. That’s where meal planning software comes in.
Let meal planning software do the work for you
Whether you’re meal planning for yourself or your clients, saving time is of the utmost priority for most wellness professionals. A meal planning software program can take the guesswork out of your diet plans and help to ensure that you and your clients are getting all the nutrients you need—while being mindful of any food preferences, allergies, or sensitivities.
If you’re a wellness professional who believes in meal planning but who has fallen off the wagon, use these tips to get back on track and walk the talk of healthy eating. And don’t forget to share these tips with your clients, too.