By Praveen & Maahek Nair
Meal Plan is basically packing your lunch but instead of a day you cook and pack meals for the entire week. This includes Breakfast, lunch & dinner meals all done in 1-2 days of cooking and packing. This is not just useful for people who workout but also for people who do not have time to cook but don’t want to eat outside food.
In this article, we cover the basics of meal planning, 4 must-have essential food groups to include in your diet, How to Count your Calories, How to Diet for Weight Loss, How to plan your menu for the week, mistakes to avoid while meal planning, cheat meals ( foods to avoid for cheat meals), how to plan for leftovers & more.
Basics of a Meal Plan
First, we cover the basics of Meal Planning
Plan your menu for the week
- What different meals do you need throughout the day? For your breakfast, plan out what 2-3 different things you want for breakfast, lunch, dinner, Keep the weekends free for cooking
- You can only have 2 or a maximum of 3 in terms of variety in the different food, you will eat, as you cannot spend time cooking different foods, each different recipe costs time to make.
- You can increase the quantity no problem but not the variety, especially for beginners, who are cooking for the first time as you will burn some of your meals, add too much salt and all kinds of things could go wrong.
- Plan all of these according to the time you are willing to spend cooking,
- Don’t decide on small things like cookies that take a lot of time but the quantity is too small to fill your belly
- If you get really hungry cook up small but fast cooking foods like pancakes or boiled eggs
Mistakes to Avoid
- Make it a habit to add smaller quantities of sugar or salt to your food and taste it with a spoon before adding more
- Also, check if the food is cooked by tasting a spoonful to make sure you don’t overheat/burn your food.
- Keep the flame low
- A video tutorial is always better than a book, this way you know what to add first, and can visibly see if the amount of water and ingredients look similar in quantity.
Leftovers
- Do not keep your menu fixed, make it fluid & easy to adjust as having leftovers is common, accordingly, you will have to adjust and carry forward that food to the next day.
Cheat meals
- Some days you won’t feel like cooking or want something different. Cheating is fine, as long as the quantity of that food is low
- As most cheat meals and foods are calorie-dense- which means most have a large amount of calories in a small quantity. The best example of this is… cheese as only 2-3 cubes can contain up to 200 calories
- But Avoid outside and packaged food for your cheat meals, if you want pizza make a pizza.
Miscalculations are common
- You can always make changes to your plan next week.
- Say you miscalculated the grams of protein, add a little more chicken next time
- The meal plan was low on fiber, add more green vegetables and fruits
Calorie Counting
- Use a Calorie Calculator for figuring out your maintenance calories
- Just type Maintenance calories calculator on google and you are there.
- Minus 500 calories from your maintenance calories and you have your goal for daily calories for weight loss
- If you are looking to bulk up or gain muscle just add 500 to your maintenance calories
- MyfitnessPal is a great tool for keeping track of what you eat & how many calories you consume in a day.
Make sure to include these in your diet- Healthy unprocessed food rich in Carbs, Fats, Fiber, Protein
Carbs (healthy carbs that won’t affect your weight loss diet)
- Oats
- Sweet Potatoes
- Kidney Beans (cooked )
- Potatoes
- Quinoa
- Banana
- Pumpkin
- Beetroot
- Soba Noodles (instead of noodles)
- Barley Bread
- Corn (also homemade popcorn)
Protein
- Milk
- Eggs
- Fish
- Chicken
- Chickpea
- Yogurt
Fats (good fat)
- Eggs
- Avocado
- Fatty Fish
- Cheese (in small amounts)
- Nuts (like almond & cashew)
- Coconut oil (for cooking)
Fiber – can be found in grains like rice, legumes, vegetables & fruits
- Asparagus
- EggPlant/ Bhindi
- Cauliflower
- Broccoli
- Strawberry
- Coconut (the white insides)
- Kidney Beans
The Ideal ratio of the main three Carbs, Protein & Fats (for Building muscles) would be 25% for protein, 45-60% for carbohydrates, and 20-30% for fat.
Depending on your goals adjust these percentages of the three main macronutrients depending on your goal. Focus on eating enough protein so your body has the resources needed to repair your muscle fiber after workout and proper sleep for recovery as this is the time when your body can focus on the task of repairing & building stronger tissue.
If you don’t eat properly, weight loss workouts can also result in muscle loss, as without protein to rebuild your muscles your body ends up consuming your muscles resulting in muscle loss. For weight loss, you should eat protein to preserve muscles
The quantity you eat will be slightly larger compared to bulking- 1.2g instead of 0.8 grams
For those aiming for burning fat and gaining muscle at the same time, that recomposition phase only happens for beginners who are just starting gym & diet. You should focus on one goal at a time, as trying to do both will result in more time to see the results you wanted & hence higher the chances of giving up due to lack of progress.
It’s not that protein directly helps you get thinner, that’s only possible through workout & burning calories. Protein-rich food keeps you satiated for longer periods of time resulting in you not eating as many calories helping you stay within your goal limits.
The best way to know if you have had enough quantity of fiber, fat, protein & carbs in your meal plan is by writing what you eat in MyfitnessPal, as this lowers the efforts on your part, if any of these is low in your diet, the app informs you almost immediately.
Packing & Labelling
The first step for any kind of Meal Prepping-
Buy Containers
- Containers will be labeled according to the day you will eat
- So Containers will have labels like – breakfast for Monday, lunch for Thursday, etc.
- Most of these will be in the fridge but salads, dry fruits, vegetables, fruit & Bread can stay outside the fridge.
Keep ingredients separate
- This means, don’t make a sandwich & keep it in a container
- Keep the ingredients for a sandwich in small containers packed in a bigger container together
- or use a divider and keep them in the same container
Conclusion
While all this is a lot of effort & you will sacrifice a few weekends before you get fast enough to cook and prepare all this in time to enjoy your days off. But its efforts towards a healthier body and investment towards your goals. Keep up the efforts, they are sure to pay off towards a better body and a more confident you.