Getting started with meal planningUpdated a year ago
Why meal planning is essential
Ever get to 6pm and wonder…. what are we eating for dinner?! Hmmm....unfortunately fast-food brands advertise heavily around 7pm to capture hungry people who haven’t planned ahead their meals. Without a meal plan for healthy eating, you might find yourself down at your local fast-food outlet having a nutritionally poor and high calorie meal for your dinner. Not good when we are trying to lose weight.
If you are interested in losing weight, it is necessary to plan your meals ahead, and for that plan to be sustainable over the weeks and months required for consistent weight loss.
Getting plenty of protein to manage hunger
When it comes to weight loss, it’s a fact that sometimes you'll have some feelings of hunger. In order to manage these feelings, you'll need a meal plan that keeps your energy levels up and helps you minimise any discomfort.
Your main meals of the day should contain high quality protein and plenty of it. Those main meals need to keep you satiated enough to keep you going until the next main meal, and help you keep off the high-calorie, low-nutrient snacks.
Help with meal planning for weight loss
You need a plan that assesses your current situation and includes concrete steps to incrementally reach your goals.
The key factor for weight change is considering the number of calories in our daily meals and working out how these can be changed to reduce the number of calories. Some of our bad meal habits might need to be completely eliminated (i.e. high calorie soft drinks) but many meals can be easily adjusted to healthier options.
Healthier meals do not necessarily need to be time consuming to prepare. Also see our articles on ‘good snacking’ and ‘eating out at restaurants’ for more information.
Here’s to healthy eating.