let’s talk about meal planning! i often like to cook on sunday or monday night and eat whatever i make throughout the week, but this has been my first attempt at actual meal planning – planning, cooking and/or portioning breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for the entire week. and it’s worked pretty well so far! i decided to do this for a few reasons:
- i have a wedding coming up in 4.5 short months, and i want to put my best foot forward for it. so bring on the workouts and healthy food!
- portion control is, in my opinion, probably one of the two very biggest ways of losing weight or maintaining.
- i love to snack. and snacking between meals is good for you! but the calories can add up fast, depending on what you’re eating and how often. so i wanted to try to keep my snacking under control.
- my weeks are busy, and when i’ve had a long day at work, i tend to get lazy about cooking and resort to easy/tasty/high-carb items like ramen, rice, and pasta. i rarely eat balanced meals when i don’t plan ahead, even though i enjoy healthy foods.
that being said, i am one of those people that NEEDS variety in my life, particularly when it comes to food. my sweet, darling fiancé is happy as a clam eating plain unseasoned over-easy eggs with a drizzle of cholula hot sauce + a plain unseasoned avocado every weekday morning for breakfast and a ready-made southwest salad from safeway every weekday for lunch, bless him. and if you’re that type, more power to ya… i’m actually jealous, because it makes life so much simpler.
but if you’re not that type, read on, because i managed to come up with 3 weeks worth of healthy, delicious meals that were actually exciting for me. they are not boring, and you definitely won’t feel like you’re starving to death either… in fact, quite the opposite.
a few disclaimers before i present the menus:
- i am not a health nut. i started as a nutrition major in college because i’ve always been fascinated with nutrition, but then quickly realized that food science was more up my alley in terms of what i wanted to do for work. i do enjoy learning how the body and food interact, and i actually love to talk about nutrition and some of my opinions/beliefs on weight management, etc. maybe i’ll actually discuss some of this in a later post, buttttttt you should know now that i’m not a person who will be sharing recipes that are organic, all natural, hormone-and-antibiotic free, grass-fed, free range, gluten-free, vegan, or similar. [i do frequently eat vegetarian meals, but i’ve been trying to eat more protein, so most of the main meals have more protein than i might normally eat.] anyway, these meals are not health-nutty meals, but they are healthy meals.
- meal planning takes time. i want to be transparent here: it took me about 3 hours to make my meals the weekend before and that didn’t include the grocery shopping. and i made the majority of the dinners for the week after my first day of work each week, so that added another half hour or so. you can split up the time throughout the weekend or whatever, but i just chose to knock most of it out at one time. luckily, it didn’t feel long nor difficult, and it was definitely worth the time spent.
- it can be expensive to eat healthy. some items are more pricey than others, so it’s good to be conscious of that. i took some liberties in these 3 weeks and kind of bought what i wanted to make the meals i wanted, but as i plan my meals in the future, i will probably focus a little more on cost as well. there are definitely ways to make these meals cost-effective.
- finally, my limited yet much loved food styling background should lend itself to gorgeous, magazine-worthy photos of each of the menu items, but i’m sorry to say that i’ve taken a much more “sweet brown” approach to the food styling: “ain’t nobody got time for that!” i wish i could say otherwise. there’s probably a good reason i didn’t become a food stylist. maybe someday i’ll manage to tap into that deep, dark artsy corner of my brain that has always been inspired to take beautiful food photos, but NOT TODAY. good or bad, you’re seeing these items in their true form!
i planned/made each of the following for each of the 3 weeks:
: : breakfast
: : mid-morning snack
: : lunch
: : mid-afternoon snack
: : dinner
not included in the menu but worth mentioning: i ate 1 snack-sized piece of chocolate each day for dessert at lunch and some fruit, a piece of chocolate, or a frozen chocolate banana for dessert after dinner. and then coffee, water, skim milk. but that was pretty much it!
here are the menus for each of the weeks with links to the recipes and some quick photos:
WEEK 1:
: : breakfast: peanut butter and banana toast. whole wheat toast, peanut butter, 1/2 banana. almond butter or sunbutter would be a nice alternative to PB.
: : mid-morning snack: blueberry muffin overnight oats. this was my first time trying overnight oats and i became a huge fan. they seriously taste way too good to be as healthy as they are. i actually used plain greek yogurt instead of vanilla and added a little extra vanilla extract and a sprinkling of sugar. i garnished with whole blueberries and a little granola.
: : lunch: deconstructed sushi in a jar. i pretty much followed the recipe, except i omitted the ginger because i find ginger to be overpowering sometimes, and i added raw salmon to make it more of a poke jar. i will be honest here – the raw salmon was probably a bad idea given that it’s raw and i was making a week’s worth of meals… even though this was only a 4-day week for me, it still made me nervous. i love raw salmon, but i should know better. i definitely kept it very cold and didn’t get sick or anything, but my comfort level wasn’t too high. i also don’t love the taste of cold rice [and it also makes me slightly fearful… all i can think of is bacillus cereus. food science probz]. anyway, this wasn’t my favorite of the three lunches i made. but overall, once i got past my anxieties, it tasted pretty good.
: : mid-afternoon snack: tex-mex snack box. i loved this one. i used red and yellow bell peppers, mango, and leftover cucumber from my lunch jars to create a sort of “rainbow effect,” then added some slices of pepper jack cheese, a little container of pineapple-peach salsa, and a few baked tortilla chips [put in a plastic bag and packed separately to prevent moisture migration]. this definitely filled me up and was super yummy.
: : dinner: one-pan italian sausage and veggies. i was such a fan of this! it was soooo delicious. i pretty much followed the recipe exactly.
WEEK 2:
: : breakfast: avocado toast. whole wheat toast, 1/2 avocado, a sprinkling of kosher salt and crushed red pepper.
: : mid-morning snack: peanut butter banana overnight oats. another delicious overnight oats recipe. i’m such a fan. i garnished with bananas and a little granola.
: : lunch: pesto chicken antipasto jar. i pretty much made my jar exactly how they said to in the link, except i didn’t add the olive oil at the bottom. i’m really glad i didn’t because it wasn’t needed! it helped that i used mini mozzarella balls that were marinated in a seasoned oil, so that sort of dripped down to the bottom and made for great flavor, plus the juice from the tomatoes and roasted red peppers and the pesto from the chicken made it really tasty. [i sautéed some ready-to-eat sliced chicken breast in pesto. yum!]
: : mid-afternoon snack: nordic snack box. definitely bring the wasa crisps in a separate bag to prevent moisture migration. i added pickled beets to this snack box for color and because i love them. and i also added a wedge of the laughing cow creamy white cheddar. i only bought one small container of the smoked salmon [that stuff can be expensive!], so i had to skimp a little on that, but i had leftover pepperoni from the lunch jars, so i added a couple slices of that in each box as well. this was tasty and i felt very full and satisfied after eating this snack box!
: : dinner: thai meatball lettuce wraps. i made the meatballs when i prepped the rest of the meals for this week, and then all i had to do on the weeknights was assemble my lettuce wraps. i didn’t make the thai peanut sauce in the recipe and just used sriracha, but i think it would have been great with the sauce, so next time i might try that. i also added shredded carrots and radishes to my lettuce wraps, just for some color and additional veggies.
WEEK 3:
: : breakfast: breakfast egg muffins. jamie cooks himself eggs every morning, but i get lazy on weekdays about doing any more than throwing something in the toaster or microwave for breakfast, so these egg muffins were perfect for me! i made them at the same time that i did all the rest of my meal planning for the week, and then all i had to do was throw them in the microwave for 30 seconds. i added a drizzle of cholula just because i love a mild, vinegar-y heat, but it wasn’t necessary, as they were pretty flavorful [but i did also add salt and pepper just before filling the muffin cups and baking].
: : mid-morning snack: strawberry cheesecake overnight oats. for the third overnight oats WIN! loved this recipe. i did replace a tiny bit of that greek yogurt with some 1/3 less fat cream cheese which made it a tad less healthy, but i thought, you have to have cream cheese to give it a cheesecake flavor! but i actually don’t know if i would do that next time, because i felt like it surprisingly wasn’t needed. so yes, i am now overnight oats obsessed. i garnished with some graham cracker crumbs and a spoonful of strawberry jam, which tasted amazing when you mixed it in.
: : lunch: thai noodle salad in a jar. i meant to put chicken in this, but i forgot, so i’d probably do that next time for some protein. but this was super fresh and tasty – i loved the cilantro and mint in it. next time i will also use the type of noodles they use in the recipe, but i couldn’t find those at the store i was at so i ended up getting a thicker type of thai rice noodles meant for stir-fry. i think i would like the thin kind better. overall, loved this recipe! and even though it had noodles, i totally felt healthy eating it because it was also very veggie-heavy. besides, i’m a noodle-aholic so it was only a matter of time before i had to incorporate some anyway. ;)
: : mid-afternoon snack: west coast snack box. i really enjoyed this one more than i thought i would. i made some homemade kale chips using this recipe, and they were delish. and i also made crunchy roasted chickpeas for the first time and they were SO good! i used chipotle seasoning on them and i would totally use that again. i did find that they absorbed moisture from the air and got soft, but they still tasted good to me.
: : dinner: baked shrimp with tomatillos. this was very yummy and easy to make! the first day, i served it on a tortilla, but it was actually great even without the tortilla, so the other days i ate it without it. it would also be good with a side of rice and beans. very flavorful and a little bit different, which i liked.
and there are 3 weeks of healthy meals! overall, i’d call it a SUCCESS! i hope this inspires you to do some meal planning and/or try some new recipes. xoxo