Consider the Financial implications. How much food do you throw away each year? How often do you eat out because you don't have food in your house, or the necessary ingredients to prepare a meal? Do you have duplicate spices and condiments piling up that will ultimately become waste?
From a healthy eating perspective, you are much more likely to stick with your nutrition goals if you have a plan in place. I like to cook things ahead of time, but even if you do not have the time to prepare your meals ahead of time, just knowing exactly what you are going to prepare every day is going to make it that much more likely for you to eat the planned meal vs. ordering a pizza.
Planning ALL of your meals out for the week ahead might sound time consuming, but it is time well spent. Any regular time you have off on a weekly basis, try to fit this into that time frame so it becomes a habit. Turning a task into a habit will make it feel that much easier to accomplish. Turn off your television for 20 minutes, get a pen and paper and make a calendar for the week with each day listing Breakfast, Snack, Lunch, Snack, and Dinner, or whatever meal times you might have.
The next thing you should do is think about your week ahead. Do you have any meals already planned? Perhaps a lunch meeting or dinner date? Will the kids need sack lunches for a field trip one day this week? Take those meals into account first...and note them on the calendar. Crossing out any meals you do not need to purchase at the grocery store will only result in less time spent planning and less money spent at the grocery store.
Next you should consider your budget. Most people have a monthly/weekly grocery budget they try to adhere to. It is good to keep this budget in mind while you plan out your menu for the week. You can break down the costs by budgeting how much per week should be spent on each meal group. I have prepared an example for you, but of course your specific plan might look different depending upon your eating habits.
We will use the following "cost per meal" breakdown. Breakfast accounts for 20% of your budget, Mid Morning Snack 5%, Lunch 25% , Afternoon snack %5 and Dinner 45%. The example below will show you what that would equate to using a weekly grocery budget of $150. Also, in this example we are taking into consideration the number of meals you will not need to purchase at the grocery store. Using this information, You can come up with an estimated amount to spend on each meal group for the week. This is not going to be spot on, obviously, but it will help keep you somewhat constrained while planning your meals.
So now that you know what meals you need to plan, how much to spend on said meals and what nutritional boundaries those meals need to stay in, you can plan a menu.
Breakfast is usually pretty easy for most people, very little variation. Same with snacks. A bag of apples and box of granola bars can easily fit into your budget. Go ahead and fill those in on your calendar and you will see that much of the planning is already done with very little thinking involved.
Now onto lunch since they are usually pretty simple too. There are usually not a lot of ingredients or variation from day to day. It might be as simple as a can of soup of bread and lunch meat. No matter what your preference, write down what you want to eat for lunch each day.
Dinners are usually a bit more creative. I like to leave a little extra in my budget to plan dinners to take into account those extra things that will make it a memorable meal, like spices and fresh vegetables and maybe even a bottle of wine.
If you are not bursting at the seams with new and exciting dinner ideas, then you should go ahead and get the web involved at this point. I find this helpful because most recipes sites will let you narrow down recipes based on ingredients so if you have leftover meat or vegetables from the previous week for example, you can start off by searching for a recipe to use those up right away. Or you can search for dinner recipes using chicken or steak. Planning multiple meals each week using the same type of meat will allow you the opportunity to buy that ingredient in bulk, which usually results in cost savings.
Once you have your menu planned out you can start your grocery list.
Write down each item in your recipes, including the measurements. This will keep you from buying too much or not enough of something. This is why the actual grocery list is important, even though you think the menu is enough planning. For example, you list out every ingredient for your meals and see you will need 7 onions. If you were not shopping mindfully with a list, you might have bought the bag with 6 onions, and have been short an onion come the end of the week so you end up eating an extra meal out. Or maybe you only needed two potatoes for Wednesday nights dinner but you bought a pound instead, just knowing that you needed some potatoes for one of the recipes. A few weeks later those potatoes could end up rotting away in the cupboard.
Now that you have a list with the exact amount of each ingredient you need, check your refrigerator and cupboard for any of the ingredients you already have and mark those off the list or update the amount needed. For example if you need a dozen eggs for the week but you have 6 already, update your list to buy a half a dozen eggs instead. This will result in less waste, fresher ingredients and more room in your kitchen.
The Grocery shopping can begin now. My personal favorite grocery store is Aldis. The prices are unbelievable, it is usually not very crowded, the lines are very fast and I can usually get 95% (if not 100%) of the items I need there, with exception of a few special herbs/spices or cuts of meat from time to time. On my way home I will stop in at a pricier chain to get anything left on the list. This might sound time consuming but I get through Aldis so quickly that I really don't think I spend any more time in the long run. I save at least 25% off of my grocery bill every week, which adds up to pretty nice sum at the end of the year.
So try to plan your next grocery trip out and you will see that the whole experience is far less taxing than just mindlessly filling up your cart. Turn this into a habit and you will notice the extra dollars in your pocket begin multiply, week after week. You can feel better about the food that you are eating, as well as the food you are not wasting. You will have become a mindful grocery shopper.
Meredith - Designate A Space
