Meal planning is crucial to make sure you are prepared AND have the necessary ingredients to make meals that are right for you.

One of the main challenges you'll have to deal with when changing your diet is that you're fighting your routines.

And if you rely on being able to whip up a meal that suits your new anti-inflammatory diet on the spot, you might find you just don't have the ingredients you need. So you'll fall back on tried and trusted, but inflammatory, meals.

I use 3 meal planning strategies:

STRATEGY 1: CONSIDER YOUR WEEK AHEAD

Choose which meals you're going to make and when you'll make them based on what your week ahead will look like.

If your week is looking crazy busy, go for meals you can make ahead, or that are on the table in 10 minutes.

If you're in and out, and won't have time to take a breath, let alone sit down for a meal, include meals you can eat 'on the run'.

And if you have a week with time to cook, consider cooking extra portions to freeze, so you'll have meals for when times are crazy. I only cook dinner 3 times a week: Saturday, Sunday (well, technically my daughter cooks on Sundays), and Mondays. On these days we cook double portions, that we then eat on Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Fridays are our 'we can't be bothered' dinner days.

STRATEGY 2: MAKE A LIST OF YOUR FAVOURITE MEALS.

 

Meal planning becomes really easy if you have a quick way of selecting meals. If you have some tried-and-tested favs, that you know you can make easily and you (and others) will enjoy, write them on a list.

You could even create a set of cards with meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. If you add the ingredients to the card, you'll have a handy tool to make your shopping list as well.

Of course, an electronic version would work as well.

Having a list will make the selection process very quick. So take 5 minutes to make a list of meals to choose from.

STRATEGY 3: SHOP FOR YOUR ENTIRE MEAL PLAN

This may be obvious, after the previous 2 strategies, but when I started meal planning, I thought having a plan was enough. I still thought buying the ingredients every other day or so was going to work. But life gets in the way! And I found that if I have the ingredients for a planned meal, I'm more likely to make it. If I need to go get the ingredients I'm finding it much harder to stick to my meal plan.

And when you're planning your meals, and more specifically, when your 'week' starts, think about when the best day for grocery shopping would be.

When I started with meal planning for myself, I didn't work on Fridays. With my daughter still in school, and Saturdays typically crazy busy in the shops, it gave me a more relaxed and fast shop.

Now I do my shopping on Saturday morning, and the meal planning is done on Friday evening.

 

Don't underestimate how hard it is to change your diet! I usually 'joke' to my clients that the hard part of changing your diet is ... changing your diet. Knowing what to eat and what not to eat is not enough. You need to take the 'thinking' out of the daily equation and a weekly meal plan is the perfect strategy to do that.

 

If you would like to experience the power of meal planning, without doing the planning yourself, try my 2-Week Meal Plan. It tells you what to eat and provides all the recipes as well. You can purchase it here: 2-Week Meal Plan