Meal Planning in your Journal as Self Care (+17 awesome examples)

What an absolute treat! We have a guest blogger talking to us about Meal Planning in your Journal as Self Care

Laurie is a certified personal trainer and health coach who works with women to ditch the diet and tap into their own intuitive eating practice .

She believes that food restriction and the focus on weight loss are secretly working against us and that reclaiming a healthy relationship with our bodies is the key to long term health. She’s worked as an online health coach and personal trainer for 5 years and loves being able to virtually coach women around the globe.

You can find Laurie on her incredible website here, and go give her some love on Instagram and Facebook.

If you would like to read more on self care, we have a great post with 25 awesome self care bullet journal spreads.

Why is meal planning a form of self care?

Self care is about taking good care of yourself and treating yourself as kindly as you treat others. Self-care is about making our own well-being a priority.

So why do so many of us put our needs at the bottom of the list, allowing ourselves to be in a constant state of stress in order to get through an endless list of tasks?

How can practicing some self-care help us protect our time, our energy and our health?

When we talk about self-care often we think of manicures, hot stone massages, and other luxuries. We don’t often think about planning, organizing, or scheduling as examples of self-care because they sound kinda like …well… work.

But here’s why we should consider these as self-care activities – they actually play a big role in protecting your health. Think about how you feel when you’re rushing around, running late, or looking for things that are never where you can find them.

Stressed, right?

And that’s a problem because if you spend enough time stressed out, your body will have a chronically elevated level of the stress hormone, cortisol, which can really be problematic for your health, in both the long and short term.

Self-care is important because by doing things that protect our time and energy, we minimize the low grade chronic stress that we bring upon ourselves by not being proactive.

Listen, if you’re about to say you’re too busy to sit down and take time to plan out meals for the week because it feels like one more chore to add to your already long list of things to do – trust me when I say taking time to plan for meals each week, and writing out a grocery list, ultimately benefits you in a lot of ways!

It will save you money because dining out is so much more expensive than preparing meals at home. It also means less food waste because you’ve only bought the items you need to prepare your meals.

It means you’ll eat healthier. Even when you make healthy menu choices, portions are generally twice what you’d normally eat, and restaurant food usually contains higher sodium levels than what we make at home. And it’s usually prepared using lower quality oils like soybean. With meals planned and prepped ahead of time, you’re less tempted to get greasy takeout or hit up the drive-thru.

Choosing ingredients from the grocery store gives you more control over the quality of your food. When you select and prepare your own food knowing exactly what is included in the dishes you make, you’re able to better control the quality of your meals.

And most of all, it means less STRESS. Planning meals reduces your stress level because you have a solid plan for your week and you won’t have to rack your brain at the last minute to figure out what’s for dinner, trying to pull something together with whatever you happen to have on hand.

How to create a simple meal plan:

Print out the Weekly Meal Planner printable guide here.
Take a look at your schedule for the upcoming week and note what days of the week will you be home to cook and which nights will be a little more rushed. For those nights, schedule a crockpot meal or pre-cooked dinner the night before.
Schedule one day near the end of the week as Leftover Day, making sure not to let food and money go to waste
Decide what you’ll eat on each day. Need menu ideas? Sites like emeals.com, TheFresh20.com and TheSixOclockScramble.com include healthy recipes that are quick and easy to prepare along with the grocery shopping list for you. Pricing starts at around $5 per month.

Create your Grocery List:

Compile the list of ingredients from all your recipes
Figure out what you have on hand and what you’ll need to pick up at the store

Prep Your Meals:

Spend a few hours on the weekend doing some batch prep for your meals
- Cut all vegetables together
- Cook all grains and beans ahead of time
- Makes sauces, dressings and marinades
Pack your prepped food in clear containers and make them accessible in the fridge.

Tips:

Think like a baker and cook up an extra batch. Plan to make double what you would normally make for dinner so you have leftovers for lunches and/or another dinner.
Be sure to have food defrosted if you’re using any frozen items like meat, chicken, fish, etc.

Final word on meal planning as stress relief

If you haven’t meal planned because it seems to time consuming, know that by creating a system, it will be so much faster and easier each time you do it. Once you start implementing a weekly meal plan, you’ll notice you feel less stressed over the dinner-time rush.

You’ll feel so much less stressed when you know you’re ready for the week and you have what you need to make healthy meals for your family. Taking an hour to sit and plan your meals for the week will save you much more than that in time and energy in the long run.