In this post, learn how I simply approach the meal planning and grocery shopping for myself and my family.
One of the biggest misconceptions abut intuitive eating is that you can’t do any type of meal planning. This is definitely not true! A huge part of intuitive eating is fueling and nourishing your body so that you feel good. When you are a true intuitive eater, you will find that you crave healthy, nutrient dense food. Its so important that you have these foods available to you. If you don’t put some planning in, you won’t have the foods you crave on hand when you want them. Meal planning and grocery shopping play such a critical role here. Here are a few steps that I take each week to set us up for success.
Meal Planning
First, I take a piece of paper (this DOES NOT have to be fancy!) use whatever you have, and write out your meals for the week on one side. Flip the paper over and write your grocery list on the other side. I organize the front of my list by meal (dinners and lunches).
When it comes to breakfast, we typically cycle through the same few breakfasts throughout the week. Our favorites include, Dutch baby (recipe here), scrambled eggs and toast, oatmeal and sourdough pancakes. I have a whole video on healthy breakfast ideas here for your inspiration! For dinners, I like to plan out 6 or 7 dinners in advance so that we have everything on hand that we need to make each meal. I don’t necessarily cook every single night. Some weeks, we either do a date night, order take-out or have leftovers for a night. It’s not a perfect system but I try to cook dinner as much as possible with our schedule.
To simplify the process of planning, I try to follow a similar pattern every week with dinners I know my family will love. Every week, we typically do some kind of pasta dish, something Mexican (tacos, taco skillet etc.) and burgers (homemade or from the farmers market). This makes it less overwhelming to meal plan every week and more fun to mix in new recipes. For new ideas, I check Pinterest, blogs I love and cookbooks. I highly recommend getting a few cookbooks filled with recipes that you think you will actually make. I have been loving this one and this one.
Here is the list of dinners I came up with for this week:
- Pasta with ground sausage from a local farm and broccoli
- Baked Cheesy tacos (recipe from this cookbook) with homemade tortillas
- Burger bowls with sweet potato (recipe here)
- Sourdough Pizza (this is a Friday staple around here)
- Turkey Chili with homemade sourdough bread
- Homemade Ravioli- this has been on my list to try for so long! I am excited to make this for Sunday dinner and include the kids.
For Lunches this week my plan is:
- A big batch of chicken salad to have throughout the week
- For the kids- chicken salad, deli turkey, fruit, cucumbers and ranch, crackers (we love the Simple Mills crackers) and PB&J.
Grocery List
Once I have all my meals planned out for the week, I flip my list over and make my grocery list based on the meals I have planned. We typically keep snacks on hand from Costco or Thrive market and breakfasts are typically the same with ingredients we already have so I’m usually just grocery shopping for lunches and dinners for the week. I always organize my list by section in the grocery store (produce, dairy, center aisles etc.) This makes grocery shopping so much easier. The only thing we don’t typically buy from the grocery store is meat because this is something we try to source from local farms and usually have stocked in our deep freezer.
Write out the Weekly Menu
The last step of my meal planning process is to write out the week’s menu for lunch and dinner somewhere I can see it everyday. For me, this is key to staying on track and making sure I have everything defrosted or prepped and ready for each day’s meals. I use a large chalkboard in our butler’s pantry to do this because I walk by it many times throughout the day.
That is my process for meal planning and grocery shopping! When it comes to healthy eating and nourishing your body with real, whole foods, you really do need to put in a little prep work to make sure you are setting yourself up for success. It is so much more economical to eat healthy when you are buying the raw ingredients and preparing the food at home. Grocery shopping is a huge key to being able to eat healthy in a way that is sustainable for you!