Two years ago I joined Slimming World on a mission to get back into my size 10 clothes. I succeeded within only a few months. My secret to losing that weight was meal planning. Whether you’re doing Weight Watchers, Slimming World or just counting calories, planning really plays an important part.
My meal planner has a week overview which is perfect for those of us that get weighed weekly. Divided into the three main meals of the day, it also has a column for snacks and notes.
You might be thinking that planning your food for the week ahead sounds too restrictive. What if you don’t fancy an omlette for lunch on Monday? How will you know what you might fancy for dinner next Thursday?! Remember meal planning is only a guide. You are writing down your ideal weekly meals – you won’t break any laws if you change it!
I found the SW plan relatively easy to follow. Until it came to the A and B choices! If I didn’t plan I would find myself having a B choice for breakfast and then accidentally using my B choice again for lunch – so then I’d have to syn it and if I’d had a chocolate bar as my mid morning snack, next thing you know I’d gone over my syn allowance!
So by writing it down I could work out what breakfasts and lunch would work together, and that allowed me to then ‘mix it up’ so I wasn’t having the same breakfast and the same lunch everyday – which I think is really important. Food shouldn’t be boring.
Meal planning allows you to work around other engagements that involve food – weddings, birthday parties, drinks after work etc… If you know it’s coming you can be prepared and then ‘be good’ the rest of the day / the day after – without starving yourself!
Planning your meals also helps prevent food wastage – you can use your meal plan to shop the right groceries that you need. If it’s not on the list then maybe you shouldn’t be buying it! And if it is on the list, you hopefully won’t forget it!
Whilst using my meal planner I also kept a food diary. Remember, they are two different things! The planner is what I HOPED to eat, the diary is what I ACTUALLY ate!
But what I would do, is look back in my food diary where I had a good weight loss that week and re-write that week out in my meal planner, so that I could try and repeat it. It worked before so why shouldn’t it work again?
You can of course use my meal planners as a week per view food diary too. They come in all different sizes from Ladybird Book size, 11 x 17cm (£8) to A4 (£12) – all you have to do is choose which book cover to have it in!
Retro from Scratch 