Meal planning - my downfall

amaranthus

I might be doing great with my repayments since my LBM, but the one thing that I've never been able to do properly is meal plan!

I live (mostly) alone - I'm in a big house with my brother, and we have separate living areas / bedrooms / bathrooms and pass like ships in the night, but share a kitchen, rent, and bills. We shop and cook for ourselves, but share a meal maybe 2 or 3 times a month - he prefers it that way as he works odd shift hours.

My eating habits are pretty dreadful and contribute to my high monthly grocery spend (and the fact I've put on about 10lbs in the past year!). A typical work day looks something like this:

Breakfast: Usually absent. Possibly a yoghurt if I remember to grab one from the fridge on my way out. I know, I know. Most important meal of the day.
10:30am: Two biscuits (work lays on free drinks and biscuits each morning) and a machine cup of hot chocolate.
Lunch: A bottle of diet coke, a pre-packaged sandwich, and a flapjack / brownie / muffin from the staff restaurant.
5.30pm, at home: If there's cake, biscuits, crisps, chocolate, or similarly snacky food in the house, I have a snack.
8pm: Dinner. Often pre-packaged, some kind of microwave meal; a lasagna, risotto, cottage pie, etc. Followed, more likely than not, by aforementioned snacky food. Usually accompanied by a can of Diet Coke.

Throughout the day: It's very rare I buy anything, although being in a very big office means there's a birthday or someone returning from holiday about once a week. Cue cake / sweets.

Weekends: I am the Snack Monster. (see weight gain, above)

I have a slow cooker. It rarely gets used. I toss a bunch of ready meals in my trolley when I visit the supermarket, and buy fruit that I forget to eat in an attempt to feel a little less guilty.

Help! I throw myself on your mercy (or criticism), forumites!

FairyPrincessk

I think it helps to choose one thing to change at a time and to remember that everyone else's method won't do you any good if it doesn't work for you. I'd suggest tackling the evening meal issue first. Commit to cooking at least twice a week and eating leftovers at least once per week. That is half the week's evening meals sorted. If you have access to a microwave at work, then leftover evening meals can become lunches as well. After two to three weeks of successfully making that change, I'd add another. Maybe you want to come up with a full week's worth of meals to cook and do that for three weeks, or maybe you want to commit to making enough extra on your cooking nights to cover all of your lunches for the week.

A couple of things to bear in mind: keep it simple--both in time and ingredients terms. Keep an easy option on hand in case you get home late/are tired. Eggs, beans, jacket spuds etc. are good for this.

Ilona

Thank you. Someone will come along shortly, I have to go now.
Ilona

phizzimum

I think fairy princess' plan is an excellent one. Don't overwhelm yourself by trying to change too much at once.

May I suggest having a piece of fruit for your after work snack? Take it with you and eat on the way home before you see the biscuits! It will keep you going but I'll imagine you'll want to eat your dinner earlier than 8pm...so you'll not be too tired to cook.

It's great that you like meals like cottage pie and lasagne. If you make those you can freeze portions for another day - cheap healthy ready meals

Have you ever tried overnight oats for breakfast? Easy to knock up in advance, add whatever stuff you like, and grab and go the next day. Will make resisting the biscuits at work a bit easier

Islandmaid

Amaranthus - Totally agree with comments above, baby steps.

One thing I would like to ask do you like/have confidence cooking?

No point in us saying 'buy this - bulk cook that' etc if you don't know or don't like cooking.

I would start with breakfast, I cannot eat early in the morning, never have, but I start work at 7am, so I use those plastic soup mugs and put a third of a pot of Greek style yoghurt in there and take a couple of spoons of granola in a freezer bag to add, so when I am hungry, about 8:30-9 I have that. I might help get rid of the biccie attacks in the morning.

Also, for me 8pm would be very late to eat, so maybe have something to grab eat about 5:30 fruit, salad etc and something light at 8pm salmon and stir fry veg for example which takes minutes to cook - I assume it's that late due to commute or similar.

amaranthus

I'm not a great cook (or have the patience to be!) but I know how to use the slow cooker and can make easy stuff like stews, pasta dishes, etc. Just googled overnight oats - not something I'd come across before, but looks interesting!

suki1964

I also dont do breakfast early. I'm up between 5 and 7 am and eat anytime between 10 and 1pm Depends on how late I eat as to what I eat. Early enough and its muesli/granola and Greek yoghurt , later in the day then it's something like sardines on toast.

Can you take a pack of muesli into work and have that with a yoghurt instead of the biscuits at mid morning?

When I worked in an office it was pretty common for staff to eat breakfast in work either getting there earlier enough or taking it mid morning break

Evening meals. As already said, 8pm is pretty late to be eating an evening meal. We aim for 6.30 as by that time, tummy rumbles have started and letting ourselves get too hungry means either snacking, or pigging out


How much of a cook are you? Do you enjoy cooking when you get started or do you just hate all the palaver ?

lostinfrance72

Are you ready for the discipline of meal planning? It does take discipline, especially if you are used to the freedom of winging it and haven't had a nutritional LBM ;-)

People do it in different ways but the basics are:
Sit down (the night before you do a supermarket shop) and decide what you are going to eat for a specific meal on a specific day / time and write it all down.
Identify what ingredients you already have and which you need to buy: create a shopping list accordingly.
Go to the shops and buy all the ingredients on your list.
Stick to the cooking / plan all week. Then repeat ;-)

I do think that meal planning is quite distinct from eating more healthily or aiming to lose weight. You can plan to eat crap - but you're still planning! If you do want to lose weight, have a think and read) about how you would like to eat - less processed, more fruit and veg is always a good place to start. Then if you are also aiming to save money / reduce your food bills... Well that's another element that needs to be built in to your planning. Meal planning doesn't automatically = reduced costs + healthier way of eating: it has to be consciously built into your planning - along with all your other constraints / aims.

FWIW we are meal planning to reduce overall expenditure on food, to avoid processed food, to increase the amount of veg we eat, to accommodate my slightly fussy children's tastes while indulging DH's gourmet tastes, to allow for us having great markets nearby but a tiny freezer and to make sure we get food on the table by 7pm latest so we can eat together despite activities etc. My meal planning includes at least 2 or more veggie days per week, lots of cooking from scratch (often in bulk so some can be frozen), meals that can be adjusted to suit individual tastes, and which allow me to do a once a month big shop in Lidl with top ups at the market throughout. DH and I don't eat breakfast, just coffee, and don't miss it, the children have porridge / fruit / toast / pancakes at the weekend. Lunch is usually soup for me, roast veg and quinoa-type salads for DH. Dinner is the only meal I actually plan which keeps it very simple.

All this is just an example. I think the first step is to decide what your priorities are, write them down, then come up with some meals that fit those. Then start planning.

moneyistooshorttomention

What would be useful - for all of us I feel - would be a website where one could put in the type of diet one eats/how much money is available for it/ amount of effort one is prepared to put into it and then a section for putting personal likes/dislikes/etc.

Followed by the website duly coming up with, say, two months worth of sample mealplans and a shopping list for it.

I'd go for that personally - as I know what way I eat (healthy, vegetarian, experimental) and amount of money I am prepared to spend on it. So - I've got the cookbooks for that way of eating - and have to search through them cutting out the recipes the author might like, but I don't. Followed by working out shopping list.

Does anyone know if anyone has yet filled that particular "gap in the market" and there is such a website that will do the thinking for us all?

determined_new_ms

Box of cereal or packet of oats at work for breakfast saves me all the time I'm never hungry before 10. Taking fruit to work also helps me. I have problems if I get too hungry so fruit always saves me mid morning /afternoon. Google home made pot noodles so easy, taste and much better for you. You can make a weeks worth in 20 minx then just grab in the morning and add boiling water

Islandmaid

My food shopping week is from Wednesday to Wednesday, so I write a list of what I have 'in' on Tuesday and write a meal plan and shopping list from that. There are just the 2 of us to cook for now, and I try to make a veggie night too and a use up night - maybe make a curry which you could have oncenwith rice and once with a jacket Potato- at least that would be 2 nights covered

On a Sunday, I make soup for me to take to work, you could do that in your slow cooker, mine varies depending on what I have in - this week was bacon and lentil, as I have 4 rashers left in the fridge - really warming and filling this time of year for lunch, with a nice crusty roll