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Welcome back to the Two-Minute Wellness podcast. Today, we're chatting about meal planning and how it can fit into a mindful approach to healthy eating. It’s easy to get really hung up on a meal plan and feel discouraged or spiral if you go off track. So I like to encourage a more flexible approach to meal planning that’s helpful, reduces stress, and doesn’t involve any feelings of guilt or failure.
The way I like to meal plan is to create a week’s worth of meals and snacks that includes leftovers, dinners out, parties, date nights, and happy hours. You want your meal plan to feel very doable and realistic. If you start the week feeling like you have to stick to a strict plan, you’re setting yourself up to feel disappointed when you go off plan. And chances are, you will go off plan if you’re trying to eat exactly what’s on your meal plan as it’s written.
Instead, use your meal plan as a guide. Just by writing out your meal plan for the week, you’re already thinking of healthy recipes and planning ahead for when you might need extra snacks for a late-night dinner, for example. You’re also streamlining your grocery shopping. So these are already huge wins! Whether you have quinoa salad on a Tuesday or a Thursday really doesn’t matter. What matters is that you now have a baseline of healthy meals planned for the week, which gives you more freedom and flexibility to enjoy surprise events or spontaneous happy hours that may pop up. You’ve also reduced your weeknight decision fatigue by already having healthy meals and recipes on deck.
So to sum everything up – I highly encourage meal planning. But use your meal plan more as a planning tool and a guide, rather than a strict plan you must stick to. It should feel inspiring and flexible, not rigid and boring.
If you’re looking for a simple meal planner to make this all a little easier, you can head to lianicole.com/shop and I sell meal planning notepads to make meal planning a little more pretty and fun ☺︎
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This episode is brought to you by the Eat Freely Journal - the all-in-one mindful eating journal with the guidance, tips, recipes, weekly meal planner, and daily food journal you've been looking for to help you reach your goals and heal your relationship with food.
You can also check out other meal planners and food journals in my shop!
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