Meal planning can be a helpful tool if you’re trying to lose weight.

Most people following a diet or an eating plan find that the biggest issue daily is cooking their meals.  Some people get very overwhelmed at the thought of having to cook meals separate from their family and more often than not, this leads to deviating on their programs.

Learning to pre-plan or prepare your meals in advance is a great way of overcoming this obstacle.  Once you get into the rhythm of doing your planning on a regular basis you will find yourself with so much free time you will wonder why you hadn’t always planned ahead.

Here are some handy tips to get you started:

  • Invest in handy containers – there are so many on the market now and these will help you plan and store your meals effectively.
  • Free up a morning or a few hours to set aside the time to prep and pack meals.  Weekends often work best. Start by weighing out all your proteins according to your specific allowances.  Mark all your containers “L” for lunch and ‘D’ for dinner.  You can then decide whether you want to freeze or refrigerate the portions in the containers cooked or raw (remember all food is weighed raw and then cooked).
  • Cooking your main lunch and dinner meals, marking them correctly and then placing them in the containers to freeze and refrigerate is often best as this saves a lot of time.  While you are cooking your family dinners it is easy to warm up your specific portion in the microwave without having to then cook your food separately. Always remember to completely cool your meals before you refrigerate or freeze them.
  • When you need to use your meals, simply defrost them, warm and serve!
  • Ensure that some of your prepared meals are ‘proteins only’.  Having these cooked protein portions will ensure that you just add them to quick delicious salad portions – quick and simple to do.  Or defrost while you grill some vegetables in the oven.
  • Also plan your snacks. Allowing yourself to get overly hungry between meals may tempt you to overeat at your next meal.  Save your TLC allowed snacks for in between, especially at the beginning of Phase 2.
  • Plan to use a variety of foods. This is important to provide your body with the nutrients it needs.  Lack of variety can also lead to boredom over time.  Instead, ensure your menu includes a variety of foods each day.
  • Be creative. Go through the 100’s of Recipe in the TLC-Recipe E-Books.  If you don’t already have them you can purchase them here:  https://tlcforwellbeing.com/product-category/recipe-e-books/

We would all rather free up time to spend with family and relax so planning ahead makes doing your TLC-Program easy and stress free.

Plus, there are no excuses when going to friends and family for dinner or a barbecue.  Just pop one of your delicious pre-packed meals into a cooler box  – no excuses and no deviations.

Freeing up time while on your TLC-Program means you can spend that time with family, it makes going out to a barbeque easy (just pack in your meal of choice and enjoy!) and best of all, you are not deviating!