That is a funny take on the activity of Meal Planning. We know that planning will help us eat well and feel good throughout the week, but still, it ends up on the dreaded chore list and often gets skipped. Ease it into your weekly routine and be patient with it and it will grow on you.
Meal Planning is a chore-destroyer if there ever was one! It makes everyone efficient. As we said in the beginning, any good habit will seem like a chore first, take time to be acquired and our minds will give us more than a few reasons to convince us that we are better off without it! Once you get into the groove, you will realize that Meal Planning actually eases a lot of other chores for you and you are in a better space.
We are still trying to wrap our heads around this one! In reality, Meal Planning does not have to cost more than what you can afford. With Meal Planning, one has the ability to buy only what is required and prevents excesses even in cooking.
The leftovers can be incorporated in the next couple of meals. A bigger batch enough to cater for two times can be cooked in a one-time effort. The perishables can be bought only as required and be used prudently.
The non-perishables can be bought and stored for longer durations. Here, one can even take advantage of deals and discounts on volume purchases being offered in stores. With Meal Planning, you can plan really nice meals within your budget and even save some resources from there.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. Meal Planning enables us to be more flexible with our choices. Having a Meal Plan is an advantage and does not hold one back from enjoying otherwise.
With a Meal Plan in place, one always knows what’s cooking and is fully prepared accordingly.
However, one can be open to changing one’s plan when one’s family/friends might want to eat out or order in.
Is it not better to know what you can eat at home in case the plan one was making with one’s friends was to fall through? Meal Planning frees us up from those last-minute panic situations when one is HANGRY (Hungry & thus Angry) and then resorts to ordering in/eating out/eating junk food, none of which can be classified as healthy choices made from a free mind!
Myth 3: Meal Planning means Boring & Predictable Meals
This is not true at all! Meal Planning enables us to consciously incorporate variety in our meals. The change could come from cooking the same ingredient using a different recipe or introducing a new ingredient into the menu or even by switching our usual combinations of dishes!
When you have a plan, you create time for yourself to look through recipes if you want to or even try out new ways of cooking. When we do Meal Planning, we have a way of knowing what we cooked and served in the last few meals and thus can avoid repetitions.
In fact, when you plan on a meal-to-meal basis, you end up cooking food, which is convenient to make and you run the risk of repetitions since you are operating from your top-of-mind recall. This may not be appreciated by the family and will lead to discontent and long faces at mealtimes. Let us face it – we are multi-tasking all the time and have limited bandwidth.
It is not possible to always be ready with an interesting menu on our own. We all could do with some help and AMIYAA is here to help with suggestions and an option for you to curate your own Recipe library or even have a ready reckoner of your Family’s favorite dishes which could then be added to the Meal plans easily.
On the contrary, Meal Planning saves time. It is a fact that initially, it does seem like that since you are sitting down to plan for meals for 2-3 days at a go, which is a total of 9 meals or more! However, once you get the hang of it and figure your way around a system it will not take you much time.
Amiyaa
So your investment of time is only for the first few occasions and then it will roll smoothly. Also, having a Meal Plan for the next few days insight enables you to plan your shopping for the required groceries and vegetables in one go. You will save on your resources since you have an opportunity to buy only as per your specific requirements for the next few days.
So it is goodbye to buying more for the “just in case” scenario and running the risk of it going waste! Knowing what is going to get cooked also allows you to plan for the required prep like soaking, chopping, kneading, grinding, etc., in advance. This way you will end up saving on time and effort and be more efficient when it is time to cook.
AMIYAA’s Meal Planning module also makes it easy for you to plan the meals by offering interesting suggestions and triggers. Now, compare this with the angst and stress that you subject yourself to when you plan for each meal separately and individually. You make yourself go through the effort every day, as many times as the number of meals you are planning.
Sometimes, you may even have to rush to buy the required ingredients and then not have enough time to prep and cook properly. This is the reason most of the time, we end up cooking what is convenient and that may not be the best way to handle our /our family’s dietary requirements.
“I don’t need to do Meal Planning! I have been managing the household for years and managing it well. My cook has been trained by me and knows what to make and how to make it. At my age, I do not need to bother with this.”
“Meal Planning may be helpful for people (working/students) in the age group below 40 years. Above 40 to my knowledge, most of us have figured out a system for this.”
“We are young and footloose – don’t need to plan our meals! Sometimes we eat at home and the rest of the time we eat out! How can we plan if we do not know how our days are going to pan out?”
“The App is for women with fixed working hours. Not for us who look at the weather, look at the mood and then come up with what to cook today. I can’t do it. It is too stressful!”
“Haven’t got the time to actually sit and do the meal planning… Need to take out time! Let’s see….”
“I thought that the App will give me meal plans automatically. But here also I only have to make the Meal Plans!”
“Why are you not giving recipes? You should have your collection of recipes from where we can select what we want to make.”
MEAL PLANNING
There are a thousand more reasons like this and then some more when it comes to something that requires a change in a habit. Like all good habits, Meal Planning will also need a bit of discipline and determined effort to become a part of our routines!
We have to be patient for Rome was not built in a day and neither was the six-pack abs! But they are definitely possible with Meal Planning! Really, they are! Meal Planning is a very misunderstood subject and you will have to be patient while we try and bust some of the common misconceptions about it here!
Read this series with an open mind and we hope you will see another perspective.
Busting some Meal Planning myths
Part 1
Myth 1: Meal Planning is not for me!
Meal Planning is for everyone who cooks and eats at home. It is as much for the Working Professional as much as it is for the Homemaker. It is for those who have to decide what food to make every day. It is for those who have fitness goals. It is definitely for those who are managing certain health conditions for themselves or their family members.
It is helpful to provide balanced nutrition to all family members be it infants or senior members of the family and all the ages in between. Meal Planning is good for those who have families and even those who are single!
Meal Planning is for those who like variety. You do realize that that the same ingredient can be made differently using another recipe? Why stick to the same menus, same dishes, same dish pairings again and again? With Meal Planning, you will have a choice. Meal Planning is for everyone who wants to eat good, tasty, and healthy food every day.
However, as in life we need to be a bit flexible here as well and should be mindful of the following few things.
Having a Meal Plan means that you always know what’s cooking and are fully prepared accordingly.
However, be open to change your plan when you/your family/friends might want to eat out or order in.
Having a Meal Plan is always an advantage but should not hold you back from enjoying otherwise.
Try new ingredients, use earlier ingredients but in a different recipe, pair dishes differently than what you have doing in the past – switch the dal-sabzi combinations every once in a while!
Intersperse with a bundle of meal ideas – old & new and keep the option of bringing them up cyclically open to yourself for days that you may be crunched for time.
Keep the excitement and anticipation quotient high while planning the meals and you are on your way to great meal-time conversations and creating awesome food memories with your loved ones.
Every family has some favorite meals – those which when served elicit a positive response from all and very few murmurs of discontent come forth!
When one sits down patiently to list these favorites down, one realizes that there are quite a few of them.
However at the time of planning the meals, these obvious choices escape one’s already crowded mind. We are all busy with a lot of things! We are multi-tasking all the time hence when we think about routine maters, we operate from our top of mind recall.
Family – AMIYAA: What’s Cooing?
At that stage, we seldom have the bandwidth to do an objective analysis of all the possibilities as we are short on time and energy and tend to gravitate towards ease more than anything else. As a result, one resorts to options of what may be available to cook or what may be convenient to cook at that point of time!
What will help us is listing our favorite options in a place where they can be easily accessed by us when required. If one is to give Meal Planning a serious try, then this probably is the best way to start.
Make a list of your family’s favorite dishes in AMIYAA: What’s Cooking APP’s fantastic folder in the library module called “My Handy List’ which can be used for this purpose.
Once this list is ready, you can start with your Meal Planning by choosing any dish from here for a chosen meal on a chosen day. You can use AMIYAA: What’s Cooking App’s Meal Planning module and start with your Meal Planning easily.
It is a generally accepted view that planning helps us to be more efficient not only with our time but also with other resources.
Get started with Meal planning and use the Family’s Favorite meal list to begin with!
Once your planning is done, you will have ample time to organize the required groceries and do the necessary prep work and daily cooking will be a breeze!
It was probably in school that we first heard about a balanced diet. We learned that to feel good, stay healthy, we all should have a balanced diet every day.
Cut to the present – we all want to be healthy and fit and want the same for our family members as well. We mostly eat at home and eat healthily! Or do we?
The truth is that in spite of our best intentions and efforts we are not able to provide/consume balanced meals consistently.
This has resulted in malnutrition and deficiencies of vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients in most people. All of these requirements could have been fulfilled by our home food but somewhere we seem to have lost the plot.
Our traditional systems had taken care of this very well. Our meals are a comprehensive combination of Vegetables (Sabzi), Pulses (Dals), and/or Meats with Bread (Roti, Parantha), Rice along with Salads, Raita, Papad, Pickles, etc.
The Indian food universe is abundant with flavors of various cuisines and sub cuisines all of which contained the principle of providing for/ensuring a balanced meal for everyone.
There are many reasons that can be attributed to this imbalance in our nutritional uptake. Whatever the reasons may be, it is never too late to get back on the right track and take our home-cooked food more seriously.
There are huge benefits to eating a balanced meal.
1. Balanced meals and healthy eating habits help us to maintain normal body functions. These include our nerve functions, blood pressure, blood sugar levels, repair and maintenance functions being carried out by the body to name a few, and the efficient working of all organ systems and micro-systems in our bodies.
2.Maintain a healthy weight; eating wholesome food keeps one’s body weight in a healthy balance as one prevents overeating of any single type of food and maintains the required proportions of all nutrients in the daily meals.
3.Prevention of Diseases; Eating balanced meals reduces the risks of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, some types of cancer, and skeletal conditions. It keeps lifestyle disorders in check and boosts our immunity.
4.Enhances Vigor and Temperament; A well-balanced diet helps in boosting energy levels which helps us to carry our tasks easily resulting in a relaxed state of mind.
5.Provide Relief from Stress & Anxiety; Good nutrition enables satiety and relaxes the mind and helps the body cope better with adverse external or internal factors.
The first step in this direction is to start with Meal Planning.
In India, we like to eat freshly cooked food every day. Breakfast, Lunch & dinner are all important meals for us. Our nutritional requirements also change according to the stage of life we may be at. Instead of deciding what food to make on a meal-to-meal basis, start planning for meals for the next 3-4 days in advance.
This way one will have control over how to include all the important elements (Carbs, Proteins, Vegetables, Fruits, Fat) in the daily diet. One will also be able to avoid repeats of menu or ingredients thus keeping the menus fresh and interesting.
With Meal Planning, one can take care of including family members’ favorite dishes while also ensuring that each meal has the right proportions of the required nutrients, etc.
This will help in making sure that healthy eating does not become boring! With Meal Planning, we can also be healthy, wealthy, and wise!
Raise your hands if you or anyone you know is suffering from Vit D/Vit B12/Calcium/Iron or any other deficiency or from Blood Pressure or Diabetes?
Looks like we all know a few people like that!
Most of these are what are called Lifestyle Disorders and can be checked/managed by having a balanced diet and a fit lifestyle.
Research has shown that a large number of healthy-looking urban Indians are suffering from malnutrition resulting in vitamins, minerals, or micronutrient deficiency. Malnourishment in India is usually discussed as a problem of the disadvantaged, rural population. But there is significant evidence linking malnutrition to better-off, urban populations which surprisingly also face rising rates of obesity and diseases emanating from those conditions.
Studies indicate that the food people eat every day is only catering to a small amount of the actual requirement of vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients and the said deficiencies mainly result from an inadequate diet.
The popular diet of Indian families consists of cereal/pulse-based foods. There is no significant or consistent consumption of foods rich in vitamins such as vegetables, fruits, and dairy products. It is a fact that no single food item or food group can satisfy the requirements of all the micronutrients.
Hence, having diversity (a variety of fruits, vegetables, leafy vegetables, dairy products, nuts, germinated seeds, protein sources) in the foods that we consume will meet our dietary requirements of nutrients, etc.
Meal planning enables everyone to make a plan of meals with optimal nourishment and nutrition for every member of the family within the available resources.
Let us be honest. How much thought is being given each day to plan and ensure balanced, nutritious, and healthy meals for the family, consistently?
Reducing sugar/salt/oil intake/ having salads and soups/ choosing roasted over fried foods etc does not count as having a balanced and nutritious meal. These are steps that one takes to avoid/manage certain health conditions and achieve fitness goals viz., weight loss/gain, etc.
Most of our effort in deciding daily menus for ourselves each day goes towards managing family’s expectations of taste, preferences, our convenience, and familiarity of recipes/ingredients to be cooked and hence we continue to operate in our comfort zones (stress included) while taking care of our other responsibilities!
Image from the Internet
Pardon us for saying so, but the effort is more on making sure everyone is fed and happy rather than making sure that everyone is getting balanced nutrition from daily meals consistently.
Unfortunately, eating healthy is assumed to be eating boring food, which is why it is not popular. Though all it essentially means is to eat balanced meals as described above and observing portion control. It is as simple as that.
It is a fact that healthy food can also be cooked in interesting ways and there are a plethora of such recipes available on the Internet for everyone to see and try!
Our country is blessed with a diversity of cuisines, ingredients, and food cultures. Our dining tables are increasingly showing how our individual/family’s food culture is evolving with the inclusion of more and different cuisines (including but not limited to Indian) in our meals.
It is possible to have interesting, balanced, and nutritious meal plans by exploring and incorporating Meal Planning into our routines. It may seem to be difficult initially but one just has to get used to it and adopt it in their lifestyle!
Meal Planning is the first (and the most important) step towards good health.
Say hello to good health and start with Meal Planning!
