We are all pushed for time.
And when we are pushed for time, we make bad food choices.
Has it happened to you?
It’s happened to me!
Would you like to be able to create a healthy meal plan in less than 15 minutes?
Of course you would, that’s why you are reading this!
So let’s get to it!
Creating a Healthy Meal Plan
The plan is to eat healthy all day long.
Ideally, that means eating 5 well-balanced meals spaced 3 hours apart.
How do we do that?
To figure out how to do that, I recommend a 4-step process:
- Figure out what to eat. (3 minutes)
- Create meals. (10 minutes)
- Make index cards of the meals. (extra time but well worth it)
- Shop and prepare from the cards. (saves time on grocery shopping and meal preparation)
Now let’s look at each of these steps.
Step #1 – Figure Out What To Eat
We know that there are foods we should stay away from.
That list is forever long!
So, it will be quicker to look at a list of foods that we should eat.
That’s where Michi’s Ladder helps us out.
Michi is a Japanese word meaning “road; path; method”.
Michi’s Ladder is a guideline for healthy nutrition and is the foundation of our healthy meal plan.
The higher up on the list you eat, the better off you’ll be.
Our goal is to eat from the first and second tiers of Michi’s Ladder.
You’ll also see whether these foods are good sources of protein (P), carbohydrates (C), or fat (F) – this comes in handy in Step #2.
You’ll notice that tiers 4 and 5 don’t contain this information—that’s because these foods aren’t healthy, so you shouldn’t look to add them into your healthy meal plan.
If a food has an asterisk (*) before it, consider it a nutrient-rich superfood.
Note on frying: Foods should be eaten raw, steamed, grilled, poached, baked, or broiled. Frying automatically drops even the best foods into tier 5.
 |
Print Michi’s Ladder and circle the foods you’ll eat that are in the first two tiers. (This shouldn’t take more than 3 minutes.) |
Step #2 – Create Meals
Each meal should contain proteins (P), carbohydrates (C) and fats (F).
So, look at your print out of Michi’s Ladder and choose a protein (P).
If your protein (P) is a lean source of protein like chicken and turkey, you’ll need to add carbohydrates (C) and fats (F).
If your protein (P) is fish or lean cuts of beef it will already have fats (F) so you just need to add carbohydrates (C).
See how easy this is!
|
Put together a protein (P), carbohydrate (C) and fat (F) to create a meal. Write down your list of meals. (This shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes.) |
Step #3 – Make Index Cards of the Meals
If you’ve taken the two action steps above, you’ve already created your healthy meal plan in less than 15 minutes!
Now there are a couple more steps to make your life easier.
Take each meal from your list and put it on an index card.
Here are some examples of well-balanced meals that are about 300 calories each:
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Obviously, you can mix-and-match and rotate as needed.
Hopefully, this gives you an idea of what things you can and should eat.
And it should also help you to simplify the process of preparing your meals.
|
Create your meal index cards and keep them in a small box or small plastic bag. (This will take a few more minutes but it’s well worth it.) |
Step #4 – Shop and Prepare from the Meal Index Cards
If you’ve made it this far, you have everything you need to create and stay on a healthy eating plan.
Part of that healthy eating plan is to go shopping and get the foods you need.
Make sure you bring those meal index cards with you to the grocery store.
They have the foods that you need to buy on them.
When it’s time to eat, just pull out a meal index card and prepare what’s listed.
This doesn’t leave anything to guess work since you’ve got everything covered.
So, there you have it, how to create a healthy meal plan in less than 15 minutes!
One quick tip, don’t forget spices! Spice up your healthy meals to make them even better. Some of my favorites are cinnamon, Himalayan sea salt and garlic.
|
Tell me on Facebook whether or not this is this going to work for you! |