Planning your meals and following a diet chart is one main step towards healthy living and losing weight. We visit doctors and nutritionists to get meal planners or weekly or monthly diet charts to follow a balanced diet. However, it is often difficult to follow the strict guidelines of a specialist who prescribes specific food items we may not like eating. Following a diet that you love to eat helps us stay on a balanced diet consumption for a long time and improves health and wellness. A meal planner can be created on a plain words document, our mobile phone notes application, a plain paper, on customized apps like Mealtime, Platejoy, and MealPrepPro with features to create meal planners or using a meal planner template.
Importance of a Meal Planner
Managing tasks and writing down things to do is always a great practice. Especially in the era of extremely fast and busy lives. Writing down stuff to do greatly manages our daily tasks as well as our health and wellbeing.
Meal planners are great movers towards losing weight. We can seek professionals’ help visiting them or through online resources and learn about the best foods for our body needs. Online blogs and resources provide adequate knowledge of food groups, body nutritious needs as per age, gender, and health conditions. It all helps us create meal plans for ourselves and our family.
As a personal experience, weekly meal planners go best. You can utilise the weekend to create the list, get all required groceries, prepare food to be stored and used for the weekly meals and easily follow the guide for yourself and your family.
Benefits of Meal Planner
Meal planners have many value-added benefits in addition to being a driver for weight loss and a balanced diet.
Proper management of meals to cook
Your daily cooking details are prepared and some pre-work of cutting vegetables or making sauces can be done in your free time. We can segregate each day as a meat, vegetable, rice, curry, or lentils day and consume all flavors, colors of food throughout the week.
Groceries management
The ingredients required for the meals to be made can be collected, stored, and prepared before initiating the week. This eases the cooking process and ensures all things are available throughout the week.
Proper following of a diet
The sole purpose of a meal planner is to divide your food intake and consume all foods with good portions and quantity. It prevents excess consumption of the same meal item and allows us to have a diverse set of meals.
Helps adopt a balanced diet
Consuming different foods on different days helps us stay on a balanced diet. A day for chicken, one for vegetables, one for lentils, one for meat, one for pasta, and so on ensures all food groups and items are consumed and we stay on a balanced diet.
Helps lose weight
Proper food intake, the balance of nutrients, and a plan that cuts off high caloric foods from diet greatly help in weight loss. We stay on that diet and meal plan that fulfils our dietary demands and ensures no excess unhealthy food consumption. This helps reduce and maintain our weight.
Tips to create a Meal Planner for Weight Loss
Count Calories for your meals
Counting calories is a great way to help lose weight. Preparing our meals by counting calories helps us consume a specified calorie intake. We should ensure a calorie deficit while preparing meals to lose weight. A person consuming fewer calories as compared to what is required by their body creates a calorie deficit. This helps us lose weight.
Choose High Energy & /less fattening Ingredients
High energy and protein-rich food items make us stay active and energetic and won’t add to the fatty deposits in our body. We consume those food items and burn them at a good pace. This improves our health and helps us lose weight.
Choose Heavy Breakfast & Light Dinner Meals
Heavy breakfast meals keep us active and energetic to work for the entire day, We keep moving for the day and burn the nutrients consumed. Lighter dinner meals are good for weight loss as a person does little activity after dinner and goes to bed So dinner meals are less used by the body and get stored as fat.
Focus on Nutrients Intake
Nutrient intake is very important while preparing meals. Our meals should have a variety of food items. Protein and vegetable groups in excess and carbs and fat in less amount. This proportion helps us lose weight. A fruit portion for snacks ensures we stay filled and hydrated.
Refer to Weight Loss Recipes
Weight loss recipes are great support when it comes to losing weight and preparing meals. Recipes with the use of fewer carbs, more whole wheat items, healthy fats, and proteins are great movers to lose weight. Many diets like the Ketogenic and Atkins diet focus on low carb intake help a lot for weight loss.