Meal Planning Ideas for Weight Loss

Losing weight can be difficult to do. Knowing what you should be eating, and simply how much food you should be eating is hard if you do not have the knowledge to support your weight loss decisions. Yet losing weight, if you have a few stone or pounds to shift, can be so beneficial for you. It reduces your risk of developing certain illnesses and conditions like heart disease and diabetes. So, being able to get rid of extra weight is a good idea if your weight is causing you a problem.

So how do you get the knowledge you need to lose weight for good? Importantly, how do you get the right knowledge for you? There is so much information available to us nowadays, in books and online, that proclaim to be the diet that will change your life. 

Here, we look at some tips and ideas that can help you with your weight loss goals. Batch cooking may, to some, sound like a labour intensive, time consuming process. However, those who implement it into their lives often find that it saves them time and money, and also means that they eat far better for it too. Being able to quickly grab food from the freezer that will enable you to eat a home cooked meal is one of the best ways you can up your intake of food that is nutrient rich and tastes great. 

Meals like curries and ragus are perfect for batch cooking and, with the right ingredients, you’ll find that you can easily batch cook recipes for weight loss. On busy weeknights, you can then turn to your freezer for these meals that take just as much time, if not less time, to prepare than a ready made meal. Ready-made meals are usually diet no nos as they are not only going to be far more expensive than something you have made yourself but they also will contain little nutritional value and include many nasties that are not great for your body. 

Weight Loss Meal Kit Products

If the idea of meal planning on your own is overwhelming to you, or the notion of batch cooking involves far too much forethought for your diary, then turning to weight loss meal kits can be a great idea. These products have so many weight loss meal ideas that it is easy to work delicious yet nutritious meals into your routine. That’s key because by upping the amount of recipes you know through using these weight loss meal kits, you also are educating yourself on what food is good for you and what isn’t. 

Crucially too, it makes creating delicious meals more attainable and accessible. Weight loss meal kit products are not expensive. They cost little more than if you bought the raw ingredients themselves. Yet, you are given clear recipe cards and instructions alongside those ingredients so that you know how to prepare food you may never have cooked with in the past. 

Plus, weight loss meal kit products have a wealth of recipes that will help you meet your goal. Not only does that keep your diet far more interesting, it also just makes it so much easier to plan. You simply pick a handful of meals you want to eat that week, and the recipe boxes turn up at your door. As that is so easy, you are more likely to make those meals and eat them as opposed to buying what you previously thought to be easy: fat laden takeaways or overly processed ready made meals from your supermarket.

Meal Planning Ideas

Having a host of meal planning ideas that you can turn to time and time again can help stay on the straight and narrow too. For example, working closely with your diary as well as the rest of your family’s diary can be a really good way to help you meal plan in such a way that your dietary needs are met, as well as everyone else in your household.

So, if you know that all your kids are going to be in one evening as opposed to at school clubs or a friend’s house, ensure that the meal you pick to make everyone fits in with your diet or is easily modifiable so you can leave the ‘naughtier’ food for the rest of them. Or at the very least eat a very small amount of it. 

Other meal planning ideas that can be helpful is to look at your diary and get snacks ready for the days that you know you will be too busy to sit down and eat a square meal. When you are running around on adrenaline, the likelihood is that when you stop, you are ravenously hungry and therefore eat something that is quick and convenient. In our modern day and age, quick and convenient food can mean it is too processed to be of any nutritional value. When you eat it, you may feel less hungry, but it does not keep you full for long. 

Also, look at websites for ideas of what to eat. Doing so can get you excited about the food that you can eat, and stops you from feeling like you are going without. By making the experience more positive, you are more likely to stick to your diet. Lose it recipes, for example, are great for giving you ideas about what to make that week. Lose it recipes are often really simple too as well as totally delicious. There are so many other recipe banks too that can often quickly be filtered through to find low fat or diet specific recipes. 

If you combine all these meal planning ideas together, you will hopefully find that meal planning is no longer a chore. It becomes quicker and quicker and, one happy side result of meal planning is that you often save money as well as reduce waste from your home. Meal planning means you are more likely to use up what you have in your fridge and cupboards as opposed to finding that at the end of the week you have an odd mish mash of fruit and veg that you need to get through, but no recipe to harmoniously bring them all together.  

If you are really struggling with meal planning ideas but really want to kickstart your weight loss regime, looking at schemes like the slimming world 7 day kickstart menu can help. With the slimming world 7 day kickstart menu, all the thinking and planning has been done for you so you just have to stick to what you are allowed to eat. For those that want the ultimate ease and a diet that can reset their approach to food, this can be a very good option. ‍

What Meals Will Help You Lose Weight?

This is such a hard question, but such a crucial one to look into if you are looking for meal planning ideas for weight loss. Fundamentally speaking, you will lose weight if you consume less energy than you expend. That’s why the calorie controlled diet has proven so popular over the years as it means people figure out how many calories their body needs a day to run. If they eat less than that, their body has to get energy from its fat stores, causing the body to lose weight. 

As a result, low calorie meals can therefore help a person lose weight. Low calorie meals are often very high in veg or fruit and lean protein. They are often very low in fats which are usually found in oils and dairy and fattier cuts of meat.

However, this is not the only way to lose weight. And, a calorie controlled diet can be difficult to follow as you have to be so exact about the number of calories you are ingesting. If you do not, just a few bites of the wrong thing, can really set you back over the course of a day. Plus, many followers of this diet find it more difficult to eat a balanced diet with all the nutrients they need. For example, some foods that are very calorific, like avocados, have a lot of nutritional value, yet a calorie controlled diet can mean that avocados are completely eliminated. 

Other meals that many people tried to up their intake in is carb reduced recipes. Carb reduction, ever since the Atkins diet, has been a popular way to lose weight. Followers have found that their bodies have to use different energy sources than carbs to fuel their body. That's because carbs are the preferred source of energy for a body as they are easy to break down and turn into energy. Without a carb source, the body has to use other types of food. 

Planning Meals to Lose Weight - Key Takeaways

Weight loss meal ideas can be difficult to come up with when you start out on a diet on your own. That’s why it can be so useful to look for meal planning ideas online and in recipe books, from a source you trust. Those sources should be individuals or entities that know the nutritional value of food as well as how foods can be mixed up in a recipe to make something totally delicious to eat. 

Importantly, looking for weight loss meal ideas should also be a positive experience. So often, people associate diets with negative emotions. Having to do without favourite foods or because of low self-esteem, food can become a bit of a battle ground. However, food can be both delicious and good for you. That’s why meal planning can be so helpful. It helps you identify meals that balance out that tricky equation so that you can eat meals you enjoy without leaving you hungry and unsatiated. Instead, you will find that you lose weight but do so in a very healthy approach. Importantly, meal planning also helps you shift your perspective on food for good so that your weight stays down permanently.

Success centres around taking a sensible, balanced approach to your diet. A great deal of that approach is entrenched simply in planning what you eat and knowing what food you have in your house, to ensure that you not only can’t fall off the weight loss wagon, you simply do not feel the need to reach for the cookie jar or biscuit tin. 

Most Effective Meal Schedule For Weight Loss

Meal planning ideas are more than just writing down what you are going to eat for your main meal on every day of the week, and ensuring you have the right ingredients in your house. Instead, meal planning ideas should take into account what you are doing that week too, as well as if you need to prepare any food for your breakfasts and lunches, as well as snacks, when you are out and about living life. 

For that reason, the most effective meal schedule for weight loss will be one that is flexible to your needs. Are you going to be out a couple of times one week in the evening? If so, does that mean you may be over indulging with restaurant food or bar snacks? If so, should you look to prepare some healthy salads for a number of your meals the rest of the week? Or, if you are not going out very much, is it possible for you to prepare meals that usually take a little bit of time that you often short on? Preparing those can help you no end as you will find that your diet remains varied and therefore interesting to you. That’s the crucial thing to remember. If you find eating your so-called diet food enjoyable, you are more likely to eat it and make healthier decisions. 

Batch Cooking Recipes for Weight Loss

One aspect of meal planning that can be highly effective is batch cooking recipes for weight loss. If you have food ready and on hand to eat that is good for you and not laden in fat, sugar and preservatives, but instead is high in whole grains and unprocessed ingredients, you will find that you are far less likely to eat badly.