How To Meal Plan Like a Nutritionist
As a nutritionist the most common question I am asked is can you please write me a meal plan. I am reluctant to write a meal plan for anyone (I don't even write them for myself). The reason is a meal plan can be restrictive. What happens if you are asked out to dinner with a friend last minute and your meal plan says you have to have a salad for dinner, but the place you are going doesn't have salads on the menu. Do you panic and cancel or go out to dinner and worry about not following your meal plan? I have the solution for you.
The way I work around this is by giving a lot of freedom. This is how I do it and you can as well. Firstly workout how many serves of each food group you need from the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating (Don't forget to check out what a serve size is for each food group here). From here there are two things you could do and it is going to depend on how structured your lifestyle is. 1. For those of you who are students or just don't like to tie yourself down with plans, you can make up a little chart that has the food groups listed down one side and a boxes next to it that represent how many serves you need a day and to just tick them off as you go through out the day. or 2. Make your own loose meal plan for the week with the foods you like. This will help you to make your grocery shopping list. If you do happen to have a spontaneous lunch date then at least you have a good idea of what your meal should include.
The reason I use the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating to base these serving sizes on is because it has been thoroughly researched over many years and is based on evidence from over 50 000 studies.
Let me give you an example of what a day might look like for me (24 year old female)
Breakfast
2 piece mulitgrain toast (2 grain)
1 medium tomato (1 veg)
1/2 avocado (1 veg)
small glass milk (1 dairy)
2 tsp milo (discretionary choice)
Morning tea
natural yoghurt (1 dairy)
oats (1 grain)
strawberries (1 fruit)
Lunch
poached chicken (1 meat)
multigrain wrap (1 grain)
1 cup salad (1 veg)
Afternoon tea
piece of fruit (1 fruit)
Dinner
beef stirfry-
beef (1 meat)
1 cup veg- carrot, green beans, capsicum, broccoli (2 veg)
rice stick noodles (2 grains)
soy sauce
garlic
Totals
Veg= 5 serves, Fruit= 2 serves, Grains= 6 serves, Meat= 2 serves, Dairy= 2 serves
The number of serves outlined in the guidelines is just an average. You don't have to strictly eat that many serves everyday. It is designed to balance out over a week or month. As you can see I haven't eaten exactly the perfect serves this day but it might mean the next day I have a little more out of one category that I lacked in from the previous day. Please note if your goal is weightloss you can still use this way of meal planning just make sure you are choosing whole grain, low fat options and avoiding treat foods (find out the foods to limit here).
After keeping track of how many serves you have for a while it will just happen naturally. You won't have to plan as intricately.
The whole purpose of this being a loose meal plan is so that there is not guilt or cancelling on dinners if things don't go to plan.
If all of this is sounding a bit intimidating (or absolutely impossible) start with small steps. Maybe try and fit in an extra serve of vegetables every day for a week or have one less packet of chips for a particular day. I talk more about taking small steps to get you started in my blog post here.
I hope this has been a helpful. If you have any questions please feel free to leave them in the comments or send me a message on Facebook here.
Let me know if you try it out!
Have a lovely weekend,
Let me know if you try it out!
Have a lovely weekend,
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