What is Your Meal Planning Mindset?
I did a survey to my mailing list recently, asking about where people get stuck when it comes to their health and creating a healthy lifestyle. One of the biggest challenges: preparing healthy, simple and delicious meals.
I totally understand why consistently eating healthfully is a lot of work — it’s time consuming and who’s got a lot of time these days? For years my eating was inconsistent and less than healthy, at best. Mostly because my approach was catch-as-catch-can. Yes, I went to the grocery store but I didn’t necessarily know what to buy, and I cooked dishes that were elaborate and too time-consuming. Definitely a de-motivator. Plus cleaning up was a whole other job that I hated. And as a single person back then, I found it to be all a bit overwhelming and not much fun.
That was before I understood how our mindset plays such an important role in not only the actions we take - am I or am I not going to make healthy meals - but how we feel as we’re doing it. I notice this with my clients all the time. When they talk about what drudgery it is to prepare healthy meals, guess what? It feels like drudgery. But when they decide that shopping and prepping food can actually be fun (or at least not feel like punishment), that’s a whole other story that can lead to lots of possibilities (I’ll feel you in on how I make it more fun in future posts).
These days, I’m inspired to spend the time planning every week because I’m motivated by feeling healthy and energetic when I do. When I’m eating well, I don’t get those mid-afternoon drops in energy, I feel focused all day. And I feel more inspired to get to the gym (which is key for me). Plus when Bruce, my husband, and I have a plan for the week, we save SO much money. These days that’s a big motivator too. For awhile we were wasting a lot of food that we’d buy and then end up not using. It would go bad and was just a terrible waste. Not to mention that Bruce grew up in huge family where you just didn’t waste anything so he couldn’t stomach good food going bad.
What about you, do you plan your meals each week? How does your mindset affect how you feel about preparing food? And what motivates you to plan things out anyway? Please share your thoughts.
Filed under: Healthy lifestyle, Motivation, Food preparation, Healthy Meals, Meal Planning, Food Shopping
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