Meal Planning and Preparation Tips For Busy Schedules

Meal planning is determined by the schedule of the day or week on what we have to cook by making a list.

In today’s time women and men both are working for fulfilling their needs. Everyone is busy with office work, household work, and outside work for the office and home, so it is hard to maintain a diet and nutrition or to make meals thrice a day.  Nowadays, most people order food from outside on a daily basis containing extra oil, and spices which affect physical health that brings weight gain, obesity, acne, also do gastric problems, laziness, etc. in order to save time. To stay fit, we should eat healthy even in our busy schedules. 

Meal planning definition or why it is important?

Meal planning is important to save money, time and to improve your food choices because we eat junky foods much in comparison to organic ones, so when we plan the meals it forces us to stick to the plan of cooking the recipes. 

Meal preparation and planning tips for busy schedules:

1. Do plan to make your meals one day before or at night so that you can do preparation one day before and by waking up the next morning, it would be easy to make your meal. 
2. Stick to the plan to make your meals, and do not make over-time-consuming recipes. Make easy making recipe plans; you can make khichdi, oats, daliya, shakes, fruits, vegetable juice, salads, bread toast with different spreads, boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, omelets, yogurt, paneer, etc. which are easy to make, digest and healthier in all the ways and are full of vitamins, minerals, proteins, etc.   
3. Make food according to the nutrition such as making protein-rich pulses and for some carbohydrates, make rice.
4. There are so many benefits of meal preparation ahead of time. It saves your precious time, you can make your meal and put it in the freezer, and then when you are getting late for work; you do not have to make food at that time. Meal preparation or making the food in bulk saves your time, gas, money, and energy in the meantime. 
5. If you are running too late and don’t have time to prepare your meal then try to avoid oily or junky food that is rich in calories. Try to find substitutes for that food, we can have a variety of soups such as tomato soup, veggies soup, etc. instead of cold drinks which is harmful to health, and we can have wheat flour noodles instead of refined wheat flour noodles. 
6. Meal planning and meal prep reduces stress level when we are working. It’s hard to maintain a house and office together, nowadays it is easy to maintain the housework by doing shopping online instead of going outside. There are so many apps or links on which you can buy vegetables, fruits, utensils, food, and many other kitchen products which saves time and energy.    
7. You can prepare your overnight oats jar to save the time or energy in which you are eating healthier too.  
8. If you do not have time to prepare food, there are so many apps that serve homemade food or you can join the mess, some give tiffin box services directly from home which maintains health. Students or people who are living outside their homes for their studies, work, etc. are not able to prepare food due to heavy workloads. So they usually use these services.   
9. Sleeping early and waking up early in the morning makes your day perfect so that you can work early ahead of time and can finish your all work without being worried.
10.  One of the best methods to save time is to undercook your food when you have time in a day and then cook over again at that time when you want to eat in less time. 

There are some principles of meal planning which should be followed such as adequacy which is a sufficient amount of food that is being eaten, do not make an extra quantity of food which is a waste of food and time. It explains that take a sufficient amount or quantity of nutrients like carbohydrates, vitamins, fats, proteins, calcium, etc. that you required in your meal. Balance of nutrients is equally important in the meal so that your body functions well. Variety, moderation, nourishment, etc. defines the principles of meal planning.

Also Read: Low-Carb and Keto-Friendly Meal Plans and Recipes