Daily Planners: To-Dos and Also To-Eats!

If you’re a busy person like me, you often use your daily planner to organize your brain. It may be full of things you have to do and people you have to meet. So why not try listing the things you have to eat? If you’re trying to watch your weight or simply wanting to be healthier, keeping records is the surest way to progress. It’s only by knowing where you’re at that you can find out where to go. And by writing down your meal plan, you’re able to more easily say, “No,” to temptation when it comes to foods that are off-limits. This article explores how to work your daily meals into your daily planner.

How do you use a daily planner for meals and snacks?

If you read magazines and articles online during your breaks from work, you can find and place different recipes for healthy, easy meals and snacks in your planner. Take it home and make the recipes for dinner, or incorporate those recipes into your meals for the next day. Another way to use your planner is to schedule meal times. Some health professionals recommend eating every 3 hours, which makes out to 5 to 6 meals per day. If you still want to go with the regular 3 square meals a day, plan your snack times in between so you don’t get hungry and cheat by having a 4^th meal!

Here are some other useful tips to planning your meals:

1. Prior to the work week beginning, schedule a time to prepare your meals for the next few days at least. During this time, prepare a versatile recipe that can be used in multiple meals. For example, you may choose to cook roast beef. For one night of that week, it can be your dinner. The next day, you can take some slices of the meat and prepare a sandwich for your lunch. So instead of having a fabulous new creation in the kitchen every night, you can take one amazing dish and turn it into a variety of meals, saving you time and grief. List in your planner what day you’ll have roast beef for dinner and also what day you are planning to make it into a sandwich for your lunch.

2. Schedule breakfast within 1 hour of waking up. If you go any later than that, you’re setting yourself up for failure in the form of binge eating!

3. Your what-to-eats for lunch can contain more food than dinner because you still have a good amount of the day to burn those calories off. Keep that in mind when you’re writing down what to eat for lunch.

4. If you work out, schedule a post-workout snack or meal within 60 minutes of the end of your workout. Because your muscles are still super-charged, they can burn through the calories of your meal more easily. You’ll also want to do this in order to feed your exerted body for faster growth and repair.

5. Schedule dinner no more than 2-3 hours before bed. Doing so will help the food to digest better and not get lodged into your stomach for prolonged periods of time.

6. Depending on how caffeine affects you, schedule a time in your planner beyond which you’ll stop drinking caffeine so that you can protect the length and quality of your sleep.

These tips will make your meal-planning a lot easier. Organizing your recipes and meals to cook for the week will really cut the time for preparation and help you focus on healthy eating if that’s your goal. Plan, organize, cook and innovate, and you’re sure to be healthy despite your busy week!

Don't forget to check out my website, www.do24days.com, for fun, health-related 24 day challenges!

Check out this video for tips on how to track your weight loss!