Lose Weight with Menu Planning

By Lisa Holcomb
 
We all do it. We make New Year resolutions to lose weight and get in shape. Or maybe we just want to be able to feed our families healthier meals. However, by this time of the year, many of us have already fallen off the weight loss/eating healthy band wagon. With excuses like, “I just don’t have time to cook healthy meals,” or “I don’t know how to cook healthy meals,” or even “I don’t really know what a healthy meal is,” it’s no wonder we get frustrated and go back to our old, unhealthy eating and cooking habits.
However, there really is an easy way to stick to your weight-loss goals. Menu planning can help you meet your goals and stick to them. Lots of people use menu planning to save time and money, and those are very important reasons to menu plan. However, meal planning also plays an important role in our efforts to lose weight. By planning out menus, you can make sure your nutritional needs are planned for and that you always have a healthy meal ready and that fits into your diet plans for your family.
You need a plan in order to succeed. Fail to plan, plan to fail. Like I said above, we can all come up with lots of excuses as to why we can’t seem to lose that weight or stick to our resolutions. We get busy, kids are sick that week, life gets stressful. But, when we sit down and plan out our breakfast, lunch, dinners, snacks, and even desserts, make our shopping lists and purchase the needed ingredients, then we are far more likely to stick to the plan.
I know most people don’t like to plan out menus. Coming up with the healthy recipes, making the shopping list, etc., can be time consuming in itself. However, there are so many sites on the Internet now that offer recipes, you can have a week’s menu planned without too much time involved. Menu planning sites like Build a Menu, will even do all the work for you. With lots of healthy recipes to pick from (even Weight Watcher-friendly recipes), all you have to do is decide which ones you want to eat that week. Build a Menu will give you the healthy recipe options and the shopping list. Yes, you still have to do the shopping and cooking, however, now you have a plan, and it’s so much easier to get those healthy meals cooked.
I know that when I have a meal plan for the week, my family eats much healthier. We are less likely to eat processed foods and less likely to eat out. Preparing a weekly meal plan will help you meet and stick to your weight loss goals. Decide today that it isn’t too late to make the changes in your diet for you and your family. Build a Menu can help you make those changes and meet that goal.
Lisa Holcomb and her husband, Will, have six children (her oldest two children are married and have babies of their own) and live near Austin, Texas, with their four boys. Lisa is co-founder of Build a Menu and is known as the “Queen of Meal Time Makeovers.” She is an author, speaker, and an advocate for adoption, family nutrition, savvy grocery shopping, and family dinners. Feel free to email her at [email protected].