Introduction by nutritionist Anna Earl
Welcome to the Five Day Meal Planning and Preparation Solution. Do you find yourself regularly resorting to packaged food, prepared ready meals, and takeaways because you don’t have the time, energy, or supplies to prepare meals from scratch? Do you have great intentions to cook fresh healthy food but find it difficult to sustain? And does cooking feel like a chore and it’s just become easier to shove something frozen into the oven to heat up?
Well listen up for some take-home tips to get you back on track. Eating a healthy diet can seem like an impossible challenge when you’re super busy and tired, yet imagine only having to reach into the fridge, or grab something out of the freezer, and to know that you’ve got it tastily prepared for any meal that works for you.
Planning and preparing some of your meals in advance is a great way to encourage and maintain healthier eating. It doesn’t mean you need to spend hours slaving in the kitchen, but I would go so far as to say that from experience and observation, failing to meal prep if you work nights, in particular, will result in a reliance on convenience foods. And this week you’ll learn why that is not ideal.
The five day programme will show you how a small investment in time one day can reap rewards. So why should you prepare meals from scratch? There are tons of prepared choices out there, why bother with all that planning and shopping and peeling and chopping when someone else has done it for you? Think about those convenience food choices. Are they made of whole foods, fresh and seasonal vegetables and fruit, quality protein, and healthy fats? Do you know? Are they low in salt, additives, ultra processing, and trans fats that can all contribute to poor health and weight issues?
What quality of fuel are you giving yourself? Would you say that on your current diet you’re performing well? Are you spending a large sum of your monthly budget on quality prepared foods? And if so, can you sustain that financially? If you provide meals for family members, are they well nourished? Are they learning essential skills in cooking to thrive, to feed their bodies and brains? The simple truth is that healthy food preparation takes time. There’s no real way around that.
Accepting that fuelling ourselves well is a priority, and sacrificing other things in life to prepare nutritious meals, it may initially seem onerous, perhaps impossible. But start small, just once or twice a week, if your meal prep at the moment is minimal, and see the benefits. It means planning to plan, and preparing some or all of your meals ahead of time depending on your schedule and the time that you have available.
So what are the benefits? Well, it saves you time. You won’t find yourself in a supermarket four to five times per week topping up for individual meals. It saves you money because you plan for a certain number of meals and your shopping list reflects those items for your planned meals and snacks. Reduce your waste using up leftovers and avoiding randomly bought ingredients from going off. It saves you the stress of deciding what to cook every day; that mental energy of constantly having that decision circling in your head and arriving home after work, frazzled, unprepared, and unmotivated, and then reaching for the frozen pizzas.
I’m not judging, it’s just too tempting if you haven’t already planned and prepared something more nutritious. And it helps ensure you make good food choices more often. Plan when and how often to have red meat, fish, plant-based meals, balancing the proper nutrient components and portion sizes that are suited to you and your energy needs instead of relying on processed convenience foods with their set portions.
Investing in meal planning and preparing healthier food choices can positively impact your energy levels, your weight management, your gut health, heart health, your mood, and your immune system. Around mealtimes can your kitchen become a high stress environment filled with people asking you “What’s for dinner?” They may have no idea or understanding as to what you have had to contend with during your working day, and yet the responsibility falls to you to feed yourself and the hungry mouths of your loved ones as quickly as possible because they’re all starving.
If your diet tends to be high in simple carbohydrate foods – so that’s your white bread, white pasta, white rice, pizza, chips, pastries, your boxed breakfast cereals, breadcrumbed and battered goods, cakes, chocolate bars, and fizzy drinks – your energy is impacted by these foods causing your blood sugar to peak and trough regularly throughout the day.
If you’ve already completed the Five Day Sugar Solution Challenge, you’ll have a good understanding of that now. This pattern can increase your risk of Type 2 diabetes and certainly contributes to feelings of fatigue. These foods can increase cravings to manage your energy levels as well as contribute to weight issues. If you can relate to that and you want some direction, give this five day programme your full attention.
Planning what you’re going to eat for five of your weekly meals, and preparing just one in advance, is hugely beneficial in ensuring that you nourish yourself well. Remember, if you’re a shift worker, you are already at increased risk of conditions such as insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity because of that topsy-turvy wake-sleep cycle that you have to negotiate for even more reason to try and prioritise healthy food choices to support your energy now and your long-term health ahead of you.
And at the end of the five days, you’ll know your ideal budget to spend on food and drink if financial savings are a driver to motivate you, you’ll know when you’re most likely to opt for convenience processed foods and/or takeaways due to lack of time to prepare at that mealtime. That could be your priority, to plan and prep at least for that day. You’ll know what level of planning and preparation you’re going to start giving to your meals. You’ll know how to plan the format that works best for you. And you’ll know what recipes you are comfortable cooking right now to start you off. You’ll know where to find nutritious recipe ideas to try over the coming weeks, and you’ll know how to store and reheat your prepared food.
Finally then, who else could benefit from this five day focus? Can you use it to share the task of cooking? If you are regularly feeding others, meal prepping isn’t something you need to necessarily always do on your own, unless of course you want to, or depending on your home situation. But the whole family can take part. Young children can be eager to help out in some capacity. This might fill you with dread, but investing the time to educate them about different foods, encouraging them to try different flavours and textures, and learn the basics in the kitchen is giving them such essential life skills.
Forget cooking multiple meals for different family members where possible unless there are specific dietary requirements otherwise that is just exhausting. Consider that over a third of UK children in Year Six now – that’s the top year in primary school, so just our 10 and 11 year olds – are obese. So if you’re generally the main cook, other adults in the home can also be encouraged to help with prepping the ingredients, whether this is at a mealtime or in advance. So think about how you could recruit members of your household to join you in this challenge, and how could that look if it goes well.
If this is going to be quite a challenge for you, are there colleagues in your team who could take part with you at the same time? Because having that peer support, encouragement, and a little accountability can be very effective. So if you’re ready to have a go, download the attached guide, and I’ll see you ready to start on day one.
Well listen up for some take-home tips to get you back on track. Eating a healthy diet can seem like an impossible challenge when you’re super busy and tired, yet imagine only having to reach into the fridge, or grab something out of the freezer, and to know that you’ve got it tastily prepared for any meal that works for you.
Planning and preparing some of your meals in advance is a great way to encourage and maintain healthier eating. It doesn’t mean you need to spend hours slaving in the kitchen, but I would go so far as to say that from experience and observation, failing to meal prep if you work nights, in particular, will result in a reliance on convenience foods. And this week you’ll learn why that is not ideal.
The five day programme will show you how a small investment in time one day can reap rewards. So why should you prepare meals from scratch? There are tons of prepared choices out there, why bother with all that planning and shopping and peeling and chopping when someone else has done it for you? Think about those convenience food choices. Are they made of whole foods, fresh and seasonal vegetables and fruit, quality protein, and healthy fats? Do you know? Are they low in salt, additives, ultra processing, and trans fats that can all contribute to poor health and weight issues?
What quality of fuel are you giving yourself? Would you say that on your current diet you’re performing well? Are you spending a large sum of your monthly budget on quality prepared foods? And if so, can you sustain that financially? If you provide meals for family members, are they well nourished? Are they learning essential skills in cooking to thrive, to feed their bodies and brains? The simple truth is that healthy food preparation takes time. There’s no real way around that.
Accepting that fuelling ourselves well is a priority, and sacrificing other things in life to prepare nutritious meals, it may initially seem onerous, perhaps impossible. But start small, just once or twice a week, if your meal prep at the moment is minimal, and see the benefits. It means planning to plan, and preparing some or all of your meals ahead of time depending on your schedule and the time that you have available.
So what are the benefits? Well, it saves you time. You won’t find yourself in a supermarket four to five times per week topping up for individual meals. It saves you money because you plan for a certain number of meals and your shopping list reflects those items for your planned meals and snacks. Reduce your waste using up leftovers and avoiding randomly bought ingredients from going off. It saves you the stress of deciding what to cook every day; that mental energy of constantly having that decision circling in your head and arriving home after work, frazzled, unprepared, and unmotivated, and then reaching for the frozen pizzas.
I’m not judging, it’s just too tempting if you haven’t already planned and prepared something more nutritious. And it helps ensure you make good food choices more often. Plan when and how often to have red meat, fish, plant-based meals, balancing the proper nutrient components and portion sizes that are suited to you and your energy needs instead of relying on processed convenience foods with their set portions.
Investing in meal planning and preparing healthier food choices can positively impact your energy levels, your weight management, your gut health, heart health, your mood, and your immune system. Around mealtimes can your kitchen become a high stress environment filled with people asking you “What’s for dinner?” They may have no idea or understanding as to what you have had to contend with during your working day, and yet the responsibility falls to you to feed yourself and the hungry mouths of your loved ones as quickly as possible because they’re all starving.
If your diet tends to be high in simple carbohydrate foods – so that’s your white bread, white pasta, white rice, pizza, chips, pastries, your boxed breakfast cereals, breadcrumbed and battered goods, cakes, chocolate bars, and fizzy drinks – your energy is impacted by these foods causing your blood sugar to peak and trough regularly throughout the day.
If you’ve already completed the Five Day Sugar Solution Challenge, you’ll have a good understanding of that now. This pattern can increase your risk of Type 2 diabetes and certainly contributes to feelings of fatigue. These foods can increase cravings to manage your energy levels as well as contribute to weight issues. If you can relate to that and you want some direction, give this five day programme your full attention.
Planning what you’re going to eat for five of your weekly meals, and preparing just one in advance, is hugely beneficial in ensuring that you nourish yourself well. Remember, if you’re a shift worker, you are already at increased risk of conditions such as insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity because of that topsy-turvy wake-sleep cycle that you have to negotiate for even more reason to try and prioritise healthy food choices to support your energy now and your long-term health ahead of you.
And at the end of the five days, you’ll know your ideal budget to spend on food and drink if financial savings are a driver to motivate you, you’ll know when you’re most likely to opt for convenience processed foods and/or takeaways due to lack of time to prepare at that mealtime. That could be your priority, to plan and prep at least for that day. You’ll know what level of planning and preparation you’re going to start giving to your meals. You’ll know how to plan the format that works best for you. And you’ll know what recipes you are comfortable cooking right now to start you off. You’ll know where to find nutritious recipe ideas to try over the coming weeks, and you’ll know how to store and reheat your prepared food.
Finally then, who else could benefit from this five day focus? Can you use it to share the task of cooking? If you are regularly feeding others, meal prepping isn’t something you need to necessarily always do on your own, unless of course you want to, or depending on your home situation. But the whole family can take part. Young children can be eager to help out in some capacity. This might fill you with dread, but investing the time to educate them about different foods, encouraging them to try different flavours and textures, and learn the basics in the kitchen is giving them such essential life skills.
Forget cooking multiple meals for different family members where possible unless there are specific dietary requirements otherwise that is just exhausting. Consider that over a third of UK children in Year Six now – that’s the top year in primary school, so just our 10 and 11 year olds – are obese. So if you’re generally the main cook, other adults in the home can also be encouraged to help with prepping the ingredients, whether this is at a mealtime or in advance. So think about how you could recruit members of your household to join you in this challenge, and how could that look if it goes well.
If this is going to be quite a challenge for you, are there colleagues in your team who could take part with you at the same time? Because having that peer support, encouragement, and a little accountability can be very effective. So if you’re ready to have a go, download the attached guide, and I’ll see you ready to start on day one.
Ever wondered how to prioritise your health and nutrition while managing the demands of your unconventional work schedule? Shift work can be challenging when it comes to maintaining a balanced diet.
Do you struggle to cook healthy meals on a regular basis? Particularly on a night shift, do you resort to fast food and ready meals? If these questions resonate with you, you're not alone. The irregular hours, fatigue, and limited food options during night shifts can make it difficult to make nutritious choices. Your health and energy can be impacted as a result.
In this five day meal planning solution, we will work together to help you develop a meal plan tailored to your unique needs as shift workers. We'll address the common challenges you face and provide practical solutions to ensure that you can enjoy delicious, nourishing meals no matter what time of day or night you're working.
Our goal is simple: to empower you with the knowledge and tools to make healthier food choices, improve your energy levels, and ultimately enhance your overall wellbeing.
So, are you ready to embark on this exciting journey toward better nutrition and a healthier you? Then let's get going. In each of the following videos Anna will give you advice, tips and even recipes to get you started, concentrate on one each day and start your journey to better nutrition today. Click on the button below to download your guide to meal planning.
Day one
Welcome to Day One of the Meal Planning and Prep Solution. Today we start with getting clear on how preparing meals in advance is going to work for you. We’re going to look at what and how to meal prep to save you time and stress. Then I’m going to invite you to assess your current weekly food spend to compare it with a week when you have planned your chosen meals and see where planning could make you some savings. If you’re completely new to meal planning, we’re going to identify the flashpoint in your week as your starting priority. Let’s commit to addressing that area in your weekly routine and gradually build on it.
So here are some things to consider; which days or day do meals feel the most challenging to prepare? On that day, do you want to better streamline the morning routine? Are you up and out too quickly to think about a nutritious start to your day? Perhaps on particular days, not preparing lunch results in you making unhealthy choices because you’re so hungry come lunchtime you end up heading out to supermarkets for meal deals or to other convenient food outlets. Are you spending a small fortune because you haven’t brought anything with you?
It might be that you regularly plan your evening meals, but at lunch you’re forced to opt for whatever you can grab. Or is the evening meal the more difficult one in the day to manage day after day. When you get home from work your stress levels soar as you hit the ground running, dealing with “what’s for dinner?” If you’ve not eaten as well as you’d like throughout the day, you might find that you’re ravenously hungry which never helps with patience nor with impulsive snacking, grazing, and meal choice.
Think how it would feel not only to know what you’re going to eat, but you’ve got half, or the majority of the work already done. Or maybe it’s those impulsive or subconscious snack choices that are out of control. They’re not planned, so you eat whatever tempts you. Remember those meal planning benefits, reducing stress, gaining back some time in only shopping once or twice a week, not every other day or more. Saving money by planning and managing your shopping list. Reducing reliance on takeaway inconvenience foods.
And perhaps the most significant of all, preparing healthy meals to give you energy and to nourish you. Embedding a new habit is best done slowly with small steps to make it sustainable. Aim to win at one meal and then build on that. So get clear on where you’re going to start to make the biggest impact in your week. Tomorrow we’ll identify when you’re going to find the time to prepare your food, but for today, we’re going to consider the different levels of meal preparation. So now that you’ve decided which meal needs your attention first, let’s think about what meal prepping actually means.
It can range from simply preparing freezer smoothie packs for breakfast to cooking complete dinners for the up and coming week. You don’t need to spend your entire rest day in the kitchen either. Even spending 15 minutes planning per week and 15 minutes per day getting some advanced food prep done for each meal will make it easier to eat well during the week.
There isn’t a right or a wrong way to do this. You don’t have to choose just one. These methods may suit you at different times depending on your work and your home schedules. So make ahead meals. If you have a little time to prepare meals during the week, cooking complete meals in advance just to reheat on the day, makes for easy, convenient weeknight dinners. That might mean setting the slow cooker up to have a casserole, a curry, a chunky soup, or a slow-cooked joint with some veggies chopped waiting for your return after a busy day at work.
Then consider batch cooking and freezing batch cooking is preparing multiple batches of a recipe to be portioned out and chilled or frozen for meals in the weeks to come. Think ragu for spaghetti Bolognese, lasagne, chilli, a shepherd’s, cottage, or fish pie, and many other firm favourites that you may have up your sleeve.
The extra effort involved in doubling or tripling quantities can feel very satisfying when it’s all portioned up and labelled and put into the freezer ready for your busy workday. Plus it’s economically and environmentally beneficial to be filling your oven when you have it on, rather than just heating it up for one or two jacket potatoes for example.
Then we have individually portioned meals, grab and go meals, usually lunches or breakfasts that are prepared the night before you need them, and then just stored in the fridge. Portioning up some granola to go with a pot of yogurt if you need to take it to work for an early. Making overnight oats, boiling some eggs, and roasting some vegetables to then build a nutritious salad for lunch. Or popping some smoothie ingredients into a bag to whizz in the morning minus the liquid providing that those fruits aren’t going to go brown once chopped.
And then just partial meal prep. When you need to cook meals just before serving – such as with a stir fry, or if a chosen recipe is particularly time consuming – you can chop the ingredients and store them in airtight containers in advance. You could roast a whole butternut squash whilst the oven is on for something else and then add that to soup, or vegetable wraps, or make a batch of some white sauce to use for a lasagne in advance to cut down on the kitchen time of preparing that on the day that you planned.
This can be especially helpful before a busy work night shift where the effort might otherwise put you off. So partial prep may be an option if you’re in the kitchen cooking something else and you can get another meal underway.
So those are your varying levels of meal preparation to consider for different days and opportunities. You’re looking to maximise your time available to addressing those challenging situations when starting completely from scratch just feels impossible, unlikely, and therefore probably isn’t going to happen.
So your second task for today is to look at your current food spend. Take 15 minutes or so to look at your monthly bank statements and calculate an average week or month’s spend on food. Is it what you expected? To keep track, some banking apps will categorise spending, adding up your food expenditure so you can see how often you visit your supermarkets. And then include spending on drinks such as coffee shop visits if you want to look at savings. Keep this to compare with a week when you have planned your meals and you food shop accordingly.
So day one summary. Consider the day where meal prepping will make the biggest difference to your current routine, and commit to planning and preparing that meal in advance to whatever level is going to be helpful. Familiarise yourself with the different levels of meal prep to suit different opportunities of time, and then calculate your current weekly food spend so you can see the financial benefits as well. And then come back tomorrow to find out more about when to plan and how to store your prepared food.
So here are some things to consider; which days or day do meals feel the most challenging to prepare? On that day, do you want to better streamline the morning routine? Are you up and out too quickly to think about a nutritious start to your day? Perhaps on particular days, not preparing lunch results in you making unhealthy choices because you’re so hungry come lunchtime you end up heading out to supermarkets for meal deals or to other convenient food outlets. Are you spending a small fortune because you haven’t brought anything with you?
It might be that you regularly plan your evening meals, but at lunch you’re forced to opt for whatever you can grab. Or is the evening meal the more difficult one in the day to manage day after day. When you get home from work your stress levels soar as you hit the ground running, dealing with “what’s for dinner?” If you’ve not eaten as well as you’d like throughout the day, you might find that you’re ravenously hungry which never helps with patience nor with impulsive snacking, grazing, and meal choice.
Think how it would feel not only to know what you’re going to eat, but you’ve got half, or the majority of the work already done. Or maybe it’s those impulsive or subconscious snack choices that are out of control. They’re not planned, so you eat whatever tempts you. Remember those meal planning benefits, reducing stress, gaining back some time in only shopping once or twice a week, not every other day or more. Saving money by planning and managing your shopping list. Reducing reliance on takeaway inconvenience foods.
And perhaps the most significant of all, preparing healthy meals to give you energy and to nourish you. Embedding a new habit is best done slowly with small steps to make it sustainable. Aim to win at one meal and then build on that. So get clear on where you’re going to start to make the biggest impact in your week. Tomorrow we’ll identify when you’re going to find the time to prepare your food, but for today, we’re going to consider the different levels of meal preparation. So now that you’ve decided which meal needs your attention first, let’s think about what meal prepping actually means.
It can range from simply preparing freezer smoothie packs for breakfast to cooking complete dinners for the up and coming week. You don’t need to spend your entire rest day in the kitchen either. Even spending 15 minutes planning per week and 15 minutes per day getting some advanced food prep done for each meal will make it easier to eat well during the week.
There isn’t a right or a wrong way to do this. You don’t have to choose just one. These methods may suit you at different times depending on your work and your home schedules. So make ahead meals. If you have a little time to prepare meals during the week, cooking complete meals in advance just to reheat on the day, makes for easy, convenient weeknight dinners. That might mean setting the slow cooker up to have a casserole, a curry, a chunky soup, or a slow-cooked joint with some veggies chopped waiting for your return after a busy day at work.
Then consider batch cooking and freezing batch cooking is preparing multiple batches of a recipe to be portioned out and chilled or frozen for meals in the weeks to come. Think ragu for spaghetti Bolognese, lasagne, chilli, a shepherd’s, cottage, or fish pie, and many other firm favourites that you may have up your sleeve.
The extra effort involved in doubling or tripling quantities can feel very satisfying when it’s all portioned up and labelled and put into the freezer ready for your busy workday. Plus it’s economically and environmentally beneficial to be filling your oven when you have it on, rather than just heating it up for one or two jacket potatoes for example.
Then we have individually portioned meals, grab and go meals, usually lunches or breakfasts that are prepared the night before you need them, and then just stored in the fridge. Portioning up some granola to go with a pot of yogurt if you need to take it to work for an early. Making overnight oats, boiling some eggs, and roasting some vegetables to then build a nutritious salad for lunch. Or popping some smoothie ingredients into a bag to whizz in the morning minus the liquid providing that those fruits aren’t going to go brown once chopped.
And then just partial meal prep. When you need to cook meals just before serving – such as with a stir fry, or if a chosen recipe is particularly time consuming – you can chop the ingredients and store them in airtight containers in advance. You could roast a whole butternut squash whilst the oven is on for something else and then add that to soup, or vegetable wraps, or make a batch of some white sauce to use for a lasagne in advance to cut down on the kitchen time of preparing that on the day that you planned.
This can be especially helpful before a busy work night shift where the effort might otherwise put you off. So partial prep may be an option if you’re in the kitchen cooking something else and you can get another meal underway.
So those are your varying levels of meal preparation to consider for different days and opportunities. You’re looking to maximise your time available to addressing those challenging situations when starting completely from scratch just feels impossible, unlikely, and therefore probably isn’t going to happen.
So your second task for today is to look at your current food spend. Take 15 minutes or so to look at your monthly bank statements and calculate an average week or month’s spend on food. Is it what you expected? To keep track, some banking apps will categorise spending, adding up your food expenditure so you can see how often you visit your supermarkets. And then include spending on drinks such as coffee shop visits if you want to look at savings. Keep this to compare with a week when you have planned your meals and you food shop accordingly.
So day one summary. Consider the day where meal prepping will make the biggest difference to your current routine, and commit to planning and preparing that meal in advance to whatever level is going to be helpful. Familiarise yourself with the different levels of meal prep to suit different opportunities of time, and then calculate your current weekly food spend so you can see the financial benefits as well. And then come back tomorrow to find out more about when to plan and how to store your prepared food.
Day two
Welcome to day two of the Meal Planning and Prep Solution. To start today’s task we’re going to work out when you can plan your meals, when you can do some meal preparation. Planning your planning is key. Scheduling when to meal plan each week encourages consistency to embed this as a new habit and ensure that you keep this going beyond these five days.
One of the biggest reasons that people struggle to make lasting changes to their diet isn’t because they lack willpower. It’s more likely to be due to an unstructured approach to consistently getting the right foods in and then using them. So today I’d like you to think about where you have a time slot in your average week to do your meal planning and where you can allocate some meal preparation time.
For some people, prepping makes more sense to do as much as you can in just one day, but depending on that schedule, you may prefer to do it in smaller batches throughout the week. Either way works, but generally it’s going to be your free time and perhaps a shift pattern that dictates which way you go. Meal planning and then food shopping for those ingredients can save you a significant amount of time so you don’t need to keep nipping into the supermarket on your way home to grab some last minute items for dinner, lunch tomorrow, et cetera.
If you really believe you don’t have any spare time at all, look at my weekly routine on page six of your guide. It’s divided into time slots. So consider how you’re spending each day. Where are you losing time? Could you be more efficient with it? And what is the cost to you of spending your time like this? Does it really make it impossible to follow a healthy eating plan?
It’s quite common to realise you do have a couple of hours a week you could claw back where you are perhaps just randomly scrolling. If that’s you, let’s prioritise meal planning for this week at least so you can experience the benefits. Maybe aim to identify 15 minutes where you can plan up to five meals for next week.
And then set up your storage, because now that you’ve decided to give meal planning and prepping a go, have you got the right equipment for batch cooking, for example, and to easily store all these ingredients or meals? Have you got a cupboard just overflowing with an array of plastic tubs and mismatching lids? Maybe it’s time for a tub amnesty. Decide what food storage containers you’re going to need and just donate the rest to your recycling bin.
Good storage containers that are fit for purpose are the foundation of your meal prepping, and help to make the process more seamless, and therefore user-friendly and therefore more likely to happen. Choose containers that you can store and stack easily. You may also want to consider some sticky labels if you’re going to plan to freeze meals regularly. So this may mean a small financial investment now to get it right, but the more convenient that this exercise is to put into action the more likely you are to adopt it as a new habit.
So consider for lunches and breakfasts you might want some airtight containers with divisions so that the food you store is kept separate. There’s some concern about heating food in plastic containers. The science is a little inconclusive as to whether the plastic chemicals can leach into food, but if you are concerned, choose those that are marked BPA free.
Stainless steel containers can work well for breakfast and lunches, but not so helpful for reheating food. On the upside, they’re unbreakable if carried around in work bags that might just be chucked in and out of the boot of a car, for example.
Glass is a good option if you’re not regularly transporting it because glassware can be used for both freezing and reheating safely and enables you to see exactly what’s inside it. So this will become invaluable the more prep you do and the more meals that you have in your freezer. No more guessing whether it is leek and potato soup or frozen custard.
The best are heat-proof glass storage containers with leak-proof lids. That way your portions of lasagne, your soup, your casseroles can move from the freezer to the fridge for defrosting, to the oven or microwave, and then straight onto the table for serving. And you can order a set in a range of different sizes on Amazon.
Resealable BPA free storage bags are useful for stacking up soups, smoothies, and sauces in the freezer, but check your containers are dishwasher safe if you have a dishwasher, and microwave if you’re going to regular regularly use both of those for reheating food and for washing up.
And then look at reusable coffee mugs that retain heat or keep items cold if you want to save on buying hot drinks and smoothies and rather take your own with you. This can cut down a lot on expenditure on daily shop-bought drinks. They also may well contain less sugar, and you can still have your favourite flat white now and again.
OK, so that’s a day two summary, deciding when you can meal plan and do some preparation, earmark that into your diary and then look at organising your food storage ready to go.
One of the biggest reasons that people struggle to make lasting changes to their diet isn’t because they lack willpower. It’s more likely to be due to an unstructured approach to consistently getting the right foods in and then using them. So today I’d like you to think about where you have a time slot in your average week to do your meal planning and where you can allocate some meal preparation time.
For some people, prepping makes more sense to do as much as you can in just one day, but depending on that schedule, you may prefer to do it in smaller batches throughout the week. Either way works, but generally it’s going to be your free time and perhaps a shift pattern that dictates which way you go. Meal planning and then food shopping for those ingredients can save you a significant amount of time so you don’t need to keep nipping into the supermarket on your way home to grab some last minute items for dinner, lunch tomorrow, et cetera.
If you really believe you don’t have any spare time at all, look at my weekly routine on page six of your guide. It’s divided into time slots. So consider how you’re spending each day. Where are you losing time? Could you be more efficient with it? And what is the cost to you of spending your time like this? Does it really make it impossible to follow a healthy eating plan?
It’s quite common to realise you do have a couple of hours a week you could claw back where you are perhaps just randomly scrolling. If that’s you, let’s prioritise meal planning for this week at least so you can experience the benefits. Maybe aim to identify 15 minutes where you can plan up to five meals for next week.
And then set up your storage, because now that you’ve decided to give meal planning and prepping a go, have you got the right equipment for batch cooking, for example, and to easily store all these ingredients or meals? Have you got a cupboard just overflowing with an array of plastic tubs and mismatching lids? Maybe it’s time for a tub amnesty. Decide what food storage containers you’re going to need and just donate the rest to your recycling bin.
Good storage containers that are fit for purpose are the foundation of your meal prepping, and help to make the process more seamless, and therefore user-friendly and therefore more likely to happen. Choose containers that you can store and stack easily. You may also want to consider some sticky labels if you’re going to plan to freeze meals regularly. So this may mean a small financial investment now to get it right, but the more convenient that this exercise is to put into action the more likely you are to adopt it as a new habit.
So consider for lunches and breakfasts you might want some airtight containers with divisions so that the food you store is kept separate. There’s some concern about heating food in plastic containers. The science is a little inconclusive as to whether the plastic chemicals can leach into food, but if you are concerned, choose those that are marked BPA free.
Stainless steel containers can work well for breakfast and lunches, but not so helpful for reheating food. On the upside, they’re unbreakable if carried around in work bags that might just be chucked in and out of the boot of a car, for example.
Glass is a good option if you’re not regularly transporting it because glassware can be used for both freezing and reheating safely and enables you to see exactly what’s inside it. So this will become invaluable the more prep you do and the more meals that you have in your freezer. No more guessing whether it is leek and potato soup or frozen custard.
The best are heat-proof glass storage containers with leak-proof lids. That way your portions of lasagne, your soup, your casseroles can move from the freezer to the fridge for defrosting, to the oven or microwave, and then straight onto the table for serving. And you can order a set in a range of different sizes on Amazon.
Resealable BPA free storage bags are useful for stacking up soups, smoothies, and sauces in the freezer, but check your containers are dishwasher safe if you have a dishwasher, and microwave if you’re going to regular regularly use both of those for reheating food and for washing up.
And then look at reusable coffee mugs that retain heat or keep items cold if you want to save on buying hot drinks and smoothies and rather take your own with you. This can cut down a lot on expenditure on daily shop-bought drinks. They also may well contain less sugar, and you can still have your favourite flat white now and again.
OK, so that’s a day two summary, deciding when you can meal plan and do some preparation, earmark that into your diary and then look at organising your food storage ready to go.
Day three
Day three of the Meal Planning and Prep Solution looks at what to eat. Today we’re going to spend some time thinking about what exactly you’re going to eat. What does healthy food look like? Are eggs healthy? Should I be buying low fat products? Can I still eat cheese?
Try not to be drawn in by faddy diets that can be based on celebrity marketing and little science. There isn’t a one size fits all approach because everyone has their likes and dislikes. You might have some specific symptoms you’re dealing with. There might be things that you hate to eat. There might be foods that react badly. A personalised nutrition plan tailored just for you is the ideal, but here we have some general guidelines.
Try to base your day on three meals per day at regular intervals giving your gut a rest between meals for some daily maintenance, detox, and repair. Eating a palm-sized portion of protein at each meal can really help with managing appetite and can reduce and avoid the need for snacking. So when we think of protein, we think of meat and poultry, fish and seafood, yogurt, eggs, beans, lentils, chickpeas, dairy, nuts, and seeds, tofu.
And don’t worry and fear about including fats into your diet. Healthy fats like olive oil, oily fish, avocados, nut butters, they contain really beneficial properties and shouldn’t all be lumped together as “fat is bad” and “fat increases cholesterol.” It’s not all the case; we need the right proportions of fats in our diet. We’re looking at counting nutrients over counting calories. Reducing added and hidden sugar intake is more helpful than reducing and avoiding fat.
Eat a minimum of five portions of non-starchy vegetables and salad per day, and that’s a good palm size amount per portion. And always include vegetables and salad with lunch and dinner, breakfast too if you wish. There’s no real upper limit on how many vegetables you can eat. And look for around two portions of fruit per day, ideally with meals to reduce the impact of fructose potentially spiking your blood sugar.
Vary this as much as possible to get the full range of vitamins and the powerful plant chemicals called polyphenols that we get from all the different colours of fruit and veg. And the fibres in those foods also benefit your beneficial gut bacteria. They feed your gut bacteria.
Ideally you should feel satisfied from your main meals and not require continual snacks through the day. However, should you feel hungry, if you’re working out and need a little pick me up in between meals, try sticking to one daily snack. And we’re trying to reduce that dependence on sweetness between meals. Looking at things like oat cakes with some cream cheese or some hummus, maybe a slice of ham and tomato if you eat meat, a small pot of natural yogurt with some berries, a handful of nuts and some seeds, a small chunk of cheese, or some unsweetened nut butter spread onto an apple.
If you look at the Oscar Kilo Nutrition for Wellbeing pages then there’s a helpful resource there called The Healthy Plate that might help you with portion size and nutrient suggestions.
And now’s a really good time to have an audit of what you have in the fridge, freezer, and your cupboards. Make a list if that helps, with some healthy meal planning over the next few days. Herbs and spices, cooking oil, and flours may already be at your disposal. And depending on what you normally buy, you may already have things like chopped tomatoes and frozen veggies that can be used to form the basis of loads of meals.
Again, the Oscar Kilo Nutrition for Wellbeing pages has a recipe section that might give you some prompts. The ideal scenario is that you can use up tins and packets of things that have been sitting around for a while, maybe feeling a little bit uninspiring. So make some space for your planned meal ingredients for next week, and then obviously we’re going to avoid food going to waste. You might want to look at the website lovefoodhatewaste for using up leftovers and those tins that have been there for a while.
So day three summary; become familiar with what makes up a healthy plate of food, the different macronutrient components, and then that lovely array of colourful vegetables on your plate. Step away from calorie counting, and look to adding nutritious foods and ingredients to your balanced plate. And then audit your cupboards and make space for your home cooking to come.
Try not to be drawn in by faddy diets that can be based on celebrity marketing and little science. There isn’t a one size fits all approach because everyone has their likes and dislikes. You might have some specific symptoms you’re dealing with. There might be things that you hate to eat. There might be foods that react badly. A personalised nutrition plan tailored just for you is the ideal, but here we have some general guidelines.
Try to base your day on three meals per day at regular intervals giving your gut a rest between meals for some daily maintenance, detox, and repair. Eating a palm-sized portion of protein at each meal can really help with managing appetite and can reduce and avoid the need for snacking. So when we think of protein, we think of meat and poultry, fish and seafood, yogurt, eggs, beans, lentils, chickpeas, dairy, nuts, and seeds, tofu.
And don’t worry and fear about including fats into your diet. Healthy fats like olive oil, oily fish, avocados, nut butters, they contain really beneficial properties and shouldn’t all be lumped together as “fat is bad” and “fat increases cholesterol.” It’s not all the case; we need the right proportions of fats in our diet. We’re looking at counting nutrients over counting calories. Reducing added and hidden sugar intake is more helpful than reducing and avoiding fat.
Eat a minimum of five portions of non-starchy vegetables and salad per day, and that’s a good palm size amount per portion. And always include vegetables and salad with lunch and dinner, breakfast too if you wish. There’s no real upper limit on how many vegetables you can eat. And look for around two portions of fruit per day, ideally with meals to reduce the impact of fructose potentially spiking your blood sugar.
Vary this as much as possible to get the full range of vitamins and the powerful plant chemicals called polyphenols that we get from all the different colours of fruit and veg. And the fibres in those foods also benefit your beneficial gut bacteria. They feed your gut bacteria.
Ideally you should feel satisfied from your main meals and not require continual snacks through the day. However, should you feel hungry, if you’re working out and need a little pick me up in between meals, try sticking to one daily snack. And we’re trying to reduce that dependence on sweetness between meals. Looking at things like oat cakes with some cream cheese or some hummus, maybe a slice of ham and tomato if you eat meat, a small pot of natural yogurt with some berries, a handful of nuts and some seeds, a small chunk of cheese, or some unsweetened nut butter spread onto an apple.
If you look at the Oscar Kilo Nutrition for Wellbeing pages then there’s a helpful resource there called The Healthy Plate that might help you with portion size and nutrient suggestions.
And now’s a really good time to have an audit of what you have in the fridge, freezer, and your cupboards. Make a list if that helps, with some healthy meal planning over the next few days. Herbs and spices, cooking oil, and flours may already be at your disposal. And depending on what you normally buy, you may already have things like chopped tomatoes and frozen veggies that can be used to form the basis of loads of meals.
Again, the Oscar Kilo Nutrition for Wellbeing pages has a recipe section that might give you some prompts. The ideal scenario is that you can use up tins and packets of things that have been sitting around for a while, maybe feeling a little bit uninspiring. So make some space for your planned meal ingredients for next week, and then obviously we’re going to avoid food going to waste. You might want to look at the website lovefoodhatewaste for using up leftovers and those tins that have been there for a while.
So day three summary; become familiar with what makes up a healthy plate of food, the different macronutrient components, and then that lovely array of colourful vegetables on your plate. Step away from calorie counting, and look to adding nutritious foods and ingredients to your balanced plate. And then audit your cupboards and make space for your home cooking to come.
Day four
Day four, meal planning methods. Planning gives you an oversight of your week’s nutritional content and reduces the possibility of being deplete in certain key nutrients that can impact your health. Varying your meals – with a range of proteins, so one or two days a week of red meat if you’re a meat eater, one or two days a week of white meat, poultry, and then fish, and plant-based meals with healthy fats and diverse, colourful seasonal vegetables and fruit – is a great foundation.
You could choose to sit down with a brew and flick through your favourite cookbooks for inspiration. You might want to bookmark the pages with your favourites, or cut out and keep appealing recipes in a good old-fashioned scrapbook or a file. If your favourite recipes that you’re already confident cooking aren’t the healthiest, think of ways to pad them out to raise their nutritional content like adding in extra portions of vegetables, tins of beans, chickpeas, reducing the sugar and the saturated fat content. Consider alternative lean plant-based protein and healthy fat sources.
Alternatively, there are limitless nutritious recipes online. Check out the BBC’s Good Food, Tesco Real Food, the Jamie Oliver recipes, The Happy Pear – as in the fruit – which is suitable for vegans, The Doctor’s Kitchen, Joe Wicks and Amelia Freer – F-R-E-E-R – to name just a few. And keep checking back to that recipe section on the Oscar Kilo Nutrition for Wellbeing pages too as they are regularly updated.
There are healthy suggestions for breakfast, main meals, soups, smoothies, and snacks on there. And in addition, your social media platforms will be brimming with food and recipe posts. You can follow your healthy favourites, but again, just be wary of faddy diets, particularly those that encourage eliminating certain food groups long term. These aren’t always based on science nor tailored to your individual makeup.
I like to use the free app which was called Whisk and is now Samsung Food which suggests recipes according to your preferences. You can then allocate these to a specific day and add the required ingredients to a shopping list. I find it really user-friendly and a great way to meal plan. But I do also like a physical cookbook with colourful pictures to flick through, so I tend to combine the two.
So your food planning options; there are various ways now to plan your meals. Create a note in your mobile phone, allocating meals to specific days, and creating a shopping list alongside it to refer to easily once you’re at the supermarket. You can use just a pad and a printed planner and a pen which is easy to adapt, amend, and can be viewed by all in the home to assist with your meal prep. It’s a good visual overview of the variety within your chosen meals.
You could use the template in your meal planning guide, or there is also one available for shift workers, again on the Oscar Kilo Nutrition for Wellbeing pages, and also on my website nutrivival.co.uk.
There are digital apps as mentioned above. The free Samsung Food app helps you search for recipes and allocates them to specific days, so that’s already a kind of cookery book resource as well as a meal planning template as well. Having this on your phone means you can easily refer to it and update it whenever you have a spare five minute, e.g. if you’re commuting on public transport.
Other planning apps include Mealime, Yummly, and Recipe Keeper, although they’re not all with full free elements. And if you have the funds, there are a number of companies such as HelloFresh, Gousto, Mindful Chef, and Simply Cook who deliver food kits for you to assemble. This is probably the most expensive of the food planning options, but it can take a lot of the decision making and the logistics out of food planning, shopping, and preparation.
If you decide to invest and choose wisely it does encourage you to get a healthy nutritious meal at the end of the day, and you can just sign up for one or two meals per week. You could subscribe to a healthy eating organisation or a coach. Again, there are a wide range of online organisations and well-known personalities offering monthly subscriptions where you’ll receive meal plans, for example Weight Watchers, again Joe Wix, and vegan option with Deliciously Ella. Prices for these will vary greatly. They might be useful in the short term to give you a little boost whilst you build your confidence to go it alone. So there’s some options for you to consider.
The day four summary; experiment with different meal planning methods and find what works for you within your time availability and your budget.
You could choose to sit down with a brew and flick through your favourite cookbooks for inspiration. You might want to bookmark the pages with your favourites, or cut out and keep appealing recipes in a good old-fashioned scrapbook or a file. If your favourite recipes that you’re already confident cooking aren’t the healthiest, think of ways to pad them out to raise their nutritional content like adding in extra portions of vegetables, tins of beans, chickpeas, reducing the sugar and the saturated fat content. Consider alternative lean plant-based protein and healthy fat sources.
Alternatively, there are limitless nutritious recipes online. Check out the BBC’s Good Food, Tesco Real Food, the Jamie Oliver recipes, The Happy Pear – as in the fruit – which is suitable for vegans, The Doctor’s Kitchen, Joe Wicks and Amelia Freer – F-R-E-E-R – to name just a few. And keep checking back to that recipe section on the Oscar Kilo Nutrition for Wellbeing pages too as they are regularly updated.
There are healthy suggestions for breakfast, main meals, soups, smoothies, and snacks on there. And in addition, your social media platforms will be brimming with food and recipe posts. You can follow your healthy favourites, but again, just be wary of faddy diets, particularly those that encourage eliminating certain food groups long term. These aren’t always based on science nor tailored to your individual makeup.
I like to use the free app which was called Whisk and is now Samsung Food which suggests recipes according to your preferences. You can then allocate these to a specific day and add the required ingredients to a shopping list. I find it really user-friendly and a great way to meal plan. But I do also like a physical cookbook with colourful pictures to flick through, so I tend to combine the two.
So your food planning options; there are various ways now to plan your meals. Create a note in your mobile phone, allocating meals to specific days, and creating a shopping list alongside it to refer to easily once you’re at the supermarket. You can use just a pad and a printed planner and a pen which is easy to adapt, amend, and can be viewed by all in the home to assist with your meal prep. It’s a good visual overview of the variety within your chosen meals.
You could use the template in your meal planning guide, or there is also one available for shift workers, again on the Oscar Kilo Nutrition for Wellbeing pages, and also on my website nutrivival.co.uk.
There are digital apps as mentioned above. The free Samsung Food app helps you search for recipes and allocates them to specific days, so that’s already a kind of cookery book resource as well as a meal planning template as well. Having this on your phone means you can easily refer to it and update it whenever you have a spare five minute, e.g. if you’re commuting on public transport.
Other planning apps include Mealime, Yummly, and Recipe Keeper, although they’re not all with full free elements. And if you have the funds, there are a number of companies such as HelloFresh, Gousto, Mindful Chef, and Simply Cook who deliver food kits for you to assemble. This is probably the most expensive of the food planning options, but it can take a lot of the decision making and the logistics out of food planning, shopping, and preparation.
If you decide to invest and choose wisely it does encourage you to get a healthy nutritious meal at the end of the day, and you can just sign up for one or two meals per week. You could subscribe to a healthy eating organisation or a coach. Again, there are a wide range of online organisations and well-known personalities offering monthly subscriptions where you’ll receive meal plans, for example Weight Watchers, again Joe Wix, and vegan option with Deliciously Ella. Prices for these will vary greatly. They might be useful in the short term to give you a little boost whilst you build your confidence to go it alone. So there’s some options for you to consider.
The day four summary; experiment with different meal planning methods and find what works for you within your time availability and your budget.
Day five
So, day five. We’re just going to cover safe reheating and then think about small steps for continuing beyond this five day solution. Storing and reheating food safely is important; no one wants the upshot of your prep to be food poisoning. So here’s what you need to know. Check your fridge temperature is five degrees C or below; freezers should be minus 18 degrees centigrade or below. When foods that are prepped for the freezer have cooled, get them into the fridge to cool completely before transferring to the freezer and take extra care with rice.
There’s no reason that you can’t cook batches of rice and reheat them, but spread the rice in a shallow container and get it in the fridge as soon as possible. Rice is often cited as the food most likely to give food poisoning when reheated, but it can be done safely if you follow those steps. And then label your food with a name and date of what’s inside.
Here’s how long to keep food in the freezer to keep it at its best. Soups and stews up to three months; fresh poultry, one year if whole, nine months if in pieces; other meat, four to six months: burgers and mince, two to three months; and leftovers, two to three months.
Thaw frozen foods or meals in your fridge instead of on your worktop, and for faster thawing, submerge foods in cold tap water, changing the water every 30 minutes. Reheat at the right temperatures. Most food needs to be cooked until it reaches an internal temperature of at least 75 degrees C as this kills most bacteria. But don’t overthink this, you’ll have done it before, so just do what has always worked for you. Reheat or freeze foods only once or you can run the risk of food poisoning.
So small steps to take you on from here. If you’ve mostly used a bit of a “fly by the seat of your pants” approach to making meals, try not to get too overwhelmed. Don’t try to incorporate too many new things at once. Don’t try meal prepping with all new healthy recipes that you’ve never made before, this will just lead to overwhelm despite your best intentions, and be difficult to sustain this long term. Go easy on yourself by prepping recipes you already know, and when you feel comfortable, just think how to adapt them to make them even more nutritious. And then explore the suggested recipe resources listed yesterday to try something new.
So that’s it, you made it to day five. Congratulations. How was it? Let us know if this has given you a boost and some ideas for eating more healthily in the future.
These five days have just been about giving you some opportunity for thinking and some groundwork; the next few weeks is going to see you reaping the rewards. The key is to get used to scheduling exactly when you’ll fit this into your busy weekly schedule. If you work night shifts, perhaps the most beneficial place to start would be to plan and prepare your main nutritious evening meal before your shift starts, and then food to take with you for during your shift. Finding some go-to recipes that you enjoy can make planning what to eat much easier, taking away that daily mental effort, especially on those days when you’re flagging and you’re feeling uninspired.
So the takeaway message from this week, hopefully this time in the kitchen can be more than just another daily chore. Creating a nice environment, perhaps with some music or an uplifting podcast, can sometimes reframe this activity as a form of relaxation. If you’ve been used to ready meals and plates of food that are on the table in a matter of minutes, with minimal effort and minimal interaction with the ingredients, this might seem like a big effort.
Healthy eating on a regular basis does take time, but being able to shift your mindset to seeing this as a priority for your self-care, rather than working out how you can get dinner on the table as quickly as possible, will benefit you and the loved-ones you are feeding in a way that nothing else can.
There’s no reason that you can’t cook batches of rice and reheat them, but spread the rice in a shallow container and get it in the fridge as soon as possible. Rice is often cited as the food most likely to give food poisoning when reheated, but it can be done safely if you follow those steps. And then label your food with a name and date of what’s inside.
Here’s how long to keep food in the freezer to keep it at its best. Soups and stews up to three months; fresh poultry, one year if whole, nine months if in pieces; other meat, four to six months: burgers and mince, two to three months; and leftovers, two to three months.
Thaw frozen foods or meals in your fridge instead of on your worktop, and for faster thawing, submerge foods in cold tap water, changing the water every 30 minutes. Reheat at the right temperatures. Most food needs to be cooked until it reaches an internal temperature of at least 75 degrees C as this kills most bacteria. But don’t overthink this, you’ll have done it before, so just do what has always worked for you. Reheat or freeze foods only once or you can run the risk of food poisoning.
So small steps to take you on from here. If you’ve mostly used a bit of a “fly by the seat of your pants” approach to making meals, try not to get too overwhelmed. Don’t try to incorporate too many new things at once. Don’t try meal prepping with all new healthy recipes that you’ve never made before, this will just lead to overwhelm despite your best intentions, and be difficult to sustain this long term. Go easy on yourself by prepping recipes you already know, and when you feel comfortable, just think how to adapt them to make them even more nutritious. And then explore the suggested recipe resources listed yesterday to try something new.
So that’s it, you made it to day five. Congratulations. How was it? Let us know if this has given you a boost and some ideas for eating more healthily in the future.
These five days have just been about giving you some opportunity for thinking and some groundwork; the next few weeks is going to see you reaping the rewards. The key is to get used to scheduling exactly when you’ll fit this into your busy weekly schedule. If you work night shifts, perhaps the most beneficial place to start would be to plan and prepare your main nutritious evening meal before your shift starts, and then food to take with you for during your shift. Finding some go-to recipes that you enjoy can make planning what to eat much easier, taking away that daily mental effort, especially on those days when you’re flagging and you’re feeling uninspired.
So the takeaway message from this week, hopefully this time in the kitchen can be more than just another daily chore. Creating a nice environment, perhaps with some music or an uplifting podcast, can sometimes reframe this activity as a form of relaxation. If you’ve been used to ready meals and plates of food that are on the table in a matter of minutes, with minimal effort and minimal interaction with the ingredients, this might seem like a big effort.
Healthy eating on a regular basis does take time, but being able to shift your mindset to seeing this as a priority for your self-care, rather than working out how you can get dinner on the table as quickly as possible, will benefit you and the loved-ones you are feeding in a way that nothing else can.