Healthy Meal Planning in Minutes: A Busy Mom’s Guide

After questions about protein, help with meal planning and prepping is the most popular ask my clients have. 

They will be making progress in their health goals and things are going well, but they will come to their 1:1 coaching session exasperated:

“I HATE meal planning, can you help?”

Why yes, I can. 

I don’t not consider myself an expert in this area, but I do have two older children and have muddled my way through 14 years of meal planning for more than just me and have found a few strategies that work. 

Although I too, get frustrated and bored at times. 

Here are my top strategies and tips (and then I’ll share my favorite website for recipes below):

1. Open your phone and create a Meal Plan Folder inside your notes app, then create a separate breakfast, lunch, and dinner note inside that folder
2. Inside each note you are going to brain dump all your favorite meals and recipes that you and your family likes. For breakfast, I really only have the kid meals in there, but here’s a pic of what that looks like:  

3. Set aside time the day before you usually order or go pick up groceries (personally, I recommend ordering ahead if you can, it’s so much faster!) and map out your meals. I do this on paper because it’s easier for my brain. I look at what afternoon and evening activities we have and determine meals around that (i.e. is it a Crockpot night? Charcuterie style in the car? etc). 

4. Then I map out breakfasts. I always have some sort of protein (usually eggs in some form or protein pancakes–see the picture above with my go-tos) and fruit and then vary the carbohydrate. Fridays are always something “fun” like Katz donuts with fruit and sausage or Annie’s organic cinnamon rolls with fruit and a protein yogurt parfait (I have teenagers, they eat a LOT of food). For a younger child I would cut the cinnamon roll in half, with a few slices of fruit, and a couple dollops of Greek yogurt. 

5. I have, in the past, used “theme nights” to help guide meal planning. For example, Mondays would be spaghetti or pasta is some form, Tuesday was Mexican food (think tacos, enchiladas, nachos), Wednesday was soup night in the winter and salad night in the summer, Thursday would be homemade pizza night (sometimes we did bagel pizzas), Friday would be charcuterie board night where we basically cook some chicken tenders up and throw cheese, veggies, and sausage onto a cutting board and watch a movie, Saturday we have church so we generally do take-out, and Sunday would be salmon or other seafood meal. Just having this structure can help you get your brain organized when it comes to making meals. It helps tremendously. 

Recipe resources

Here are a few of the places I grab meals from:

1. The Real Food Dieticians: www.therealfooddieticians.com. Never made anything that wasn’t a hit for the whole family. 
2. Rachel Mansfield: www.rachLmansfield.com. She is an excellent gluten free option and mom of multiple kiddos. Her meals and sweets are delicious! 
3. Fit Foodie Finds: www.fitfoodiefinds.com also has some delicious and family friendly meals! 

For each of these, hop on their mailing list because they send out weekly recommendations for meal planning. I take my faves from each and create my own plan. Takes me 20 minutes, tops. Currently, I do this during my son's basketball game warm-ups on Sunday morning. 

A Few of my Easy Faves

We all need to dial it in sometimes. Here's the meals I revert to when I need to do that:

• Breakfast for dinner: protein is either eggs or sausage and I definitely add protein powder cottage cheese to pancakes if we are having those. 
• Premade rice from Trader Joe's or Costco (sometimes even mixed with cauli rice--no one has noticed yet), chicken, and frozen veggies with a little coconut aminos. 
• Premade gnocchi with sausage crumbles and tomato sauce
• Costco Caesar salad with air fried Bare Chicken on top: I'll also add avocado and tomatoes
• Quesadillas or grilled cheese with tomato soup: you can also cut up the grilled cheese into square and make "croutons"-so good! 

I also have a freebie for you that has some delicious family friendly options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Grab it HERE.

I also offer monthly meal plans inside Reclaim Your Metabolism, my group coaching program. Check that out→HERE

Was this helpful? Are you feeling inspired? Meal planning is rarely fun, but it shouldn't be time consuming. 

If you have a picky eater in the house, schedule a consult and we’ll see if my pediatric nutrition services are a good fit to support you. You can schedule that here

As always, I’m rooting for you!

Katie.