3 Tips For Healthy Meal Planning
Many people have a goal to eat healthier, but what does a healthy meal actually look like? While dietary needs may differ from person to person, there are certain guidelines that make sense for most people when planning healthy meals. Here are a few rules for healthy eating that may clear up some confusion and give you a better idea how to meal plan for good nutrition.
1. Eat real food
This may sound simple and obvious, but it may be unclear to some people what “real food” actually means. To make it easy, think about it this way: the closer it is to how God made it, the better. If it comes in a box or bag in the middle of the grocery store and has a bunch of ingredients you can’t pronounce, that’s not real food. For example, broccoli, organic blueberries, and grass-fed beef = real food. Froot Loops, Pop-Tarts, and McDonald’s French fries = not real food.
2. Prioritize food quality (but do the best you can)
Eating organic foods is helpful to avoid many pesticides, herbicides, food additives, GMOs, and other chemicals that are rampant in the food supply, but let’s face it – eating organic is expensive. The Dirty Dozen/Clean Fifteen lists at ewg.org are a great resource for determining what produce items need to be organic and what conventional produce is okay. Eating high quality animal foods such as grass-fed beef, organic/pastured poultry and eggs, and wild-caught fish can also be significantly more expensive. Look for deals and shop local – sometimes local farms will let you buy in bulk (half-cow, whole-cow, etc.) to save money in the long run. At the end of the day, do the best you can – better to eat conventional meat and vegetables than to just throw your hands up and hit the Taco Bell drive-thru.
3. Don’t get stressed out
With all the conflicting information online these days, it can seem impossible to figure out what to eat. It can be easy to fall into the trap of seeing certain foods as the enemy, stressing out over every ingredient, and taking hours to meal plan. However, chronic stress is probably worse for you than eating a “bad” meal. There’s some ancient proverb that says something like, “Eating the wrong food with the right attitude is better than eating the right food with the wrong attitude.” Now I’m not saying you should go eat a box of Krispy Kremes because you have a “good attitude” about it, but you get the point. Don’t stress out about your food and meal prep, have gratitude, and make it fun.
Now that we’ve gone over a few ground rules, what does a healthy meal actually look like? Here is a basic template that I use and should work for most individuals:
4-8 ounces protein. Good sources include grass-fed beef, bison, lamb, organic/pastured chicken or turkey, wild-caught salmon or other low-toxin fish. The amount you need will be based on your size and activity level. If you’re not sure how much 4 ounces is, if you take a 1 lb package of ground beef and make 4 burger patties out of it, 1 burger is 4 ounces.
Non-starchy vegetables. This includes veggies such as broccoli, green beans, leafy greens (kale, chard, spinach, etc.), cauliflower, asparagus, and brussels sprouts. These are best cooked (steamed, roasted, sauteed). Around a handful is a good starting point.
Healthy carbs (starchy veggies, whole grains, fruit). This can include foods like sweet potatoes, rice, quinoa, potatoes, butternut squash, plantains, or fruit. The amount will differ according to individual carbohydrate needs, but around a handful is also a good starting place here.
Healthy fats. Healthy fat sources can be used for cooking or added to the meal. Good fats to add to meals include extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, ghee, grass-fed butter, coconut oil, avocados, nuts, etc. Avoid industrially processed vegetable/seed oils including canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil, etc.
This is a good starting place for putting a healthy meal together. You can adapt this template to your individual needs as well. For example, someone on a low-carb or keto diet can add more fats and non-starchy veggies and have a smaller portion of carb sources or none at all. An athlete who is training hard may want to add more protein and healthy carb sources. Someone on a low-FODMAP diet will want to avoid things like broccoli, asparagus, brussels sprouts, and avocado.
Feel free to add other healthy foods – this is by no means an exhaustive list. If you like sauteed onions and tomato on your grass-fed burger, go for it. The main thing is to eat the foods that work for you in the right amounts for your individual needs. Eat real food, avoid refined sugar, refined flour, and processed seed oils as much as possible and you’ll be on the right track.
If you’re still struggling with how to figure out how to eat healthy for your unique needs, we can help! Schedule a free discovery call today to get started.