3 Tips For Healthy Meal Planning

Here are 3 tips to help you be prepared:

• Simplify. Instead of being overly concerned with counting calories or measuring portion sizes, think of your diet in terms of color, variety, and freshness. This way it should be easier to make healthy choices. Focus on finding foods you love and easy recipes that incorporate a few fresh ingredients. Gradually, your diet will become healthier and more delicious.
• Start slow and make changes to your eating habits over time. Trying to make your diet healthy overnight isn’t realistic or smart. Changing everything at once usually leads to cheating or giving up on your new eating plan. Make small steps, like adding a salad (full of different color vegetables) to your diet once a day or switching from butter to olive oil when cooking.  As your small changes become habit, you can continue to add more healthy choices to your diet.
• Every change you make to improve your diet matters. You don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to completely eliminate foods you enjoy to have a healthy diet. The long term goal is to feel good, have more energy, and reduce the risk of cancer and disease. Don’t let your missteps derail you—every healthy food choice you make counts.

Here are some healthy menu planning ideas:
Breakfast:

• 2 Brown Rice Cakes with almond butter, 1 apple & Green tea (this one is for people who just need a light start to their day).
• 1 Cup of cooked quinoa, with 1/4 cup of almond milk, chopped walnut, cinnamon & chia seeds (this is for people who have tendency to feel cold easily).
• Smoothie with one avocado, an apple, 1 juice of a lemon, kale, spinach and celery with ground flax seeds (this is for people who have tendency to feel warm often).
• 1 omelete made of 2 eggs & 2 egg whites, chopped mushrooms & grilled asparagus, sea salt and pepper & green tea (for those who like some savory food upon waking).

Lunch & dinner:

• Cooked quinoa with sautéed veggies (asparagus, garlic,mushroom, red & yellow peppers all chopped), add sea salt, paprika and olive oil. Option to add cooked chopped chicken or salmon
• Grilled meat or fish, with a big salad (mixed greens, sliced tomato, sprinkle goat cheese, sunflower seeds, olive oil & lemon juice)
• Salad as a meal: arugula, chickpeas, tomato, red & yellow peppers, walnuts, add chopped grilled tofu, meat or fish to it, dressing (olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salt and Italian seasonings).

Snack:

• Handful of nuts or seeds with a fruit
• 2 hard boiled eggs with cucumber slices (perfect for a warm summer day)
• Almond butter on apple slices
• Plain goat yogurt with berries
• A glass of wine with a piece of dark chocolate (great evening snack)
• Mashed yam with cinnamon & nutmeg & cashews (great for the cool winters)
• Smoothie: parsley, beets, strawberries, and almond milk.

You've heard it before: if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Once you start being prepared for most of your meals, eating healthy won't be that difficult.
To health!