With a little bit of practice you'll be able to absolutely crush this and plan out your
meals with ease. Hey, so today I wanted to do a full breakdown - start to finish -
how to plan out your meals. Regardless of whether you plan your meals just to
not have tonnes of groceries that go bad or whether you follow like a macros and calories sort of
approach and you want to make sure that you're planning your days properly so you're not left
with weird macros at the end of the day. Either way, this video is going to help you and this video
might be long because I'm going to be breaking it down properly. I want this to be like a full
reference guide that you can use if you want to understand meal planning. Just quickly before I
jump into it, in case you're new here, my name is Rachel. I'm a nutritionist and a personal trainer
and a wellness coach and planning out your meals is going to make your whole week super
simple. You'll cook at home more, you're going to save more money and your food isn't going
to go bad. If you do enjoy this video feel free to give it a thumbs up for me. It's a completely free
way to support my channel and hit subscribe if you're new here. Let's dive into the first point.
I think firstly approaching this you want to know what your goal is with your nutrition.
Like, do you just want to eat a bit healthier? Do you want to add in more fruits and vegetables?
Do you need to increase your fat intake? Do you want to help balance out your hormones?
Maybe you want to get leaner, maybe you want to add muscle. These are just a few examples of something
which you can target with your nutrition but then take that a step deeper and I want you to also be
honest with yourself and ask yourself like, do you actually like cooking or would you rather be in
and out of the kitchen pretty fast. And then, also do you have time to cook at home or are you gonna
be like a grab-and-go type of person? You need to be able to pack your meals and take them with you.
I think if you can be honest with yourself about what your goals are and what's actually feasible
for you to do... you're more likely to make a meal prep and a meal plan that you're able to stick to.
Now, I want you to create a list. I don't care where you put it - put it in a notepad,
put it in your phone notes, whatever is going to work for you and this is just going to be like
a continuously updated list of your favorite recipes right now. I just have mine in my phone
notes. I don't follow the typical structure of like, breakfast, lunch, dinner... I'll talk about that more
later when I come back to like structuring your meals out but figure out what sort of
pattern works for you for your meals. You don't have to go by the old traditional model. Now, on
this list you are going to compile your favorite recipes. Whether it's ones that you already know,
ones that have been passed down, maybe you found some on Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok,
whatever. I don't care. Just put them on a list so that you have them there because it's so easy
to forget the foods that we like and then you end up finding like two things which you repeat to
death and that's where the boredom can set in. So make sure that list is a little bit bigger like 10
to 20 and then you can update this list every few months or as you find new things that you
like. Just add them onto that list! And that's also going to help you eat a little bit more seasonally
because you can figure out what's in season right now where you are. Go through a list and see if
that lines up with any of the recipes that you have. Also, ideally you want to be picking recipes
within your skill set or if you want to learn to cook a little bit better, you know, just outside it.
Now to minimize waste and save some money we're going to go through what we
already have and check what's available. Basically shopping your own
inventory. So go through your fridge, freezer, cupboard and just note down what you already
have and that you're able to use. This is before we start planning out our meals. Now,
once you've gone through and you've got your list of everything that you have available to
you, you can start to see if it lines up with any of those favourite recipes that you have.
Now, when it comes to actually planning out the meals this is where it's gonna vary. I was gonna
say a little bit but it's gonna vary a lot to be honest because it's gonna depend like,
do you wanna just plan your meals so you can feel organized or are you doing like calorie / macro
tracking? Start with the easiest one first which is just planning for the sake of planning and
feeling organised. You can literally do this in a notepad, in your phone... set up an excel spreadsheet.
When you start to plan this out do it in a way which actually suits your lifestyle and suits your
schedule. Like, for example, if you know you're gonna be working out almost every morning like whether
it's four or five days a week and you'd like to have something small to eat first try to make sure
you structure your day in a way where you know you can get that snack in before you go to the gym.
I'll use my day as an example. So, my non-gym days are a little bit different. I'll still eat
the same number of calories and the same macros, I don't believe in changing them between a rest day
and a training day because on a rest day your body actually needs those calories to recover
efficiently. I'll just change the size of my meals from a rest day to a training day so on a training
day I'm gonna have something small before I go to the gym, whether that's a piece of fruit or
maybe it's half a banana and one egg... mashed up, put it with some cinnamon and cook it like pancakes.
Oh and something to note as well, is I have PCOS. So I'm pretty moderate in my carb intake and I try
to put most of my carbs around my workout session. When I get home from the gym that's when I have a
much higher carbohydrate and protein meal. So this could look something like protein oatmeal. So like,
rolled oats with protein mixed into it and then you can top it with like greek yogurt and some
seeds and some fruit or maybe it's a smoothie and I'm gonna add in some rolled oats or like some
banana and a little bit of honey to the smoothie or if I felt like having a savoury meal it could
be like turkey breast with kale, chopped tomatoes, a bunch of spices and serve it with a sweet potato.
if you have to head into work it might look a little bit different and something which I find
works well for a lot of people that I work with is cooking an extra portion of dinner and using
that for leftovers for lunch the next day because then you know, especially if you live with someone
else they're likely to be there by the time you need to leave for work in the morning because it's
not like you're leaving the meal sitting in there for a long period of time. Where a partner, friend,
housemate, sibling can steal it and it also means the food is super fresh too which you know keeps
it tasty. We also need to figure out are we doing a whole seven day plan or are we just planning for
like two or three days. So as an example, I'm just gonna say that you're planning without
macros, without calories, you're just planning your meals to organise your grocery list and everything.
You're planning for seven days and you're planning for yourself and your partner, so then you need to
go and figure out 'okay, well what recipes am I making'... are you making them from a recipe? Are
you making them just from generic ideas that you have of the portions of each ingredient? By the way,
you want to go in, plan out your weeks, lay out your meals and then add up all of those ingredients so
for example, if I'm using chicken in six dishes I need to make enough for myself and a partner.
You need to multiply that to take the number of times you're eating it into consideration
but then also their portion too. Is their portion the same or is their portion larger or is their
portion smaller because that's going to change how much you need. Remember we've already picked
these meals from our list based on the ingredients that we already have so then you can go through
once you've calculated how many you need of which ingredient, check off how much you have
of that already and then you're going to go and do the shopping to supplement what you don't have.
Now, I want to talk about the slightly more complicated model which
it can sound a little bit daunting at first but it's actually fine. Like the first couple of times
that you plan like this you might feel a little bit overwhelmed and it's just because there's so
many details. Once you do it a few times you'll be totally good. I have an excel spreadsheet, a macro
meal planner which I used to do this. I'll leave it linked if you want to have a little look at it
but you can also do similar things in like Lifesum, My Fitness Pal, so many apps like that that
you can use. They're just not going to generate a shopping list for you. Also before we jump too far
into it I wanted to say a quick little thank you to Squarespace for partnering with me on today's
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This is going to be talking about calories and macros. I'm not going to explain how to calculate that in this video
because that is a whole tangent of its own. knowing your macros is one thing but then it's like okay
well right, well how do I translate that into a full day. I feel like a trap that I fell in with macros at first and I think a lot of people
do is you go, okay, well these are my macros and then you just start eating through the day and then all of a
sudden it's the end of the day and you're left with just like funky macros like you've got like
five grams of fat and 50 grams of protein and like negative 20 grams of carbs and that makes it
really tricky because it's going to make it feel stressful to follow. When in reality, macro tracking
is literally just a tool to help you stay consistent with your nutrition because eating well and eating for your goals
consistently is what's going to get you the results that you want to get particularly if you're training
in the gym and you're trying to achieve a specific outcome. With a little bit of practice you'll be
able to absolutely crush this and plan out your meals with ease. Now, when planning out I like to
recommend going off scale measurements. So, grams, millilitres, fluid ounces or ounces. This is going
to make it the most precise when you're figuring out the portion sizes for your meal. And then, like I
mentioned earlier, your eating schedule and your lifestyle is going to play a huge role into this as well.
Like are you a flight attendant and you're constantly on the go, you're staying in different places or are you someone who
works from home and you have the flexibility of having your kitchen near you all the time. Now, remember you've got your
list of your favorite recipes. When it comes to putting these into your macros you might need to
modify ingredients. For example, if a recipe calls for chicken thigh but you want to use your fats
to have maybe some almonds as a snack later on in the day we can take some of the fats out of that
dish by swapping the chicken thigh for a chicken breast or let's say you wanted to bake something
and it had table sugar in the recipe, you might want to swap it for erythritol or monk fruit
and this way we can manipulate the recipes a little bit to fit better within our day.
Priority number one is determining how many meals per day are you going to have. You just
need to figure out whatever's going to work for you. The next priority is going to be including
your micronutrients. Now, here I know that sounds weird because we're talking about macros right but
I think it's so easy to fall into the trap of like oh I'm following my macros and your meals become
super basic, like too basic. Like to the point where you're not getting enough vitamins, you're not
getting enough minerals, your energy will start to tank or you're following your calories and
macros but you're feeling super ravenous at the end of the day. We need to volumise the meals and
also make sure that you're getting the vitamins and minerals that you need. When I'm working with
clients I like to give them little outlines for this to help them with this planning. So
for example, when I'm working with a client I might tell them I want you to have six to seven portions
of vegetables this day or I want you to have like four to six portions of vegetables this day
and I want you to have six portions of protein so if you can start by thinking 'okay, well where
am I gonna fit these fruits and veggies' and we build our meals up that way first because if
you can fit those in you're going to feel a lot better in terms of energy production. It's going
to improve your gut health and it's going to help us get a lot of variety into your diet too.
Next up, we want to look at our protein intake and how we can stagger that out pretty evenly
throughout the day. A higher protein diet is going to help keep you satiated and this is even more
important if you're doing strength training as well because we need to make sure that we've
got a positive nitrogen balance happening to keep a hold of all the lean tissue that we've
built. You know what your protein intake should be, what you can do is go 'okay well what's my
protein intake' divided by the number of meals that you want to have in a day and see if you
can space it out evenly like that. If you can't get it perfectly even, don't worry. You can just
sort of like, shimmy it a little bit and like one or two of the meals might be a little bit bigger
and let's say you have a snack that is obviously probably going to be a little bit smaller.
Next up, we're going to find a place for our starchy carbohydrates. If you are diabetic, if
you have PCOS or if you have insulin resistance this is going to be a little bit different to
someone who doesn't have any of those. You know, depending on your preferences if you don't have
any of those you could sort of space these pretty evenly throughout the day for sustained energy and
to just help fill you up. Now this is not me giving you personal advice because you know I'm talking
to you through a camera so I don't know your medical history, I don't know your health history.
Now if you do have a little bit more of a problem with insulin, like I know I do with my PCOS, [what] I tend
to do is I make my meals around my workout favour my carbohydrates. This is not every single day, it's
just most days like I'm not perfect, I just do what I can most days but most days I'll put my carb
heavy meals around my workouts and then I taper it off toward the end of the day which leads to my
next point which is fat. Fats are actually crucial for your hormonal health and they add the taste
to a meal. Like without the fats it's going to be so bland and boring. All your cooking fats, so any
cooking oils, dressing oils, etc. is all included in your fat intake as well. So I would put them
towards the end of your priority list because then we can divide them throughout the day and that
can be adding nuts and seeds and figuring out how much cooking oil you can use for different dishes
and then finally room for like your soul food, treat food, whatever you want to call it. So
for me, I know I love to have a little bit of dark chocolate so I make sure that I have room for like
a piece or two of dark chocolate with a cup of tea or maybe you know that every Saturday you like
to go out for dinner with your friends so make sure you make room for things like that because
planning out your meals and like following your macros, unless you're someone who's like an athlete
or you're competing and, and I don't doubt if you're doing those things you probably have a
coach and you're working with like a dietitian and a whole bunch of people who are helping you with
that, but i think if you're a general person who's just trying to be a bit fitter and a bit healthier
we need to make room for those things. So give yourself some space to actually like
live your life and have some freedom in there too. Now, my final tip for you, I feel like I have talked
for 100 years... I use an app on my phone which is called Bring and anytime we're running low
on something I just add it to the grocery list. If I know it's something that we eat a lot of
either myself or Mitch, like for example sometimes he'll just like call out from the kitchen he's
like can you add basmati rice to your list and like yeah okay so you know just keep a running
list of things that you know you probably going to need particularly if you eat quite similar meals
regularly. I hope that explains it a little bit better for you and makes you feel a little bit
more confident when it comes to your meal planning. It doesn't have to be daunting if you just watch
this video and this is your first introduction to it and now you're about to go and maybe you've
downloaded my meal planner and you're going to start planning out your week. It can feel a little
bit overwhelming at first but just remember those priority lists start with a realistic structure.
Add in your fruit and veg for your micronutrients, divide up your protein and figure out where you
can put it and add in your carbs, your fats and your treats. Anyway I hope you're well! Come join
me on Insta if you feel like it, it's @rachelaust and I'll catch you my next upload. Bye!