hi my name is Melanie McGrath and I'm a dietician who specializes in fertility
pregnancy and women's health today we're going to be talking about how to put
together a meal plan I find this is a just a skill that makes
such a big difference with for so many of my clients over the years so
hopefully it's going to be a great skill for you too okay so first of all we've
talked in the past about how to put together a daily meal plan to suit your
needs depending upon your kilojoule requirements and what micronutrients you
need throughout the day but what I want to really look at today is how to plan
your week because reality is for also busy these days and as much as you don't
necessarily have to follow it exactly to the T if you do put together some type
of overview then you never have to worry about those last-minute what am I going
to cook tonight and then that's really when you go out and end up buying
takeaway food on those days when you don't have the energy to put something
together so what I want to do today is go through a bit of a plan to suit you
my first tip is to think about what I call just the meal plan threes and that
is to aim to have about three serves of red meat a week three serves of fish and
three serves of legumes so I've got a meal planner here and it's really very
simple so it just goes through each day of the week and so I usually start just
by putting in our red meat serves and then our fish serves and then our
legumes serves some people choose two rather than going on the type of protein
he might go for the type of dish so for example you might have a roast every
Sunday or you might have a you know fish every Friday night or it might be that
you do a stir fry every Tuesday night what have you like the other thing to
think about as a first step is what does your usual week look like so for example
if you always do say netball on a Tuesday night
then you're not going to have as much time to prepare a meal so maybe go for
something quick and easy on Tuesday nights or if you're somebody who tends
to always go out with the girls on a Friday night and you always attend to it
end up going out to an Asian restaurant then put that in your meal plan it
doesn't have to be perfect what I prefer is that it's something more achievable
so let's go through and do a bit of an example just to give you a bit of an
idea okay so I'd like to introduce you to Brittany and Brittany is going to
help but well I'm gonna help Brittany you put a meal plan together so welcome
Brittany hello hello and so your festival Brittany can you tell me are
there any foods that you don't need I know everything
music great all right so next thing is there any things that you two have a
weekly basis on a regular basis yep so I'm out most Thursday nights playing
sport so generally don't get home till late on Thursday night okay so that's
the night we're gonna need something really quick and easy yep
and generally the weekends is where I like to catch up with friends at least
one time over the weekend but other than that most nights oh I'm sorry
so you'd usually go to a restaurant on either a Saturday or Sunday um or yeah
Friday or a Saturday night I'm sick yeah Saturday and maybe a Sunday brunch yeah
I guess fantastic well yeah let's start by putting those things in so for the
Sunday brunch in um now with your with your Thursday night sport is there
something that you usually have to eat I like to eat before you go for sport or
do you eat afterwards what do you usually do there it's quite tricky
because I play at different times every Thursday so if I'm playing a later game
I'll definitely eat before then it's yeah generally something quick like
pasta something like that if I'm playing an earlier game Oh eat afterwards yeah
sure okay so pastor is something quick and
easy for you to prepare on a Thursday night yeah great well let's pop that
into your meal plan and then that's in and done right is there any other kind
of things that you have already on a weekly basis or the other nights you
know really where you kind of reckon your brain going what am I going to do
for dinner tonight I'm home most of the rest of the week so sometimes it's
running out of inspiration and ideas but ya know I'm homeless and I still have
plenty of time to cook fantastic okay so let's start by putting in some bread
make meals then and one of the other things that I like to do is often have
leftovers for lunch the next day from the meal the night before so we'll start
by choosing a red meat meal and then we can put in some leftovers from there so
actually the other question I didn't ask you is would you like to go by a protein
base or would you like to choose more base um your plan more around kind of
different types of meals like stir fries and roasts and so forth um I like a bit
of variety just changing it out but I'll be more person based is an easier way
yeah do it yeah okay so let's start with some red meat which night of the weight
would you like to make you a red meat night Oh plan here okay I'll start on
Monday okay great and then would you be likely to take some leftovers for lunch
on a Tuesday yeah definitely yeah great so we'll pop in red meat for Tuesday
lunch so that gives us two of our red meat meals we've got one more to put in
here somewhere where would you like to have your third red meat we are maybe
you don't know Friday not Friday night yeah okay okay and that way if you're
eating out at a restaurant you can have that if you're having something at home
you can still have read me and then if you have and if you want to do the
leftovers again on a Saturday yeah then you can certainly do that usually with
red meat it's three to four times a week so it's
gonna hit or even two to four times a week so it's not going to hurt having a
little bit extra basically we want to aim for around 450 grams of red meat a
week the World Health Organization has shown us that eating more red meat than
that can actually increase the risk of colon cancer so yeah
four nights or more for four meals a week is plenty okay so now let's go for
some fish meals do somebody who cooks fish or just has too much in fish um I
would cook your fish on a stick alright so where would you like to put
some fish in maybe on a Wednesday all right so just cut some fish in here for
Wednesday night dinner and then would you have those leftovers on a Thursday
lunch or would that usually would usually do more of a like a salmon
filets were fish brillant um I'll probably just have you have a feel out
of fish okay so your leftover yeah probably not no problem and then do you
want to pop in a few other types of fish meals as well so obviously yeah you've
got your feel it's and then you can also do things with em yes make salmon or tin
fish is really popular as well so you could do say a tuna casserole or you do
some salmon patties or like just use tuna tuna to make a salad we thought of
put it in a sandwich yep maybe like a lunch on a Monday or
something yeah good yeah tuna salad yep and possibly Thursday lunch Thursday
lunch yet fantastic fish is really popular choice for lunch because
particularly the canned fish and smoked salmon they're both so quick and easy
and really handy things to take to to lunch for work so that's great now let's
do some some vegetarian moodle's yeah um so again we got loads of options with
our Jamie else so you could do like a and again a veggie burger or you could
do like a Mediterranean type salad with chickpeas in it or you could do some
type of like minestrone soup well it's a whole lot of a whole lot of beans in
that so yeah I would you like to pop things
okay Tuesday night yep and then would you have some leftovers for lunch the
next day yeah yep great thank you Friday lunch
shit like right and again so that's they're often things that you can
prepare in advance so if you were to prepare a big minestrone soup or some
veggie patties they're things that you can prepare in bulk and then just take
to work which is quite quick and easy okay so then that fills us up for
Mondays Tuesdays Wednesdays Thursdays and Fridays we've really just got
Saturdays and Sundays left we'll put our restaurant meal in for Saturday nights
as we discussed and then yes so you can have a bit of variety there Sunday
nights do you want to so really what we could do you could choose some type of
chicken meal you could possibly have some more fish or an error and
additional vegetarian meal yeah maybe some chicken so chicken and chicken to
Sunday night yep fantastic and then maybe we just leave Saturday lunch and
Sunday lunch open particularly if you have been out you might be less likely
to have like you might just have something light if you have a late
brunch on those Saturday and Sunday we have some mornings fantastic so that's
kind of your overview for the week then what you would do so you could either
sit down and plan this every week or you could use this as your kind of basis on
an ongoing basis and then just go in and fill in some examples so for example so
let's do this for the next week yep and so for example let's start with Monday
night we've got a red meat option what what would you like to do for our red
meat option you could do have you got favorite red meat casserole like a lamb
casserole or a barbecue or you could do a so many options like he's doing just
some steak and veg yes it's maybe steak stay convinced yeah and so this is for
next week's ace mistaken veg and so with that looking leftover steak you might
like to put that into a bit of a salad yeah stay lunch so warm steak salad okay
then we've got our veg a meal on Tuesday night what would you like to have for
this week oh maybe like hey vegetto risotto or something like that yeah yeah
do you cook with tofu uh yeah I do yeah yeah - if it's really nice in a in a
stir-fry as well or would you do like yeah I could do some tofu stir-fry
legumes through every auto yep no Jeff use the dry fry for this week yep okay
we'll pop that in and then so you've got the leftovers for lunch on yep Wednesday
fish so you were going to do a Phillip yeah salmon yes the salmon with some
steamed veggies yep okay and then so Thursday would you got some extra salmon
and then take that again with some steamed veggies maybe turn that into a
salad or would you take some yeah maybe cook a bit more over cook more salmon
and yet take leftovers yeah okay and then Thursday night is your pasta night
yeah so maybe again if we do a chicken pasta again just so that we don't have
too much red meat yeah and that'll just help to balance things they had a bit
there great maybe with you do it with some pesto where you do a tomato based
sauce yep yep and Friday night we've got red
meat again what would you like to do for Friday night um hmm maybe like
kabobs or something like it on the barbecue yeah yeah lovely with some
vegetables and yep sounds good um and then we've got our restaurant
meal Saturday night you obviously you can always swap Friday night and
Saturday night yeah hitting up time on Friday night instead and then a last
meal that we need to decide on is Sunday night we've got a chicken dish uh-huh so
what are you thinking about that um chicken maybe like a chicken schnitzel
or something that sounds great yeah with your veggies yeah fantastic
so there's your meal plan done for the week and as you can see it only took a
few minutes to do so once you've got the basic structure of the week it's much
quicker and easier to go in and fill in your recipe ideas and and it just means
you've got something to base it on like I said it doesn't have to be exact if
all of a sudden something comes up and you want to swap a night or you want to
you know you're particularly got a craving for something else that's fine
but at least you've got that there as a plan and I found with so many of my
clients that it makes a really big difference for them another little tip
that works quite well on the weekends what post is the tip from one of my
clients is that they call it fake out night so instead of take a tap and take
out so you take away night and they have fake out which means that they make like
a homemade homemade hamburgers or homemade pizzas or homemade Chinese or
something along those lines so that's a great little tip that you might like to
try to anyway make sure you download a meal plan you can often get them from a
lot of the stationery shops too or put one together yourself and have a go at
doing this because I guarantee it will make a big difference for you my online
program eight steps for boosting your fertility is coming up want to prepare
your body for pregnancy join us by registering at Melanie Makris com /join