Three Step Exercise and Meal Planning

Planning your meals and exercise around your busy life might seem too hard at times. Many clients ask for a meal plan to help them with their week. We don't enjoy writing plans for other people unless we fully understand your lifestyle, commitments and likes/dislikes when it comes to food. Its easy to write you a standard plan with 3 workouts a week and all meals planned out. But what happens when you have to fit in the kids after school activities? What if you have an event coming up? What if you hate half the meals in the plan? Will the standard really work for you? Meal Planning is individual and should be approached in a way to suit your needs.

Instead we would like to help you create your own plan that you can customise for your busy life. We will help educate you about the types of exercise to focus on for your goals and simple ways to meal plan. We won't teach you how to diet or cut calories. This is about creating simple habits that lead to healthier choices for yourself and your family.

Benefits of Exercise and Meal Planning

Helps you identify the time you have available to you each day for meal prep and exercise
Saves time involved in going to the supermarket daily for meal ingredients
Saves money on food as you reduce the amount of take away eaten on busy days
Provides a sense of accomplishment if you can stick to the plan or have adjusted to your back up plan
Helps you recognise how consistent you are with exercise and healthy eating
Reduces food waste in your household
Creates a habit and easy to follow plan that you can replicate weekly
Avoids that annoying conversation with your partner when you are too tired to think at the end of the day.

Exercise and Meal Planning Step One

Write down the commitments you have this week. This includes work hours, school drop offs, activities, sports, parties, anything that will take your time. Also consider travel time for each commitment. Knowing your available time will help you to understand where to start with your planning.

Exercise and Meal Planning Step Two

Based on the information you gained from step one, identify free time for exercise. Write down how long you have on each day and select an activity to suit. Remember to enter your rest days.

Tips for making time to exercise

Wake up 30 minutes earlier and fit in a brisk walk or body-weight workout before breakfast
Get active with the kids. Exercise doesn't always have to be structured
Choose classes that suit your lifestyle. Joining a group to exercise will help with motivation

Exercise and Meal Planning Step Three

Considering your commitments for the week, time allocated to exercise, it's time to plan your basic meals. Add your Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner to the plan. Remember you can plan to have leftovers the following day for lunch or eat the same dinner two nights in a row. You can prepare vegetables that will form parts of different meals in the week to cut down on meal preparation. If you find creating a whole meal plan overwhelming at first, choose one meal to focus on. Start with breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day right?

Tips for Meal Planning

Remember your exercise and meal plan is a starting point. Change the plan to suit your life.
Get creative with leftovers by utilising what you have in the fridge to make a meal.
Try Online shopping. If you are time poor or struggle to shop with the kids, jump online with Coles or Woolworths to have your groceries delivered.
Create your list of common items purchased and update them with new meal ideas.
Have a back up plan for workouts. If life gets in the way and you miss your class, have a fall back workout for home.
It doesn't need to be complicated with calorie counting, macro breakdown or meal timings.
Focus on choosing foods that you enjoy and make your body feel well.

We aim to help make life simpler for families. Our advice is aimed at helping families create healthy habits and getting rid of the all or nothing habits adopted with restrictive diets and meal plans. However, if you are training for a specific event or your goals differ from general healthy living, our plan will require more adjustment.

If you need further assistance with meal planning, exercise or have any questions to help improve the health of your family, our Strong Mums Program is the place for you.

Categories: : Exercise, Women's Health