It’s five o’clock and you’re feeling hungry. So are the troops. You check the fridge. Then the freezer. Then the fridge again.
Uh oh.
If you’ve ever had that “oh no” moment when you realize that there’s nothing for dinner, at least nothing that will be ready before hunger meltdown turns your little darlings into raving lunatics, you’re not alone. Not knowing what was for dinner was a near-daily occurrence at my house. And the worst part wasn’t even the stress of a houseful of hungry kids. Or what a diva I turned into when my stomach was growling. Or even the wasted money that went to fast food.
No, the worst part was the food we landed up eating because we didn’t have a plan.
Frozen pizza. Fast Food. Crackers with cheese. No vegetables in sight. Sky high sodium. Empty calories.
My kids thought I was awesome when I warmed up some frozen pancakes or got Little Caesars. But I knew in my heart that I was doing them a disservice feeding them this way.
If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” Benjamin Franklin supposedly once said this and I think of it often when I’m planning out my week or my meals. Because I never feel more like a failure than when I let hunger and poor planning force me to make unhealthy choices for my entire family.
When we’re pressed for time, we tend to go with the easiest and faster route to a full stomach. And that’s usually something that comes out of box or a window. Rarely do we feel the urge to chop up some vegetables and throw together a crudité platter on the fly. We want it fast and filling. The urgency pushes away that voice that says what we should and shouldn’t eat and the 5-year-old with the sweet tooth in all of us takes control.
I’m intimately acquainted with that hungry inner child. Before I got married, I was a bit of a workaholic. As in three jobs, workaholic. I worked a full shift making reservations in the morning, changed in a restaurant bathroom so I could wait tables there through the dinner rush, and then changed again so I could bar hop, doing promotions until the wee hours of the morning. If you think I ate anything nutritious in those days, you’re very much mistaken. I lived on Snickers bars. I can clearly remember eating a hunk of cold lasagna contained in plastic wrap like a sandwich at some dive at 2am. My secret Santa that same year gifted me a 4-pack of Red Bull and a Starbucks gift card. I guess it was the only thing they thought I would use.
While a lot has changed over the last decade, making bad choices because I don’t have a plan is a constant. So how do I avoid letting that junk-food-loving kid in my brain have the reins?
I have to have a plan. Flying by the seat of my pants isn’t out of the question, but I need to make sure I’ve got a backup in case I suddenly fall on said seat of pants. I generally plan out all the meals and snacks for the entire week (I used the printable in this toolbox). This last month I tried something new. I actually made a meal plan for all four weeks. It took a little longer, but it’s such a relief to know all I have to do is stock the ingredients each week and I’m all set.
I stock the freezer. I have at least two meals in the freezer ready to be thrown into the crock pot. I’ve also got some emergency meals that can be warmed up in the microwave, such as burritos, muffins, and pancakes. I try to always have frozen vegetables on hand because the kids love eating them cold and they’re super easy, quick, and healthy.
I prepare snacks. Ask my husband and he’ll tell you that I eat way too much peanut butter. That’s because it’s easy for me to grab, fills me up, and is dairy-free. Total win. But it’s not the healthiest thing in the world (even the natural stuff) because it keeps other foods from getting eaten. So I try to get snacks ready for the day in the morning. Cut celery, baby carrots, sliced cucumber, Cuties, small servings of peanut butter for dipping, baggies of Cheerios, and cheese sticks. These little snack packs keep us from grabbing other, less-nutritious things.
I hold on tight to discipline. When I’m dying to snack on something junky or just say “whatever” when the kids want to eat saltines for dinner, I say a prayer and dig in my heels. My worst enemy is my own apathetic self. When I stop trying to do the right thing, we all suffer. Not to say that there aren’t days when the kids and I have apples and peanut butter for dinner. Or pancakes. Or cereal for breakfast three days in a row. But I stuff down the mommy guilt and promise myself that tomorrow will be better.
Meal planning is such an important part of taking care of my family. Preparing meals that are healthy and tasty (though my four-year-old may disagree on that), making sure that there are decent snack options, and keeping the stress level low when meal time rolls around are all parts of how I serve them and care for myself.
How has meal planning helped your family? Have you ever had a day that would have gone a different way had you planned your meals for it? I’d love to hear how this has changed your eating habits. Let me know in the comments below!
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