Weekly food menus get the family meal planning team together!

You can use weekly food menus and family meal planning to actually save you time, and keep you on track with losing weight, maintaining it, and keeping healthy too.

Weekly food menus...time savers on the road to losing weight

Have you noticed how little time we all have? At certain times and stages of our lives, we just seem run off our feet. If you're also trying to lose weight, and of course, keep it off forever, where do you find the time to concentrate on the food you're consuming...it just becomes another thing you have to make time for and it quickly gets too difficult.

Use weekly food menus as a way to combat this. It doesn't matter what day, night or time you choose to sit down and work out what you're going to eat for the coming week, but if you do it all at once, then you're done. You don't have to agonise about what you're going to have on any given day.

Even if you can't get to the shops to shop for the entire week (if you're one of those people who goes everyday...that's me at the moment. It's not my favorite way to do it, but right now it's what works), you can take a list with you each evening and shop for the next day.

You can also cut the time you spend by getting the family involved too. Kids can help you pick out breakfasts, come up with lunches and dinners...and guess what, you're partner can too! If everyone sits down and does it, you can plan a whole weeks worth of meals in less than twenty minutes!

Weekly food menus...helping everybody be fit and healthy

It's great including the kids and partner in the family meal planning exercise. One it teaches the kids to think about meal combinations and healthy foods...a valuable skill for when they leave home.

It's also great for the partner to help. I don't know about you, but agonizing and trying to pick out meals for the family is not one of my favourite jobs! It's good for your partner to see what goes into keeping the family fit and healthy.

In losing weight for life, and through life, healthy is the way to go. Making sure you're getting the right amounts of everything you need, and less of the things you don't...excess amounts as well as too much fat, sugar, and salt (just to name a few).

If you're eating healthy to lose weight, you don't need to have more than one set of meals...everyone can eat the same thing. Yes, you'll adjust quantities based on the age and sex of the family members (see food serving sizes for an easy way to measure portions), and you'll adjust for nutritional needs...extra calcium as necessary, and so on, but if you all work together to wet out weekly food menus, you'll be able to come up with meals, lunches and foods that suit everyone.

Weekly food menus...let's you see that you're getting everything you need

I know that nutritionist state that you should be getting so much of this, and so much of that everyday...but sometimes that doesn't work.

If you're out late three nights in a row, and that just happens to be your week...then three easy pasta meals for dinner in a row may be what keeps you're sanity, without you having to resort to take-away.

It's not the end of the world! In fact, there has been research that has shown that children, if given access to a full range of healthy foods, actually fufil all their nutritional needs...over the space of a year!

So, the beauty of weekly food menus is that you can pick and set out meals for the week that will fit in with your life for the week. Three nights working late...cook a heap of pasta and pick three different toppings that can be whipped up in quick time, one for each night.

Now the advantage to doing at weekly food menu, is that after you put in the breakfasts, lunch and dinners for the week, you can set them all out in front of you, and look at them, individually and collectively, and see what's missing.

If you're having pasta for three evening meals, you might choose high protein, low carbohydrates for the lunches on these days. Or you might stick with breads for lunch, because sandwiches on those days are the easiest and best option, but adjust by making sure you have a high protein carbohydrate free breakfast one morning, and stick to fruits for snacks.

The weekly food menus allows you to see where and which days you might be short on fruit, and where you can add it in. Snacks, or change one evening cooked meal for a small meal and follow with a big bowl of fruit salad, with all the fruits that the family likes.

When if comes to family meal planning, weekly food menus are seriously underrated. They save time, even if you do it yourself, but there also a great way of getting the family to help you out. They ease the last minute rush and stress of deciding what you're going to eat on any given day. They also allow you to pick meals to make that will fit into your schedule and life.

But as importantly, they give you a chance to look over what you're going to put in your mouth for the week, and to check it for healthiness and nutritional value, for you and the family. Because while others in the family might not need to lose weight, they still need a healthy diet.

If what you're planning to eat for the week, you wouldn't feed the rest of the family...ask yourself why?

Leave the Weekly Food Menus page and go back to the Healthy Meal Plans

Leave the Weekly Food Menus page and go back to the Life and Losing Weight Home Page