Here is the simplest approach to getting started with the food plan:
You are going to choose the same breakfast and snacks to eat all week long. Get lunch from your local natural food store deli and then cook only three nights this week for dinner.
Let’s take this step by step:
STEP ONE: I want you to choose one breakfast, and eat it all week. Of all the meals, breakfast is the one that has the most redundancy, and this is fine – as long as this is a balanced meal. There are over 120 balanced breakfast recipes on this site. You might choose the ‘Vanilla Breakfast Oatmeal’ recipe to eat this week and then, next week, you might choose to make the ‘Power Green Smoothie’ recipe.
STEP TWO: choose the same AM snack and the same afternoon snack to eat all week.
Here is an example:
AM snack: 7 almonds and a medium apple
Afternoon snack: handful of rice crackers with 2 tablespoons of hummus
This makes shopping easy! Purchase a bag of almonds, 7 medium apples, a package of rice crackers and one container of hummus and you are set!
STEP THREE: purchase seven servings of gluten free soup from your local natural food store deli. Let them do the cooking for you. These are fresh prepped soups, and not the canned version. Simply make sure that the soup has some protein in it – chicken, beef, beans, or lentils. You want to eat around 1.5 – 2 cups of a hearty soup; this is a good serving size for lunch.
With one quick and easy shopping trip, you now have a plan for breakfast, your AM snack, lunch and your afternoon snack for an entire week AND the cool thing is, that you are eating on a whole foods eating plan with minimal prep.
Now let’s talk about dinner. Two of my main goals when designing this program were:
- To maximize nutrition AND Enjoyment
- To create a whole foods eating plan with minimal cooking
I mean really, why cook nightly when you can cook 2-3 times a week and eat all week long?
STEP FOUR: For dinner, I want you to cook three times a week. Each time you cook, make 3-4 servings. If you cook three nights, making three servings each time you cook, this will make nine servings each week. This will offer seven nights of meals PLUS extra servings to freeze.
You can start to use these extra servings for lunch and rotate these in with the soups that you continue to get from your local natural foods store deli. Use this simple approach to start your program. Each week, change up your breakfast and snack choices. This will help to keep your shopping list simple and yet, offer you enough variety to keep your taste buds interested.