Backwards (Menu) Planning

Sometimes, menu-planning is just too much.   

Sometimes life runs away with you and the best planned menus go straight out the window.  The past couple weeks (at a very conservative estimate) have been like that around here.  So what to do?

Backwards Planning!

The idea is that instead of planning a week (or a month) in advance,  you assess your meals after you've had them. Let me break it down:

1) Plan as usual-- to the best of your abilities.  If you can't manage this step, don't sweat it.  Write the main meal in pencil on the planner/ calendar page of your choice.  

2) Use it as a guideline, but merrily disregard if need be and eat what you can russel up--even if that includes multiple days of takeout.

3) Record what you actually ate on the original planner/ calendar page in pen. You can see where I scribbled in the changes on my own planner pages.

4) At the end of the month (or week if you want to do it in smaller chunks), re-assess the menus you originally planned. 

        --Are there any easy meals that you find yourself preparing when stressed/ crunched for time?

         --What foods/ types of food do you turn to most often?

        --Can you make healthy tweaks and changes to those meals? 

One of my favorite tricks is to keep a couple bags of salad in the fridge.  I HATE wasting food, so I make sure that I eat it before it goes bad--even if what I want is actually a hamburger from a drive through.  Also, it eliminates my excuse of being pressed for time since it takes about 30 seconds to open a bag of salad and put it into a bowl--5 minutes if I chop and add some fresh fruit or tomatoes, some nuts, avocado, or cheese.  Although salad is not as emotionally fulfilling as a hamburger, I do feel better after eating it.  So there's that.

Other ideas might be to have a couple healthier options stashed in your freezer.  I always have veggie patties on hand, but when I was single I always had one or two Lean Cuisine-type frozen meals & cans of soup stashed for especially hard days.  I also usually manage to pick up a roasted chicken from the market--some days I simply rip it apart and eat it like an ogre (which is very satisfying), other days I might make something with it.  The point is, it's on hand, it's cooked, it's ready when I need it.

A little insight & some small changes can make a big difference.  I hope that helps you to find what works for you. :)