{Magnetic Meal Planning}

I used to post my meal plans for the week on Mondays. Not so much lately... So, in the spirit of being a better meal planner, I found this great reader post at IHeart Organizing. This mom has made magnetic tabs to place on her magnetic dry erase calendar to help her meal plan for a month at a time.

And all her recipes are kept in binders.

You could essentially create the same thing by just writing on the dry erase board, but the magnets do make it look neat and clean.

A couple other good resources I found are Clean Mama, she did a whole meal planning series and IHeart Organizing's post about her own family.

Meal Planning

Trying to get back on the band wagon... Aaron and I started going back to the gym in December. With my new membership, I received two free personal training sessions. The best piece of advice my trainer gave me was that 80% of the changes I want to see are going to come from my nutrition. So, I enlisted my friend Jenn, a nutritionist, to help me come up with some ways to make better choices. A few guidelines we decided on were:

1. Eat 5 to 6 times a day. This keeps my metabolism running all day.
2. Eat 20 grams of protein at meals. This will keep me fuller longer because it's harder for my body to break down and digest proteins. I would like to hit this goal with my snacks as well.
3. No starchy carbs at dinner. This means no white pastas, rice, potatoes, etc. I'm giving myself one day of allowance. Eventually I would like to turn this into my "meatless day"

So, here I am at the starting line.

Weekly Menu
	Breakfast	Snack #1	Lunch	Snack #2	Dinner	Snack #3
Monday	Smoothie	Cottage Cheese & Fruit	Lettuce Wraps	Hummus & Carrots	Curried Lentils & Chickpea Stew	Serbert & Almonds
Tuesday	Egg Whites, Toast, Yogurt	Smoothie	Lettuce Wraps	Air popped popcorn	Pasta Night	Serbert & Almonds
Wed	Egg Whites, Toast, Yogurt	Smoothie	Leftovers	Pretzels & string cheese	Chicken Stuffed with Spinach, Pine Nuts & Feta	Serbert & Almonds
Thursday	Egg Whites, Toast, Yogurt	Smoothie	Pita Sandwich with Veggie Chips	Hummus & Carrots	Mexican Tortilla Skillet	Serbert & Almonds
Friday	Smoothie	Cottage Cheese & Fruit	Pita Sandwich with Veggie Chips	Air popped popcorn	White Bean Chicken Chili	Serbert & Almonds
Saturday	Smoothie	Cottage Cheese & Fruit	Leftovers	Pretzels & string cheese	Fish Foil Packets	Serbert & Almonds
Sunday	Smoothie	Cottage Cheese & Fruit	Out	Hummus & Carrots	Tarka take-out	Serbert & Almonds

Monday Menu Planning

Well there hasn't been a lot of menu planning the last few weeks thanks to wonderful friends and family. We've had meals brought to us several days during the week and we couldn't be more grateful. It's made life so much easier. Especially since I'm still wrapping my brain around how to build a newly daily schedule for both the girls. Thankfully they like to take an afternoon nap at the same time in the afternoon. Gives me a couple of hours to think about dinner, get laundry folded, or just sleep. I'm attempting to cook a couple of times this week and our meal plan looks like this: Monday - dinner brought Tuesday- Spinach Pasta Wednesday- dinner brought Thursday- Beef Enchiladas Friday- dinner brought Saturday- tarka take out I realize I'm getting really boring with our menu but that's bound to happen with a newborn baby in the house. One thing is for sure after this week our dinners will look a bit different. I'll be starting to cook lighter and healthier in order to help shed some of this baby weight. More on that tomorrow. Any healthy dinner recipes that you love?

Monday Menu Planning & some helpful hints

Week of May 30th

Sunday: FEND (Aaron grabbed Torchy's Tacos and I had a bowl of cereal)

Monday: Aaron Grilling: BBQ Chicken with foil potatoes
Tuesday: Fettucini with Cilantro Jalapeno Pesto
Wednesday: Crock pot Pork Tenderloin
Thursday: Aaron Grilling: Hamburgers
Friday: Spanish Paella adapting from here
Saturday: Taco Night

Helpful hints: Themes help. 
I noticed that I usually make one pasta a week, Aaron grills once a week, use my crock pot once a week etc. If I start with these "themes", i.e. "pasta", it's easier to fill in the blanks next to that "theme", i.e. Fettucini Alfredo.

But remember: 
Things come up, people get sick/tired, plans change and you can always choose to switch things up, make something the next week or not at all and order a pizza. Menu planning isn't a strict set of rules for me causing extra stress because I forgot to defrost the chicken or don't have a can of tomato paste. Instead, it's a game plan or rough outline that makes the day move more smoothly so I don't have to worry about what we are eating for dinner!

I also found great Menu Planning Boards on Pinterest and had to share!

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