Meal-planning can help you cut costs and encourage you to make healthy food at home more often. But it does take some work. So, even though you know a meal plan will save time and effort in the long run, it’s not always easy to actually make it happen.
If you find yourself caught in that trap, try a registered dietitian’s trick for making a simple meal plan that won’t leave you bored halfway through the week.
Dietitian Tip of the Day: Make Weeknight Dinners Easy With This Protein Strategy
“Every Sunday, I come up with a meal plan for my family,” says Natalie Rizzo, registered dietitian and TODAY nutrition editor.
The plan only covers dinners, and the family usually does takeout once a week. So her meal plan covers six meals during the week, prioritizing plant-based protein and keeping dinners interesting.
“What I try to do is make a different protein every night,” she says, “because one I get bored eating the same thing every night.”
Why It Matters
If you have any kind of nutrition goals, meal-planning will make hitting them significantly easier. Whether you want to eat more fiber, hit your protein goal every day or reduce your salt intake, having some kind of strategy like this is essential.
Making a meal plan ahead of time can also help you save money at the grocery store and cut down on food waste.
But people who meal prep like this may find themselves eating the same thing frequently, or forcing themselves to eat a meal all week that they’re just not that excited about.
Rizzo’s strategy of planning weeknight meals ahead of time starts with the protein and intentionally switches up the ingredients. That way, she’ll always have a healthy plant-based protein at the center of the meal, but she won’t get bored by Wednesday.
How to Get Started
Rizzo starts her family’s meal plan with the protein. And she makes sure to choose a different protein for each night of the week and then plan the meal around it.
“I’ll make sure one night is a tofu night, one night is a bean night, one night is a lentil night and one night is a tempeh night,” she says. To change things up, about once a month, she’ll also make what she calls “faux meats,” which are foods like Beyond Burgers or Impossible meats.
It also helps to keep themed food nights in mind, like taco Tuesdays using black beans or pizza Fridays with cheese and chickpeas on top (it works, she swears). Or you might try making one night every week your pasta night or stir fry night, for instance.
That can help ease some of the mental load of trying to figure out what to eat every single night.
TODAY’s Expert Tip of the Day series is all about simple strategies to make life a little easier. Every Monday through Friday, different qualified experts share their best advice on diet, fitness, heart health, mental wellness and more.