Weight Loss Surgery Cookbook

Chapter 4

The Art of Meal Planning

In This Chapter

▶ Finding out the benefits of planning ahead

▶ Exploring how to plan meals

▶ Navigating the grocery store for healthy shopping

▶ Getting acquainted with nutrition and ingredient labels

E

ver feel like you’re spinning your wheels where meal planning is

concerned? If you’re like many people, you spend a lot of time wandering

around the grocery store but end up

✓ Without the components of a complete meal

✓ Throwing a lot of uneaten food away

✓ With outrageous grocery bills

✓ With a bunch of food in the cart that wasn’t planned for

By spending a little time upfront and then just a few minutes each week in

planning, you can have healthy home-cooked meals every day.

You may think you don’t have time to cook, but surely you can make 20 to

25 minutes available. It’s not too much to ask after you have invested in

weight loss surgery. Don’t you want to give yourself every opportunity to be

successful? You don’t have to entirely give up eating out, but if you take the

time to prepare even a few meals each week, you may find the food is better

and more satisfying (not to mention easier on the pocket book). A majority of

the recipes in this book take 25 minutes or less to prepare. Actual time before

serving may take longer because of marinating, baking, or chilling, but the

time you have to actively be doing something will be 25 minutes or less.

In this chapter we show you how to plan and organize your meals in order

to ensure you’re meeting your nutritional needs and become a smart and

efficient grocery shopper. The system we present in this chapter works really

well if you give it a chance. Commit to using it for a few weeks. It won’t take

long before you’re able to see real time and money savings. Like anything

else, it becomes a habit. You are, after all, forming lots of new habits for this

new life you have.