Meal Planning for a New Semester

Leave the exhausting and stressful mealtime routine in 2023.  This year conquer meal planning and meal prepping to truly fit into your routine.  Create habit sandwiches to relieve the mental load of constantly answering “What’s for dinner?” and bring more ease into your kitchen.

1. Look at how your schedule has changed

   1. Trying to meal plan, grocery shop, or meal prep on the same days as before might not work.

   2. How can you build habits into this new schedule?

2. Seasonality of Ingredients

   1. majority of fresh produce isn’t at its most flavorful season

      1. Opt for Root Veggies and frozen or canned fruits and vegetables

      2. This can be a great time to purchase ingredients in bulk.

         1. Be sure to have adequate space to save these items

         2. Label everything so you can keep track of how old it is

         3. Keep an easy to reference list of items (so you don’t have to dig through the freezer all the time)

3. Meal Prepping

   1. Start Small

      1. Make more servings than normal and save extras

      2. Wash and chop all of your fruits and veggies

   2. Cook extra of a protein to keep on hand

   3. Pair cooking tasks based on the appliance you are using

   4. This is a great time to find a lunch routine that works for you

4. Habit Sandwiches

   1. Take a habit that you are already doing and add something new to the beginning and something new to the end

   2. Take two habits that you already to and smush a new one in the middle

Spring into Summer

You have about 20 weeks until school is out for summer break. It takes time to establish a new habit or adjust your current habits, but think of how many weeks of flow you could experience by strategically planning these habit shifts and habit sandwiches now!