Where does nutrition fit on your calendar?

If you are serious about wanting to make changes around food, you need to fit it in your schedule.

Nutrition does NOT need to be complicated, and does not need to take a lot of time, but when we're LEARNING a new skill or trying a new thing, it's going to take some time, energy, and brain power to begin with!

When we're trying to make big nutrition changes to support someone's cholesterol or blood sugar, I often suggest that at the start, we might need to plan to dedicate an extra 3 hours or so in the week (in addition to what you're already doing) to food planning, prepping and shopping. Likely with time this number will decrease significantly, but at the start it will take time!

To have success with nutrition changes, we need to decrease decisions in the moment. This means putting a plan together in terms of meals throughout the week.  The plan does not need to be complicated - you can have the same breakfast every day, but we need to write it down for the week and put those ingredients on the grocery list and into the grocery cart and fridge for it to be successful.

So, what does this look like?

This time might look like…

Once a week (or more!):

- Planning breakfast, lunch and dinner through the week in order to put a grocery list together

- Going grocery shopping

- Washing or prepping fruits and vegetables

- Maybe making something like granola, egg bites, or protein balls to eat throughout the week if that's your thing

Daily (often nightly):

- Putting anything together for breakfast that's needed

 For example: Overnight oats in a jar, ingredients in a smoothie cup in              freezer, yoghurt in a container to go...

- Planning and/or packing lunch depending on what leftovers you have

- Getting things out of the freezer for dinner if needed, putting everything into a crock pot, making a marinade/dressing if needed...

Typically these daily things can be fairly straightforward if you have put the time and thought into the weekly things. 

As time passes, these pieces become more routine and feel much more straightforward. I can plan a weeks' worth of meals and put it into an online grocery order in less than 40 minutes - it's in my schedule to do this every Friday afternoon to pick them up on Saturday or Sunday.

I make granola (which takes about 20 min to put together once every two weeks) and then most of the rest of it is 20 minutes each night to pack up lunches as we clean up dinner. This works because the meal plan/grocery order is literally in my schedule and probably the most important thing that happens in my week to take care of myself and it trumps most other things on the weekend schedule! 

It's not easy to build these routines, but they're so valuable!

In health,

Dr. Janine