According to the Mayo Clinic, we can minimize our risk of breast cancer simply by limiting alcohol, controlling our weight, and making other healthy choices. We all know that eating healthy will greatly increase our quality of life. However, when we’re trying to live a healthier lifestyle, we always wonder what the “secret” to functioning at our highest capacity really is. Is it counting calories? Eating healthier foods? Exercising more? Many healthcare professionals contend that consistency and routine are the keys to health and happiness. Regular exercise, consistent sleeping patterns, and eating schedules could help you feel and look better than ever. The best way to establish consistency in your eating patterns is to make a healthy weekly meal plan each week. This way, you’ll be adhering to healthy meal planning that is complemented by exercise and sleep and that you can execute consistently as the weeks go by.

How to Make a Healthy Weekly Meal Plan

There are plenty of ways to go about making a healthy meal plan, however your meal plan should take the following factors into account for optimal success:

• Plan not only what you’re going to eat, but also times to eat. To speed up your metabolism, try planning mini meals several times a day, eating every 3-4 hours.
• Plan out specific meals that you will eat and take your nutrient levels into consideration. If you are magnesium deficient, implement more spinach salads into your diet or if you’re iron deficient, plan to eat more egg yolks or dried fruit.
• Make sure to include snacks to tide you over and always have food on you so that you resist going out to eat or snacking on unhealthy items.
• Include a grocery list filled with items that you will need to achieve your healthy weekly meal plan. This will help you keep focused when you’re at the grocery store and leave the store with everything that you need right in your shopping bags.
• Also include exercise times in your meal plan. This will help you build some accountability into your meal plan. If it’s written down and your schedule is free in that time frame then there’s no excuse for missing that 7:00 am work out.
• Note that you should be drinking 8-10 8 oz. glasses of water a day, about 64 oz. If you’re exercising heavily or if you indulge in high sodium meals, add more water to your diet.
• Have a weight log if you’re also trying to implement weight management into your healthy weekly meal plan. Once or twice a week, weigh yourself in the morning to stay motivated. Don’t abuse the scale, however. The numbers are sometimes deceiving and you should take factors like water retention into account when you’re weighing in. Make sure to have a pair of jeans or dress that you try on periodically to track your weight loss, instead.
• You can track a variety of things in your healthy weekly meal plan, including how full you feel after certain meals to dictate levels of satiation or satisfaction of certain foods. You can also track mood or energy levels to track your progress.
• Plan when you need to go to bed so that you get ample sleep. The more sleep, the more time your body has to re-energize and reboot.

Healthy weekly meal plan can help you do much more than plan out your meals: it can give you a way to track and gauge your moods, weight, size, grocery lists, and sleep patterns so that you can achieve consistency and, ultimately, feel great.