Save your time and sanity with meal planning

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Hi guys, Wendy here. Welcome to the healthy and thriving career moms podcast, your weekly dose of inspiration and motivation for thriving with your healthy habits, especially in the midst of the crazy mom juggle. I get that you're busy and that taking time for you is not always easy, but I'm here to help.

So let's jump in.

Hi everyone. And welcome to episode 7. I'm going to be

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sharing one of my best time-saving hacks for busy moms. Well, certainly for me, it's an absolute game changer. It's something I've been doing for a few years now, and it has helped cut so much decision fatigue, so much mental stress, trying to think of all the different things I need to do.

And that is meal plan. Now I know that might not seem like the most exciting topic, but let's be honest. Like how many of us struggle with that

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time? Sucking energy, sapping, mental sucking energy of thinking about what we're going to feed our hungry families for dinner time or wishing you could be more organized so that you can.

Have more healthy options in there to feed your family or having the best intentions to meal plan. But you struggle with the time or time to actually do any batch cooking or any of the tips that have previously been shared with you because. Ah, I just don't have time for it, Wendy, will I get it? I get you.

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You're a busy mom. You're spinning many plates and unless you love cooking, and even that is an exciting for everyday rushed dinners, dinner becomes such a chore. And the last thing you feel like doing or thinking about and putting dinner on the table becomes such a mental load. So picture this. Walking through the door after a busy day, and knowing it's going to take approximately 20 minutes to warm up the lovely, healthy, and fulfilling meal that you have

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pre-prepared or going to whip up in that 20 minutes.

And you know that your kids will eat it too, because that's a big one for us moms. Isn't it is knowing that your family's going to eat it with all their different likes and dislikes and all the things that go with it. So does this sound too good to be true? Well, it is good and it can be true. Meal planning may feel like it's reserved for the Uber organized busy moms.

You know, the ones with unicorns who bake all their own cakes too, but

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here are the key reasons I do my best to do it. Number one, it cuts stress and it saves time, no more panic trips to the shops or shoving snacks into your kid's mouth. While you're trying to make dinner after a long, busy day. Number two, it helps the budget.

So most people nowadays are watching their household budgets. And with a bit of planning, you can dramatically save on the bottom line, especially when you consider the rising costs of food in this day and age

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number three, it cuts food waste. So you can ditch that guilt that you feel when you're wasting food.

And you can also, you do your bit for the environment because actually food waste is mostly due to poor place. So also think about what you can do with your leftovers. Number four, it helps us eat healthier. So most busy moms want to nourish their families with nutritious food. And this can be very hard to do when you're on the hop and you're rushing about, and we grab

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what's easiest and not always what we want to have to be able to serve our bodies with good nutritious.

Also variety. Everyone has struggled with fussy eaters. It could actually, that could be you that's the fuss eats up, perhaps not always just the kids, but you might find yourself stuck in a rut of making the same meals over and over again, just because you know exactly what you need to get and that everyone will eat it.

So meal planning actually forces you to try new things. Now, meal planning has saved.

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Hours and hours during the week. And it's really helped me reduce my mental load as a. Because that decision fatigue, honestly, that worrying in your brain when you're sat there at work or wherever you are during the day, and you think, oh, what's for dinner tonight.

What am I going to do at what I'm going to get? What a rush to go to stop the shop. So I don't like that mental load. Can you just imagine that scene, as I described at the start, where you come in. You can put something quick on or you have something pre-prepared that you can take out. I want

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this for you too.

You all deserve as busy moms to have the Headspace, not to have to think about feeding your families every single evening, because it's just, it's so difficult. And it's one less thing we need to worry about. If we can just. A bit more organized with a little planning and consistency. This one habits can truly transform your day-to-day life.

So I'm going to share my top meal planning tips to get you inspired and get you

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organized. But before I do that, I just want to jump to my subscriber of the week. I just honestly love seeing your ratings, your reviews, and just hearing from you and all the lovely things that you have to say. It really does make my day.

And I really, really do appreciate you as a busy mom taking the time to do this because I know finding the time to do these things is not always easy, but I just want to go to my subscriber of the week, which is Jillian Crewdson, who has said: Wendy surrounds

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herself with smart, interesting, brave entrepreneurial, and often very funny experts within their field.

This podcast is Wendy's opportunity to share all she has learned by working with the best coupled with Wendy's expertise, passion, and energy, and helping moms to have more of what they want. Need desire. Aspire to personally. This is a truly wonderful 20 minutes of my week. I learned something every time I listen and it acts as a reminder for me to keep focused on my own goals.

Thank you so much, Wendy. Oh, thank you. Jillian. You've made my

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day, my week with that review and I'm so appreciative of it. Right. Let's crack in to my top tips. So for the note takers in the back, or if you're, if you're driving, obviously not taking notes right now, number one is get organized. So check what you've already got in your pantry and the fridge and the.

As well, that's a key one. There's so much lurking in the freezer. So much stuff that we throw in there. And we forget about, so a little tip on

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that is just to make sure that you write it very clearly on it, because I don't know about you, but sometimes I'll put things into plastic containers and I'll put them in the, in the fridge and I'll be like, what is that?

And then I play the guessing game. Does anyone play the guessing game where they're like, oh, and leave that to the frost a bit before I can figure out what is actually in there. So if you don't know what you've got, you tend to then overbuy or not buy what you need. And that's clutter that you have, you know, the cupboard full of all the tins.

I used to laugh growing up. My mom's pantry.

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I'd be like, mom, do we even, what is this? Even pulling out this old tin of something, I don't know. Way past its expiry date. So I actually write a really lean, I have a very small pantry. I don't have loads of space. So I just have this pantry where I like to keep everything in view.

I could put it back out in the utility room where I've got a lot more cupboard space, but I think if it's out of sight, it's out of. So I like everything to be in my view in front of me and be able to see what I've got. And then I keep like a

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running inventory of things. So I know that I always want to have some essentials.

I always want to have some kidney beans and chickpeas, um, tinned, tomatoes, things like that that are really easy to just whip up meals and have there in case you don't have fresh ingredients in. So I have, you know, tins of tuna or tins of coconut milk, so to make curries and all sorts of easy things.

Just have those essential stocks in my pantry. So that just cuts down. And then what I do is I'll be able to see what I'm

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doing my shop each week. I'll be like, oh, okay, well, I need to just to keep my stocks at like a baseline level. I need another tin of tuna. I need that. So it just makes shopping and sorting your life out so much.

Number two is create an organized cooking space with the essentials that you need. So pack away stuff that you don't use and make it a pleasurable experience to cook. So I've really engineered my kitchen to be set up. Look like when we moved house three years ago, we moved. I mean, I'm so grateful for our home.

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We live in a lovely home in Norfolk, but where we used to live, I'd actually, we'd built like our dream kitchen and I'd literally built this gorgeous kitchen. That was just everything I ever desired and wanted. And when we moved, I moved into a less than amazing kitchen compared to what we just built. So I've really had to grow into loving my kitchen and setting it up in a way that really sort of suits me and how I like to cook and just thinking about, well, all right, when I'm doing that, I'll

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need my boards there and I'll need my knives there and organizing my drawers and everything and just making it really easy experience.

So I'm not like walking to the ones that have kitchens, get that and where's that. And where's that. And I just keep everything really tidy, really organised. So think of it, like creating a capsule wardrobe in the kitchen, you want to just have everything there, everything in view that you're using. And then maybe something that I don't use very often to be fair.

There's not like maybe my cause I'm not, I'm not a very good banker. So perhaps my. The beating

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thing is I don't even know what they call. Those are like under the kitchen sink. Cause like, I don't really get to those very often, but now that my mom's living with us, she's doing a lot more baking with Jesse.

So those are getting used a bit more, but yeah, so stuff like that is not in my view, but everything that I'm using, including like my spice rack, I've got them all on this lovely pull-out tray. So I can just see everything and I can read the tops of what they are rather than pulling out every bottle.

What's that what's that was that. So just making it very organic. Number three.

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Download a meal planning app. So you can actually check out, I've got a Lincoln in a blog that I've written about this, and I'll link to this in the show notes, the best meal planning apps, which are either free or there's a few of them that you pay a few quid for.

So getting a meal planning app, if you're more of a digital person is such a game changer and such a time saver. And one of my absolute favorite meal planning apps is 500. So five dinners.com is run by husband and wife,

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Theo and Anna Michaels. And honestly, it is incredible. It's like what I say to people it's like the best of having a meal delivery service, but also having someone do your grocery shopping for you in one.

So what they do is they, so Theo is the chef. So he's a former master chef finalist. So he takes. And creates these incredible quick, easy family dinners. They've got three kids themselves, so they're busy. And so they have these amazing, lovely meals that you get, and then it organizes. So you can pick like, okay, these are the ones I fancy.

And

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then it gives you all the ingredients and then even sort, sort, according to category of how you would shop. So like your frozen items, fresh items, all that kind of thing. And then it spits out your shopping list. And then you can literally load that into your online shop. Order it, and it gets delivered to your door and then you've got your recipes and you can cook.

So it's just, oh my goodness. It's such a game changer. And one of the things that I have in my free meal planner, which again, I'll link to the show notes is actually a 50% off discount code to get access

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to that meal planning service. So that is one that I highly, highly recommend to all busy moms out there.

The other tip I wanted to share with you on that category of getting organized is to book time in your diary. So that which gets scheduled gets done. So I book a time in my diary, which is usually a Saturday or sort of Sunday morning, and I will do a bit of batch cooking, at least sort of three family meals for the weekend.

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And those are the easy things, the things that freeze well, the chilies, the veggie curries, things like that, that you can just bang in the freezer so that in the morning of you can take them out. It can be defrosting in the sink through the day. And then when you get home, you can put that on the stove heat.

That that's where I sort of the envision of like walking in and having a meal prepared and putting on some rice maybe or something else. And having that meal on the table in 20 minutes. So I know that you might think, well, Wendy, I don't have time to batch cook, but there are some really

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handy things that you can do.

So batch ideas, you can take mince and you can chop up loads of veggies in it and then hand blend it down to disguise it so that you've got. Loads of veg in there for your kids, then you can use this tip for spaghetti. So all you could use spiralized carrots or courgettes bolonaise to make a healthy lasagne , maybe with some brown rice pasta sheets or butternut sheets.

So again, you're getting more veg or more complex carbohydrates, and then you can also to that same mince , like these are just different

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ways to do it. You could add some spice and kidney beans into it and make a batch of chili. So you can have one kg of mince that you can then. Section off into a bolonaise into a lasagne and into a chili.

And you can actually even make that chili a vegetarian chili. Like I actually think a veggie chili is so delicious with carrots and different kidney beans and black beans, and it's just lovely winter warming things. And as I say, you could even just make these all veggie chili or corn

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mince or whatever it is that you prefer for your dietary preferences.

But those are just ways that you can. I also love, the idea of like cooking once and then eating three times and only having to clean up once. Because again, that is a huge, time-saver not having to cook and clean up every single time you come to do it. So that is a really big one for me is to book that time.

And I'm always so grateful for myself when I do it, because at the time I'm thinking, oh, I've got to carve out an hour quickly to do all of this or even an hour and a half. But when it comes to the mid

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week and I'm tired and I'm knackered, and I can just warm up a meal and have it on the table in 10 minutes.

Oh, Wendy. Well done. You well done, but carving out that one hour or 90 minutes that has now saved you so much time this week, honestly, it's such a game changer. Another tip is to get inspired. So have themed nights and get the family involved in ideas like meat-free Monday or fajita Friday. I mean, you can use Instagram and Pinterest

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for loads of ideas on this, but screenshot these and take pics out of recipe, books and magazines.

We have. Leave arch file like from years ago. And we just fall in recipes that we see in magazines, or, you know, that you print off. Like my husband has a stack of recipes is always printing off. I'm like, you need to file it away, like so that we can always come and see, right. We want a recipe on this and we can just easily find it rather than going on, Google finding another thing and then printing it off.

And that's another piece of paper it's like was probably in the fall.

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Yeah, that is just another thing. Just to get inspired and just take that 10 minutes just to brain dump and think of what have we not eaten in a while and like getting all those ideas. So number four is to book delivery slots and choose a shopping day.

So book your delivery slots in advance. So I do love getting a delivery. I know some people prefer to do their shopping online and I totally get that. But for me, it has been such a time saver to be able to have my

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shopping. Delivered to me. And yes, like that control person freaking me wants to really like, have everything selected.

But at the same time, it saves me so much time. And, you know, you can even get these brilliant delivery parcels . We have fun with Tesco where we get a four hour window and yeah, the availability is great. We get two fresh deliveries a week to keep us top top and stop us rushing to the shop for top-ups, which again is such a huge time.

So, if you though prefer to shop in person, then try

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setting a day every week, which will help keep you on track. And you can also download like my husband and I, we have a shared grocery list app. We actually use the Microsoft app to do it's called to-do. I'll put it in the show. And that is actually a free app that anyone can download and you can link your calendars.

So when I add something that runs out, if I'm cooking, something runs out, I add it to the shopping list. And then when my husband looks at the grocery list and loads it all in our basket, which is his job each week, we talked about that on previous episodes, you know that now,

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then he can look at the list and tick it off.

And then I know it's done and it's out of my Headspace and I don't have to think about it. So that way you can double up. Yeah, that just obviously helps save time and energy and not having to forget things and get back and say, oh, I've got to go out and get that again. Oh, no. Saves on all of that. Number five is to buy seasonal and organic way possible.

So shopping seasonally reduces your risk of produce losing vital nutritional value. And if you can't do this considered buying frozen as the

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vegetable frozen at the source. So locking in all that goodness. So I don't actually have a lot of fresh items in my fridge. You'd be quite surprised. I might need to put a picture on, on social to prove this and show you.

Yeah. I just have a lot of frozen stuff. So I flash, boil and fry a lot of stuff and then I'll freeze it so that I've got it. So it's easy. So I'll chop up if something's about, like, if I can see the mushrooms are going to hit the best before used by date, I'll just chop them up and freeze them and then I'll just take them out and I can use them for a quick, easy stir fry.

So

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it's all about saving time in that way to save time in the long run. The other thing is to buy organic where possible to cut down exposure to toxins and pesticides on your food. But I appreciate the cost often of this. So if you can't do this, then do your best to buy the dirty dozen. So these are the things that have the most chemically, they didn't Foos.

And, you know, you can actually Google dirty dozen and it's clean 15. So the dirty dozen other things with the most chemically Laden toxins in it, The

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clean 15 other things that are, you could probably get away with buying, not organic because they've got less pesticides and all that kind of thing, but regardless, always wash everything.

So that's been a real game changer for me, the dirty dozen and the clean 15, which you can Google. And as I say, I've got a little thing on this that I'm going to post on social, that you can just download and save to your phone and then you've got it. And it's. Number six is the 50% rule. So make sure you load up your plate with like 50% vegetables and salad and the rest with quality

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protein, like legumes, beans, lean meats, and carbohydrates as your obviously carbohydrates and focus on complex carbohydrates, which take longer to release that glucose, that energy into your bloodstream.

So things like brown rice, Keene, water, squashes, and vegetable. A great source of carbohydrate because they stay in your blood sugar. You don't get that rollercoaster crash up and down. So those are great things, especially for kids eating them, you know, for them getting and having more energy for longer.

Number seven. And my final tip, I want to share with you is

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double up on your leftovers. So personally, I love leftovers today. Actually I ate so many leftovers. We had leftovers for lunch and the leftovers. So making a bit extra and having that in the fridge ready for lunches. The next day is such a time and money saver.

So this definitely stops me buying unhealthy lunch options on the go or worse going, shopping, hungry. So you can whip up a stew, a soup. You could freeze excess fruit to make a smoothie or blitz your vegetables to make a sauce. Some fresh pasta that you can just whip up at home, especially with lots of us

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working from home nowadays more so.

So having a weekly meal plan is just such an ideal way to cut the stress as a busy mom. So knowing what you're going to make ahead of time goes a long way to eliminating that daily stress from your life and saving you money in the long run as well. And it will also inspire you to cook healthier options instead of panic buying.

Less healthy options or getting a takeaway. And when you're organised, you can be assured of having plenty of nutritious fruit and veg in your meals.

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So you're thinking that these tips are all good and well, but how do I actually do it? So I've got you completely covered with my free meal planner, which I will link to in the show notes.

So I'm excited to give you this meal planner as a tool to assist you with busy mum life. And I've got some fantastic discount codes in there. I already spoke about five dinners.com already, but also just some other tips and tricks and some other discount codes for some other services that I personally use that will go such a long way to helping you.

So

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make sure that you jump on that you get my meal planner. So in it, you've got a. All sorts of resources that are going to help you there. I'm actually, it's going to have the dirty dozen and clean 15 picture for you there. My cupboard and freezer essentials and example meal planner, my blank meal planner, which you can then print out and stick on your fridge.

That's what I do. My favorite recipes and also some of my further top meal planning, hacks, and tools. So I hope that episode today has helped. It's inspired you. It's motivated you to think,

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right? It is worth my time to carve out the time to do the meal planning, to do a little bit of batch cooking so that I'm on the front foot for the week.

And that I am setting myself up to be the most healthy and thriving that I can be. So until next episode, take care, guys. God bless. Speak to you soon. Thank you for listening to the healthy and thriving career moms. But more resources to support you on your journey. Visit my website, Wendy griffith.co.uk.

And please also come join our Facebook community healthy and

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thriving. This is a safe, no judgment space where we share and inspire each other. And if you got value from today's episode, I'd be so grateful. If you would share this with other career moms who would benefit to either through social media or leaving a five-star review, you can find me at Wendy Griffith, live healthy on Instagram and Facebook until next time God bless.

Stay healthy and keep thriving.