Steps for a successful food plan
Step 3. Get ready to shop.
Never go shopping without a list. Never make a list without making a plan first. Grocery stores are designed to sell you stuff you do not need, you will need to be armored against marketing and display bias. If you have made a plan and a list ahead of time find out if you can get produce or dairy products from a farmers market, roadside stand or CSA share. Make sure you have reusable grocery bags. This will help with waste and also it will help set a baseline for the amount (volume) of food needed for the week.
Do not, under any circumstances, go shopping hungary, without a list or when you are in a rush. These types of stress will make you susceptible to buying snacks, junk food and other items that will not serve a nutritional purpose.
Step 4. Go shop.
Plan this out ahead of time, make sure you have given yourself enough time to get to the places you’ll go. It is generally best to start a shopping trip by purchasing dry goods first, then moving to produce and perishable items last, but this might not work out geographically or logistically for some people, so I will just suggest that your route be thoughtful, and that it make sense to you and your schedule.
I find shopping at supermarkets and large stores to be very stressful; I wear earphones, and listen to fun music in order to help associate what I am doing with something that I enjoy, music. It may help to think of the meals that you will prepare and the time that your family will spend together, or any other positive association. The point is to make the collecting of the food that you will feed to your family a positive experience. Staying on a plan takes care and thoughtfulness; stress and negative feelings make it more difficult to put in the effort required to change and improve our experiences.
Step 1. Set out some ground rules.
Make time to meet as a family and discuss what kinds of meals everyone wants, what they don’t like, and what they would like to experiment with. This will have many other great side effects but the best is it creates a model for family communication. This should be a once or twice a year conversation so that seasons and changing tastes can be integrated.
Step 2. Make a schedule and a menu.
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This is essential to making the plan successful. This schedule starts with a planning day. This is a day that most or all family members can sit down together and plan out the weekly shopping, daily meals and recipes. During this family meeting talk about who is going to be around each day for meals. Find out how many meals will need to be made to go (sack lunch), and how many will be traditional sit down meals. This will help the family know when to put the most time and effort into meals and the family will be more informed about each other’s schedules.
When you have the schedule done, the fun part starts. Make a menu of foods that your family wants to eat, saving the best, most loved items for the times when you have the most time together. After you fill in all the meals that will need to be prepared, make your shopping list by writing out all of the ingredients that you will need. You will find that time and money savings can be increased by making smart use of the ingredients that you chose.
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