I’ve spent way too much time the last two days planning meals for the next five weeks. I used to go grocery shopping weekly because I would go into the office once or twice a week and just do my shopping then (I live about 40 minutes from town, so just going to a normal supermarket or Costco would be a more than one-hour drive). Since COVID, I haven’t been doing into work, so I’ve been limiting grocery shopping to a roughly 5-week plan. That’s why the “Meals” today were beef-stuffed cabbage rolls and curried chicken with rice: Neither requires vegetables that don’t keep a long time.
So, I have now planned out my meals for the next five weeks or so. Obviously, things will likely change a bit, but in general I’ve been pretty good at sticking to my meal (not snack) plans for the last ≈nine months.
As someone might find this useful, I’ll go a bit into how I do this. To begin with, I have a spreadsheet that has my daily food that’s planned out. It tracks calories and macros and micros and vitamins, and it gives me a percentage each day so I know if I need to include more or less for a given day to meet my goals. I start every day assuming 14 gms of multi-grain Cheerios (for micronutrients that I don’t get) and 14 gms of Almonds (for Vitamin E). I add in a rotation of three different protein shakes, based on what Costco sells for protein powder, so Sunday might be vanilla, Monday chocolate, and Tuesday cookies-and-cream.
To that, I add in two meals – “lunch” and “dinner” (though it’s non-specific). I don’t eat breakfast, I never really have. The meals I make are usually very high protein relative to a modern American diet, all having >30 gms of protein, with my largest having >60 (chicken with brussels sprouts). They usually come in around 10–20 gms of fat each, and carbs vary a lot, from a low of about 15 gms up to a high near 70 gms (Thai noodle dishes; we’re excluding home-made pasta and pizza at this point).
I plan the meals based on what uses vegetables that expire the fastest. Though the first is always salmon, for Vitamin D, and it’ll go bad within ≈3 days. After the salmon, I usually have a mango-chicken stir fry, since the mangos can go off quickly. Usually stir fries of various sorts come after that since they have various vegetables, the above-mentioned chicken with brussels sprouts, and salads are usually prevalent in the first three weeks. As the vegetables peter out, I usually have meals that require less of them or ones that last longer, like broccoli is usually good for a month or more, as are potatoes, onions, carrots, etc. So things like chili come later on, or pad thai that uses re-grown scallions from the first week, or fried rice that uses carrots and frozen peas.
I plan to eat the same thing for a few days, usually, depending on how many each batch makes. I’ve stopped just loading up on it, so cooking a meal for dinner one night and having it for lunch and dinner the next and lunch the next … these days, I try to stick with it just once a day, and I fill in the gaps with either something else, or tamales (if I have them left-over), salad [with canned tuna or chicken; tuna only once a week due to mercury concerns], or chili. Those are my go-to “filler” meals. I also try to limit the higher carb things (noodles, rice) to once a day to allow a bit more freedom with other stuff, often pairing it with a very low-carb meal like chicken vindaloo or chili or, added last cycle, orange chicken (home-made!).
After I have those five items on my day – that’s two meals, the cereal, almonds, and protein shake – I look at how I’m shaping up for macros for the day. I’m usually around 80% of everything, but it varies considerably. I will usually add in a serving then of frozen dumplings. Again, I have three different types, and each has a different macros profile that I can put in depending on what I have room for. After putting in that primary snack, I am usually close to 100% on protein, and I’m hopefully still ≈10% down on fat or carbs or both. If I’m over on either, I will cut out the cereal (for carbs) or almonds (for fat). If I’m still low on protein, I add in string cheese: The Kroger-brand string cheese with the purple border has only 2.5 gms of fat, but 6 gms of protein (the blue border has 6 gms fat). So, I add up to three of those. If that puts me over on fat, I’ll cross that out and put in egg whites. We have chickens, so we have plenty of eggs.
Or, sometimes, I might just leave it. I might not quite get to my goal for the day, but for the week I’m still good. So, that’s fine. For example, January 22, I have in the cereal, a protein shake, and 3 pieces of string cheese. I had to cross out the almonds. The two meals are a “healthy” pasta with sausage, and bison with quinoa and vegetables. Both of those are high on fat (which is why I crossed out the almonds) but “low” on protein at only 36 and 33 gms, respectively. I usually pair a 30 gm with a 50 gm, but I didn’t in this case, so I’ll come in at only 88% of my goal on protein for the day. I’m at 99% for fat and 90% for carbs, but there’s not much that can give me the 16 gms of protein I need that has <1 gm fat or <20 gms carbs other than pure egg whites. But, for the week I’m good … so I just left it as-is.
I used to then go in and try to fill in the remainder of fats/carbs with other stuff, but over the last few months ad hoc snacking has put me over my limit before I’m through the day, so I’ve stopped doing that. That gives me freedom to do some baking and put that in if I want, or to have that piece of chocolate at night, or whatever. At least, in principle. As I said, this is how I plan, not necessarily how I execute that plan.
Then, I make the grocery list.
So, that’s what I’ve been doing the last two days, spending a few hours both days making my meal plan, which is now done through February 10. I’ll go to the store on Tuesday.
Oh, something else is that I’m trying to add new meals to the rotation, but with the requirement that they take <30 minutes. Not that they take <30 minutes for me to cook after some prep cook spends two hours preparing everything, but really only take 30 minutes or less. So, new to this rotation will be Thai basil beef, and chicken shawarma with pita, and making a return appearance that were new last rotation will be orange chicken and gingery ground beef.
So, how did I do today? As you can see above, reasonably well! I actually did finally exercise again, and I was even well below my calories, though the bread almost put me over on carbs. I decided not to have more almonds or even string cheese to raise me up on fat/protein because I should be over on protein tomorrow by how much I’m under today, and based on the last several weeks, I will almost certainly be over on fat some point this week when my willpower breaks down, so I might as well go into the week with some head room.
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