Meal Plan #1

Meal Planning is one of the best things you can do to stay healthy and eat nutritiously. It does take a bit of time, but you do it once, and then it will save you hours each week.

Lucky you, though, you don’t even have to come up with your own meal plans. Follow these ones instead (adapting as needed, or course)!

Meal Plan #1

Breakfasts

I almost always have the same thing for breakfast: Peanut Butter Pancakes. These yummy pancakes are easy to make, taste delicious, and offer a protein and iron boost first thing in the morning. Serve them with strawberries, kiwis, mangoes, or oranges so that the iron is even better absorbed.

Dinners

• Slow Cooker Spanish Rice with black beans, red pepper sticks and ½ orange for dessert (beans and rice together make a complete protein, and the Vitamin C in the red pepper and orange helps you absorb the iron in the beans)
• Slow Cooker Pasta Primavera with green salad and roasted caulifower (the Vitamin C in the cauliflower helps to absorb the iron in the whole wheat pasta). Fudge Chocolate protein bars for dessert (this will provide your protein)
• Savoury Rhubarb Lentil Curry
• Lemon-wine salmon with healthy Brazilian rice and kale salad

Lunches

• Kale salad with 1/3 cup extra almonds and a slice of bread and butter or margarine
• Leftovers (plan on making double batches when you cook the dinners, so you have leftovers for some lunches for the week ahead)
• Roasted mushroom sandwiches – pretty simple – slice mushrooms, add plenty of olive oil and some salt, transfer to a cookie sheet covered with aluminum foil, and roast/bake for 15 minutes in a 350 F oven. Add any vegetables your heart desires in between two pieces of bread, and off you go.

Snacks

• No bake energy bites
• Hummus and veggie sticks (It should be noted that once upon a time, I made my own hummus. Then I came to my senses and realized that making everything from scratch is great, but can’t be a priority when there’s a good alternative on the market, and there’s a million other things on the to-do list. So judge me, but I use commercial hummus. If you really do want to make your own, here’s a good recipe).
• Fruit and yogurt

Which recipes will you try? What will you substitute?

You might notice a distinct lack of meat in these meal plans. Other than fish, I don’t eat or cook meat. I was a full-on vegetarian for about 4 years, but I couldn’t get my iron up, so to avoid supplementation, I added fish back into my diet. My iron is still low, so off on the supplements I went again. Hopefully with some more tweaks to my diet, I’ll be able to go off them soon.