Health Benefits of Meal Planning
Meal planning is something you may know a little about and may even be practicing on some level. The issue with meal planning is that you may not know how it benefits you outside of your normal workout or exercise routine. Here are a few of the ongoing and overall health benefits that you can obtain from simple meal planning for a week at a time to a month at a time.
Easy Caloric Monitoring
One of the biggest health benefits of meal planning is the ability to monitor your caloric intake. Monitoring this can help in a variety of ways. For example, if you are attempting to drop a large amount of weight you will want to make sure your calories fall below what you need for your current weight. For example, if you are 200 pounds your caloric intake may be around the 2,000 calorie a day mark. If you want to maintain that weight, then the intake is fine. If you want to drop weight, you may want to lower your caloric intake to 1,500 or less. Meal planning will help you stay on track with this easily.
Reduced Stress Levels
When you handle meal planning and stick to that plan, you can reduce your stress. You are no longer having to worry about missing a meal, not having meals ready, or forgetting to set out meals to thaw. Though this may not seem like it would cause a lot of stress, it can be domino effect. If you have a bad day, you don’t add the meal planning aspects of time constraints and stress to it. This little bit of stress reduction can help your overall stress and give you more downtime in the evenings after a long day.
Reduced Chance of Dropping Your Goals
When you don’t have meals ready, you may just grab whatever is there. For example, if you have had a rough day and don’t want to cook, you may grab a pizza or something quick. You may even think you are doing well if you grab a salad. The truth is, a fast food salad can contain a lot of calories that you aren’t thinking about. This can derail you from your goals, cause you to have a higher calorie intake, and can seem to be an easier option overtime that will cause you to completely go off your diet. Meal planning avoids all of this.
Reduced Preservatives
A health benefit you may not consider is the reduced preservatives your body would be taking in. For example, a lot of prepared meals you buy at the store have either high amounts of sodium or sugars. When you make the food at home, you can reduce this amount significantly making your meal plan an increasingly healthier option to store bought convenience foods.
There are other health benefits, but these are the ones you are likely to notice in your life first. Remember, if you want further health benefits or different benefits then consider altering your meal planning to fit those health benefit goals in your daily life and long-term health goals.
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