Welcome back, we are going through the examples of some practical ways that you can include minimalism into your, you know, ingredients of what makes up your extraordinary life. We're going to talk about meal planning. So meal planning would fall into the first ingredient that is body, we have to make sure that we sleep well. We exercise and we eat well, while we eat. That's what it's going to feel our body. So meal planning is a tool that will help you save time, save money, and making sure that you are eating what you want to be eating.

It's okay to eat out. But if you're finding yourself eating out a lot, because you just don't have anything ready at home. If you're feeling frustration because you don't have enough time, or if you find yourself spending a lot of money. That's where meal planning can come in handy. What's most important is that you understand who you are, who's your internal chef, do you hate cooking? Do you do it out of pure necessity because there are solutions For people who feel that way for you, but learning about who you are, do you enjoy grocery shopping?

What's the realistic amount of time that you can block off in your calendar every day or every week or every month to look after your meals? Do you have a joy of cooking? What's your storage space? Like? What tools do you have in your kitchen? And what's your skill set?

Yeah, so at the end of the day is trying to make meal planning as fun as possible and as effective as possible for you. We have friends that they love cooking, and their meditation is getting home after work, getting in the kitchen and cooking a beautiful dinner. And for them that that's mine time. That's like meditation, social time, sometimes they have people over. So that's how they carry themselves down after a long day. For some others eating is always a struggle.

They don't like cooking. They just don't like and don't want to spend the time. For those mean planning can help them to do this as fast and as effectively as possible. We encourage you to be creative. This is our own board in our kitchen. So you'll see, just on the left hand side, we have a very scribbled list.

But that's where we keep track of the things that we've run out, run out of and is our grocery list that we can easily just take a picture before we go to the store, or make a quick list. We have space to write ourselves ideas. And then you can see on the right hand side, we have our lunch and dinner meals prepared. We've also since this picture has been taken, we do plan for our breakfast. Just because you know, having the plan means that there is no stress. We've already thought about it in advance.

So if we're tired and having a crappy day, it's okay foods on the food's ready and planned out. But if we're having like a day where we're like, you know what I feel like cooking, I'm gonna get in the kitchen. We can just erase what we had and do whatever we want. It actually gives us more freedom to be spontaneous, and prevents less issues of you know what's for dinner. I'm starving that hangry kind of moment because We already thought about it, don't worry about it that's already planned. It's pulled from the freezer.

We've got everything in the fridge that we need. And it takes a very short period of time. We do it every Sunday night. And we actually take turns. So it's pretty cool. As a partnership, we've we've agreed that you know, meal planning isn't the number one thing we love doing.

So we alternate. Yeah, um, we were finding as Samantha was saying sometimes that we were going to the game we were going to do activities in the evening, and they were coming home. And then it was like six 7pm 8pm. And we didn't have anything ready. And then with a, we were thinking, oh, let's have those lentils, but they're in the freezer, we forgot to take them out, or we don't have the energy to cook anything. When we have a meal planning set up.

We kind of we always cooking but we have more quantity we try to plan and then we just have to make sure that we take that out of the freezer or that we have the right ingredients in the fridge to cook whatever we want to cook and that removes the pressure of I don't have what I need. I have to go grocery shopping. And so you just end up going out and buying something that you didn't want to buy, and we're hungry. And the reality is, we don't waste anything like I used to as I was growing up, I can remember that it was one of my chores that I got paid to clean out the fridge on a monthly or bi monthly basis. And I always remember filling up a garbage bag with rotted food, food that had spoiled things that it expired. And you know that I would like this was the organizer and we clean everything lined everything up.

And then the fridge would have this like fresh start and we'd start the month over again and then over the month stuff would pile up. And with meal planning, it just doesn't seem it doesn't happen that we don't have that food waste. Because everything that we're buying, we know why we're buying it. The food we can see when we're doing the meal plan. We try to be really cognizant of like what's already in the fridge, what needs to be used up, you know, before those things goes bad, and that just translate into money saved less food waste on our planet, less energy zoomed and, you know, we're eating really well. In fact, I'm spending probably more more money On the things that I actually wanted to be buying, as opposed to just buying things, letting them waste and that was like taking my money and throwing it into a garbage can, you know, so that's how you can include minimalism in your life.

When it comes to meal planning. You can be intentional with how much you buy you can be intentional by understanding. What do you like doing? Do you like cooking? Do you like grocery shopping or not? How much time are you allowing for that to happen?

How much space do you have in your pantry cabinets kitchen. So how much food can you realistically buy? Sometimes we have clients that they go to Costco to another grocery store, and everything is on sale. So they buy a lot of quantity. They come home and they just don't have space to store it. So minimalism can help you decide.

I have this much space for toilet paper. I have this much space for tomato paste. I have this much space for like whatever you are buying, and I cannot buy more than that because it's not worth my time and energy. I will be saving a few dollars but is that worth it all the stress and frustrate That you will be feeling because you don't have the space. So just think about that. It's about setting the intention and making meal planning work for you.

And it's okay to have on the meal plan, you know, the nights that you're going out or the nights that you're just going to take, you know, a frozen meal and heat it up. So, at the end of the day, you can do whatever you want to do, and feel really comfortable that you are being who you want to be. We do have a lot more information when it comes to meal planning. My background was hospitality. And I worked a lot in in kitchens. So I've been really fortunate and I love cooking.

I love everything that goes behind it. So we try to share a lot quick recipes, healthy recipes. We've been one year eating a plant based diet and the things that we've learned from that and the people that have inspired us It really has made a big difference in our overall energy and how we feel in our bodies and our minds. So, yeah, yeah, so that's how you can apply minimalism when it comes to meal planning.