41. How to meal prep and still be an intuitive eater

Intuitive Eating tells us we should pay attention to our hunger and fullness signals, and decide what we want to eat based on what we truly desire at the time. If this is the case, how can we possibly plan ahead and pre-prepare meals and still eat intuitively? It is possible, and in this episode I'll explain how.


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Please note, this podcast is intended to be general information for entertainment purposes only. Any figures quoted are correct at the time of recording. As always, please seek the support of a registered professional before making changes to your diet or lifestyle⁠, or if you feel that you are affected by any of the topics discussed.

Related Topics:

Intuitive Eating, HAES, Health At Every Size, Body Positivity, Body Confidence, Body Positive, Anti Diet, Non Diet, Diet Culture, Food Freedom, Fat Acceptance, Fat Liberation, Self Care, Weight Loss, Eating Disorder, Eating Disorder Recovery, Disordered Eating, Nutritional Therapy, Slimming World, Weight Watchers, Cambridge Diet, Cambridge Plan, 121 Diet, Lighter Life, Noom, Coaching, Healing, Health, Wellness, Calorie Counting, Macros

Transcript

Welcome to the intuitive eating and body positivity Podcast. I'm Terri and I'll be talking about all things intuitive eating, body positivity and Health at Every Size, and shaking off weight stigma, diet, culture and food rules, so that we can all have a better relationship with food and our bodies.

Hi, how are you? How are you doing? Are you well, I'm okay thank you. I'm okay thank you? Like you just asked me how I am. Oh, well, maybe you did. So yes, I'm okay. Thank you. Yeah, all good. 

My poor little cat has got a poorly arm though. Oh, bless her. So she's limping around with one paw quite swollen, so she's just hiding away having peace and quiet today. I'm hoping that it's nothing too serious and that when the swelling goes down it'll be fine. But yeah, she's feeling a bit sorry for herself today. Bless her. Funny animals though cats, aren't they? The problem is if I now need to take her to the vets I'm going to have all manner of problems because cats are not too friendly when they're in pain. I guess neither are dogs. But yeah, we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Hopefully, that'll settle down and she'll be much better later. 

But oh, it's just like a member of the family, isn't it? Your animal, whatever the animal, it's a member of the family and it causes a bit of concern, but sure, she'll be fine. 

I've had a competition in the group this last couple of weeks. I'm sure I told you about it in last week's episode, maybe the one before. But this week, I've been packaging up the winners prizes to send out. So that's fun. I love doing things like that. I love giving people little gifts and things to help them on their journey, and for this competition it was books. Intuitive eating books, lots of different ones that they got to choose from. So I've been packaging those up. That's exciting. So if you're listening to this, and you're a competition winner, and you haven't had yours already, it's on its way. Yay, woohoo.

What else has happened? Nothing. I don't think. I think that's it for my weekly tale. Hope your week has been good. 

This week, I want to talk to you about meal planning as an intuitive eater. Now, intuitive eating, we're supposed to listen to our bodies listen to what we want to eat in any given time. So as you become hungry, you start to think about what you want to eat, what type of foods you want to eat, what will suit you in that moment. You consider how much you want to eat, and what types of food you want to eat. So how can meal planning in advance be possible as an intuitive eater? 

I think this is a topic that confuses quite a few people. We want to be prepared, we want to plan ahead. But how can we do that if we are being encouraged to think at any time what we want to eat. But it is possible. If you yourself have read the intuitive eating book, the main one by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, you will know that part of intuitive eating is being practical about your hunger. It's about planning for times where you're not necessarily going to be able to be as intuitive as you'd like to be. 

For me, this is about taking away some of the challenges that we face around food. There's a lot of challenge that can come with preparing meals as and when you want them. As busy people, we have jobs, we have families, we have other obstacles that get in our way, which means that we can't always just in that moment decide what we want to eat and go ahead and cook it. Sometimes we have to be more practical about it. Sometimes we have to plan ahead because nobody really wants to get home at the end of a busy, stressful day at work and be confronted with a blank canvas of what to eat, what to feed the family, what to cook. It's no fun, and to have a bit of planning in place can help take some of that challenge away. 

It's nice to have a bit of structure around what you're going to eat. It's so that you know that food is going to be available. It means that when you're hungry, you're able to honour that hunger because you know that there's something planned, something in preparation already. You don't have to be starving, hungry before you are able to eat. If some of the planning is done, then that hunger can be honoured sooner, and then you're in a much more comfortable place because you can eat until you're satisfied rather than eating everything because you're starving. 

It can also mean that it's taking the hard work out of getting that meal together. Do you want to come home at the end of your working day and start peeling potatoes, because I do not. I hate peeling potatoes. In fact, I really like cooking, but I like cooking when I've got time to cook. I do not enjoy coming home at the end of the day and then having to peel potatoes and carrots and chop this and chop that. I don't enjoy it. So by having some of this prep done ready, it's taking away some of that hard work and it makes the process more enjoyable. It means that if you are able to prep a little bit, you're going to be in a position where you're likely to cook a meal that is nutritious, that is enjoyable. That is something closer to what you would like to eat, rather than throwing something together. That will just do. So here are a few ideas for you. 

Firstly, at the weekend, whenever your weekend may be, because I know that not everybody works Monday to Friday. So on your days off, when you are preparing to do the food shopping, maybe pick a few meals for the week that you will enjoy. You can then plan your food shopping around it, you can have an idea of a list of meals that you can cook through the week. 

Now you don't have to attach these meals to certain days. That's an old dieting thing. There were many a session at a diet club that I've been to where they would say we'll plan out your week, decide what you're going to have for breakfast for lunch and for dinner Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, blah, blah, blah. And you would have it so rigidly laid out that some days you'd come to it and you wouldn't want what you'd planned originally. So then do you go off your plan and eat something else? Or do you eat that meal and not enjoy it? That's an old dieting thing. So I'm not talking about going to that extreme. 

I'm talking about having a list of meals that you can choose from through the week, if you use that list to do your food shop, but you know you've got the ingredients in the house. And you can just come the day choose which of those meals you would fancy the most that is still intuitively eating. That is thinking about what you fancy and then picking off a list. It's like going to a restaurant and choosing off the menu. 

And don't overcomplicate that list. When you're deciding on the meals for the week, choose things that you're going to find easy to put together. Don't challenge yourself with loads and loads of recipes. I am terrible for this. At the beginning of the week, I think oh, that looks like a great recipe, and that looks like a great recipe. Before you know it, I've got a list of five recipes I've never made before, they're gonna take some time, and I know that when I get home from work I'm not going to want to do it. 

So this is a by taking away the challenges on your list. Have things that you know, are tried and tested. Have things that you know you will enjoy, have things that you know that you can cobble together in not very much time. 

If time is an issue for you have flexibility around it to. So you might get to the day of the week and choose what you want to eat from a list. But you don't have to have planned out every meal of every day. Maybe you can just plan out your evening meals and see how the rest of the day takes you know that you can change your mind. None of this is set in stone. You have the ingredients, you can do what you want to do with them. But you don't have to rigidly have it planned out to the letter. So you always know that you can change your mind. 

Also, I speak from experience when I say this next bit. Have some backup meals in your cupboards. I say this because I plan out this grand list of five or six or seven meals for the rest of the week and then you can guarantee by the end of the week at least one of those meals have not been made because I didn't fancy it, couldn't be bothered, or didn't have time. Whatever it was was I've chosen not to make all of those meals that I'd originally planned. 

So have storecupboard ingredients, have things like pasta, have things like rice, have tins of tomatoes, have frozen veg, you know, have these things that will keep, and then if you don't fancy the things you've planned, you can turn to the good old recipes that you're used to the family favourites, the things you can cobble together in five minutes, the things that you would turn to when you can't be bothered, absolutely nothing wrong with that. By having these ingredients in the cupboard, you have taken away a challenge. You have put things into place that's helped you be intuitive about your eating. You've made plans for days when you don't feel up to cooking. That is totally intuitive eating. 

Now, another problem that I have is I get bored with having the same meals over and over and over again. Oh, I lose the will to live sometimes. Because you know what? It's like you just fall back on the same old, same old, don't you? You did the food shop, pick up the same ingredients, you make the same meals. And even if it's not same meals week in week out, you remind yourself on some kind of monthly rotation at least where there's always the spaghetti bolognese, there's always a pasta dish, there's always a lasagna, there's always a cottage pie. You know, there's always things in your house that your family gets on a regular basis. 

That's not a problem. If you enjoy that food, that is absolutely not a problem. But for me, it is a problem because I get bored, and when I get bored with food my Intuitive Eating goes out the window. So I have to find ways to get around that. 

Because of this part of my toolkit of meal prepping is having things like Pinterest boards. Have you used Pinterest? What a rabbit hole that is to go down. Honestly, don't touch Pinterest unless you've got an hour of your life to lose because you start in one place, you start looking at recipes that you can use minced beef in, and before you know it, you're looking at your dream house, or a holiday or shoes or somewhere a million miles from where you started. 

Pinterest is fantastic. It's a great ideas centre. But sometimes you need the approach of getting get the job done, get out. I do love Pinterest though, it is so good. Anyhow, what I use it for is having a set of boards that are different ideas for meals. So I have got a beef board and a chicken board and a pies board and a baking board. You know I've got all these different boards where I collect ideas, and so when I'm having trouble putting a list together of meals that I might make, Pinterest is a go to, because there's already things there that I know and I like. 

And if none of that takes my fancy, I can just have a little search and see what new things come about. It is brilliant for food ideas. Maybe that would work for you too. If you wanted to mix things up if you wanted to put some new life into your dinner table maybe Pinterest is something that you could use too. Effectively it's not prepping the food, but it is putting things in place to help you to determine what you're going to eat. If you have trouble getting inspiration together for what to eat in the week, then this can be one of those things that helps you. 

Another thing that Pinterest is really good for actually is introducing things back into the diet. We have got lots and lots of old recipes haven't we that are very diety. It's easy to stick to those recipes because they feel healthy. They feel like you're being good. But also it's that whole know and trust factor. But Pinterest can help you to get some new ideas back into your diet. It can help you introduce some of those foods that you stayed away from for so long. If you type in recipes with double cream, it's going to bring you up a list of recipes with double cream in it. If you've stayed away from cheese because the thought of eating cheese is automatically a thought around putting weight on or having too much fat in your diet, well by putting cheese into Pinterest, you're going to get a massive amount of suggestions. So it can help because all of a sudden, you can start to incorporate these fear foods into recipes that you're trying. 

If there's a food, for example, that you don't eat because of say the texture of it, but you'd really like to try and eat it, you'd like to find a way to have it in your diet, then, finding a recipe that incorporates it can be really helpful. It can help you to almost disguise it really. If you can find a pie. Let's go back to the pies. If you can find a pie that you can incorporate a bit of cheese into. If you find, say a cottage pie where you incorporate some cheese into the potato on the topping. There's all sorts of ways to introduce foods back into your diet slowly but surely, in a more concealed way, shall we say. And Pinterest is great for getting recipes together. It's great for getting ideas of how you can use foods again once you've stayed away from them for so long. 

So although it's not strictly food prepping, it is preparing yourself. It is a tool to help you prepare for your meals for the week ahead. Back to the actual food prepping. Have a mixture of tastes and textures on your menu for the week. So even if you're not planning your evening meals as such, maybe you could buy some things and have them in the cupboard that will give you access to a range of textures, a range of tastes. Maybe you could have some things in the cupboard that will allow you each day to choose between sweet or savoury for breakfast. 

Maybe if you have oats that can be as simple as one day, maybe you'll have some dried fruit on it, some nuts, some seeds, maybe some frozen fruit freezer food is brilliant. So maybe you can have some frozen fruit in the freezer. That's a tongue twister isn't it? Maybe one day you want those sweet toppings, maybe another day you want something a little bit more savoury so maybe one day you could put some peanut butter into your porridge, that sort of thing. But when you are doing your food shopping, when you are thinking about the food that you're going to keep in your cupboard to help you have a range of textures, tastes, flavours, sweet, savoury, that sort of thing, make sure you've got a nice range of those things, so that you've got something there that you can pick and choose between. That is absolutely intuitive eating, and meal prepping, all rolled into one. You are making preparations and you're planning ahead for seeing what you fancy at any given time. And then when the time comes, you have these things available to you and you can honour what you're hungry for. 

This works really well with snacks as well. You can buy snacks. Maybe you can pre package them. Maybe you can, at the beginning of the week, put some snacks into little bags or little Tupperware containers, and you can have them to hand so when you're getting ready to leave the house in the morning, you just have to grab one of those bags or one of those boxes, throw them in your bag. There's no thinking needed. Then you don't have to worry about prepping fruit or veg or nuts or whatever it is you've chosen to have as a snack because you've already done that at the beginning of the week. You've taken the obstacle away, you've taken the preparation in the moment out of it. And then it's just a case of what do I fancy. That's what I'll have today. Grab one sling it in your lunch bag. 

I've said this before, but part of my problem is I can't be bothered in the morning. I can't be bothered to think about what I want to eat for the day ahead and I never know what I want to eat that morning. So having snacks at the ready, having packs of things ready made up that I can just grab and throw into a bag and then I can take it with me and choose what I want in the moment, that is a lifesaver. It's so so helpful. Even if you don't know in the morning, what you're going to want to eat. If you've picked up something sweet, something savoury, something crunchy, something soft, you know, whatever it is that you might want to choose between, you have options. You can still eat intuitively, but you've planned ahead and you've made it easy to have something to eat. 

Maybe at the beginning of the week, you go one step further. If you've got the time, if you can be bothered. Prepping one day at the weekend ready for the week ahead, can be such a time saver. If you know that through the week, you are going to have very limited time to cook your meals. If you know that in the mornings, you don't have time to do anything. If you know that when you get home in the evening, you're got such a small window of time before the kids are kicking off because they're starving hungry, then you can do yourself a favour and prepare some stuff at the beginning of the week, ready for when you get home each day. 

For a lot of people prepping at the weekend, batch cooking, making up lots of types of food ready for the weekend, that is dieting. So let's reframe that. If batch cooking is going to bring up those feelings for you, you don't have to do that, you can simply prep some of the ingredients. So maybe you will pre chopped veg and then you can put that into bags and put it in the freezer. Or maybe it's other ingredients. Maybe you could chop up the meat that you're going to put in a pie. Oh, I love a pie. Maybe you're going to make a pie or a curry or something like that. And to chop up the meat and bag that up into the right size portions ready for the meals, maybe that is what you can do to help save yourself some time on the day. Maybe you could get together a stew, or casserole, maybe you could put all the ingredients in a bag and then all you have to do is get that bag out the freezer in the morning, throw it in slow cooker, leave it there for when you get home. 

It's all still meal prepping. It's all still planning ahead. It's just taking away those challenges, taking away the hurdles, that stop us eating the way we want to eat. So that meal prepping at the weekend doesn't have to be making six trays of rice and chicken and broccoli. It doesn't have to be batch cooking one meal, and having 12 of them in new freezer. It's not about that. If you want it to be that it can be whatever you think you will enjoy through the week, whatever you think will help you with your time management, then that's fine. But for me, I find it more comfortable to prepare the veg, prepare the meat, prepare the base of a meal, and then come back to it on the day. 

It's all about what your schedule allows for really. I mean, if you can get up in the morning, and you can do all your veg prepping and stuff then, and you can sling things in a slow cooker, ready to walk back through the door in the evening (that's you walking through the door in the evening, not the slow cooker), if you can do that, if you have time for that, then that's great. I myself, I know that I don't have the time nor the inclination first thing in the morning to do things like that. So whatever works for you. 

How do you feel about leftovers for lunch as well? Sometimes we can make these meals, make a little bit more, and then box it up and have it for lunch the next day. That's planning ahead. That's eating intuitively. That's meal planning. That's helping you overcome these challenges that we're trying to get rid of. If that's what you find works for you and that's what you'll enjoy, then great. That's awesome, because you are planning ahead and still eating intuitively. 

Things like a theme nights can be brilliant for meal planning too. A very old traditional thing is fish Friday. Now, I don't know if that is just a UK thing, whether it's in other countries too, but fish Friday, definitely a thing here. I don't know if it is so much for many people anymore, but it's definitely previous generations, there would be fish Friday. Also things like a roast dinner on a Sunday. So many households religiously have a roast dinner on a Sunday. If you are one of those households that has both of those things, that means automatically you have got Friday sorted and Sunday sorted because you know you're going to have a roast on Sunday, you know you're going to have fish on Friday. You could do this for yourself. What about living like, tacos Tuesday? I like the sound of that. I like the sound of tacos on a Tuesday. 

See, it's that easy. So you could just do that. You could plan ahead. You could still have variations on that theme each week. So if you had fish Friday, then maybe one week you'll have salmon maybe the next week you'll have cod. On a roast, maybe one week you'll have chicken and another week you'll have beef. So you can still mix it up, you can still have variety, and you can still eat intuitively. But you have some kind of plan ahead of what you're going to eat on a given day. I can't think of any more off the top of my head. If you think of any quirky little things that we could turn these days into, let me know. I've given you Taco Tuesday, and fish Friday, and roasting on a Sunday. So now you can fill Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. Let me know if you've got any suggestions, thank you.

But again, can you see that's taking away some of the challenge. You've got a bit of a plan of attack for the week. You kind of know what you're going to eat. And then when it comes to it, you can be a bit more intuitive about it and decide exactly what it is you want to eat, going along with the theme that you've got planned. So that's quite a nice one, I think that works quite nicely. 

And also, don't be afraid to outsource meals. Buying in meals is great, it can really help you to get some variety in your diet, it can really help you to try some recipes that you wouldn't usually try. A friend of mine has said that she's been using Gusto boxes and she's found it great because there's recipes that they've ordered, where for a long time, she's been thinking of making this type of meal, but hasn't bothered, and now she's been able to order it the ingredients turn up already picked and packed and chopped, and whatever else and she's ready to go. So it's a case of slinging it in whatever cooking vessel is needed. 

Cool, that sounds easy doesn't it. Sounds nice. But it's a great way to get some variety in your diet and it's a nice way to have things already prepared, weighed measured for you. So maybe that is something you could try too. So you see, there are lots of ways that you can prepare in advance and still be an intuitive eater, you can do meal prep, and still be an intuitive eater, you can still honour your hunger, you can still honour your fullness, you can still eat what satisfies you. You're just taking away some of those, I'll say it again, challenges that you face when you're trying to decide what to cook and trying to cut down on the time you spend cooking. 

Who knew it was so complex a this cooking thing? Why can't we just go back to the old days where we just go out, hunt things with a stick, drag some vegetables out the earth and go home? None of this dieting then was there? None of this crazy food prep and cooking and all that stuff that went along with it? You just slung it on a fire?

Yeah, I don't think I really want to go back to the old caveman days, but seems like a nice time sometimes, doesn't it when you compare then and now? Oh, so much a simpler time. A simpler time where we didn't really live that long, though. So yeah, maybe not. Let's stick with it now. Let's just find a way to meal prep, and make life a little bit easier for ourselves instead. 

I hope that's helped throw some ideas your way. This is one of the things we talked about in the group coaching sessions. This is one of the topics that we talked about. The beauty of the group coaching sessions is that we get to talk about it, we get to throw ideas in the pot, we get to have other contributions to the topic. It's not just all me, believe it or not. I don't very often share the topics here. I don't very often talk about the same things here as I talk about in the group coaching. I just thought this one was useful. But if you do want to get involved, and you do want to have conversation with me and with other people about these sort of things, then the group coaching sessions are fantastic. 

The link's in the show notes, but do have a look and see what's involved in the group coaching. It's so good. We always have a little bit of a laugh. We talk around the subjects a lot more than we can do just listening to me talking to you on a podcast. We do talk about the subjects a lot more. People ask questions. So if there are parts of it when you're listening to this podcast where you think, Oh, I'd like to just ask about that, then group coaching sessions are a great place to do that. And to ask your own questions as well. There's always time to say oh, can I just ask you about this? And the group is lovely, really supportive. They are really, really nice group of gals. 

So if you're interested, have a look, the link is in the show notes. It's also just on my website. If you go to terripugh.co.uk you can just pick it off the menu and find out more. If you want to know more if you've got questions, just drop me a message, and I will answer whatever you have to ask. 

Well, it's been a pleasure as always. I really enjoy coming and talking to you, even if I can't talk to you. This is the next best option. So I will speak to you again next week. Bye bye.|