Healthy Meal Plan
Eating a healthy diet is a fundamental part of physical and mental wellbeing, and being healthy has never been more important. According to the CDC, nearly 72% of American adults over 20 are overweight or obese. Wow.
It’s time to change that. Eating a well balanced and healthy diet is a crucial part of losing and maintaining a healthy weight. At its core, a healthy diet or meal plan is one which contains the basic building blocks of life your body needs. It helps nourish you with the vitamins and minerals and the right amount of energy required to go about your daily tasks, but not too much so as to cause excessive weight gain. Ideally, you hit a balance so you can start feeling optimal and working your best.
Almost all government nutritional bodies agree that a healthy diet is one which is low in processed foods. These are items which are pre-prepared and not found in nature. Take for example, frozen pizza, ice-cream, cookie dough or popcorn - all of these items are high in saturated fats and heavily processed and usually have tons of sugar. The first step when moving to a healthy diet is to remove these food types from your diet - or at the very least, reduce them to a minimum.
Secondly, a healthy diet should include regular portions of vegetables and fruit. One useful way of thinking about eating a healthy diet is to think about 'all things in moderation', especially processed foods and those high in sugar and refined carbohydrates.
While healthy means different things to different people - some people prefer paleo, while other people prefer low carb or keto - but a healthy meal plan doesn’t necessarily care about a specific diet or ideology. The primary aim is to eat foods in moderation, while fueling your body to perform well, feel great, and improve your overall quality of life day in and day out.
For us here at Ultimate Meal Plans, the key to a healthy diet is sustainability and longevity. Traditionally, a “diet” in every sense of the word is designed to be something that is short-term. Think about approaches like the Whole30 or the Sugar Detox. These are short-term solutions to a problem that are followed for a specific amount of time.
Instead of following a restrictive and extreme diet for a short amount of time, our healthy meal plans aim to give you the tools to build out meals that will serve you well for the rest of your life. We want to educate you on how to build nourishing and delicious meals that don’t take a lot of time to whip up
While it might sound difficult - eating healthy is not as hard as it may sound - especially if you are purposeful about it and decide to make a plan in advance. Having a plan helps you avoid any roadblocks that might come up in your day. No matter if you are busy, working late, or have an endless To Do list, having a meal plan already in place ensures that at least your meals are taken care of.
The great thing about our healthy meal plans is that they all follow our 15/5 rule. This means that each recipe takes no longer than 15 minutes to make and requires no more than 5 ingredients. On those days when time is of the essence, you can whip up a delicious and nourishing meal without much effort.
Benefits of a Healthy Meal Plan
A healthy meal plan has several benefits. Primarily - having a plan instead of just “trying to be healthy” increases compliance and the chance that you’ll be successful. Life can get hectic and by having a plan at the ready - when the ups and downs of life come at you - you’ll have a plan for what to do.
Beyond that though - a healthy meal plan can benefit your life in many ways. Eating healthy can help you achieve a healthy body weight and better lean muscle-fat ratio.
You’ll often see the following benefits:
Increased energy
Better or overall improved sleep
Improved appetite
Better skin and nail quality
Also - achieving a healthy weight can improve health outcomes across the board including:
increased overall health and immunity
lowered risk of obesity
lowered risk of cancer
lowered risk of diabetes and other health complications
In short - following a healthy meal plan can help your life dramatically in quite a few ways.
What To Eat on a Healthy Meal Plan
The word “healthy” can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but in general, I think we can all agree that healthy food leads to better health markers, feeling better in your body, and an improved quality of life all around. So, what can we eat to ensure that we reach these goals? Here’s what you should and shouldn’t eat on a typical healthy meal plan.
Eat this on a healthy meal plan diet:
- Vegetables
- High quality meat
- Fruits
- Healthy nuts + seeds
- Real, whole foods as much as possible.
Avoid these foods on a healthy meal plan:
- processed foods
- sugars
- processed sugars
- excessive grains
- candy
- energy drinks
- alcohol
Customizing Healthy Meal Plans For You
One of the best things about getting our meal planning service to help with your healthy meal plan is that you can customize the plan to your needs. No matter your taste preferences, diet choice, or number of people you are cooking for, you can easily customize your plan to fit your needs.
With Ultimate Meal Plans - you can easily:
Pick a specific diet or a generic “healthy plan”
You can also switch meal plans once you have a subscription with us if you find that you would like to try another eating approach.
Increase the number of people a recipe is for
Are you cooking for more than one person? No worries! You can easily customize the number of people you need to feed and that will automatically update your plan and shopping list with the appropriate amount of food and ingredients needed.
Exclude ingredients for picky eaters or allergies
Let’s say you are allergic to apples or perhaps just don’t like the taste. Obviously, you don’t want these on your meal plan. Ultimate Meal Plans offers an “exclude” feature which would remove any recipes that contain apples for you.
Automatically generate your weekly shopping list
A major part of meal planning is making sure that you have the groceries you need to make it through the week. We automatically generate your weekly shopping list with the correct quantities of ingredients so you have everything you need to stay on plan.
Instantly checkout with an online grocery service (optional)
Want to skip the grocery store? Use one of our online grocery partners to order your food online and have it delivered straight to your door.
Plus you get access to a ton of bonus discounts with our meal plan and product partners.
With those options - you can be certain that you can customize a meal plan that will fit your tastes exactly and be a plan that’s not just healthy for you but is sustainable and one you can see successfully through.
→ Try healthy meal plans free for 14 days here.
Examples Healthy Meal Plan Recipes
A meal plan isn’t any good without some amazing recipes to back it up. Here are some of the best recipes we’ve found that you can try out in your own healthy meal plan:
Healthy breakfast recipes:
Steak, Eggs, and Greens
Cauliflower Shakshuka
Banana Chia Smoothie
Healthy dinner recipes:
Thai Chicken Curry
Ginger Turmeric Chicken Soup
Lemon Herb Chicken
Healthy dessert recipes:
Apple Cranberry Crisp
Healthy Chocolate Ice Cream
Pumpkin Spiced Granola
All of these recipes are similar to the ones you get access to with a subscription to Ultimate Meal Plans. When you sign up for our healthy diet meal plans, you get a week’s worth of recipes delivered to your inbox each week. Not only do you get a breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack recipe for each day, but you will also receive a comprehensive itemized shopping list with all of the ingredients you need to make these recipes come to life.
Don’t want to go to the grocery store? No problem. Use our online grocery shopping option where you can pick the ingredients you need for your meal plan, order them online, and have the delivered right to your front door.
Our goal with these healthy meal plans is to make it as easy as possible for you. Everyone deserves to be healthy and feel their best, and our meal plans help you do just that.
Healthy Meal Planning Citations & Resources
For more references and sourcing on healthy meal plans, check out the following links:
