How to create successful meal plans

Written By Thea Doyle

Amidst hectic weekday schedules, meal prep or meal planning is a fantastic tool to help clients eat healthy meals and stay on track with their wellbeing goals.

Although any type of meal prep requires planning of some sort, there is no one correct method. Depending on food preferences, cooking ability, schedules, and personal goals, it is a health practitioner's job to help their client learn and work out what is best for them.

Perhaps you’ve used, or are currently using excel documents, word documents or printed handouts to help your client plan their meals, however with the changing times and increased reliance on technology, finding an online system and process is a much more accessible, time efficient and easy to use option for most people.

Meal plans are designed to empower clients to get organised and have a fuss free way to stick to their health goals. The first step to creating meal plans is to create a collection of recipes that meet your client’s needs.

Keep in mind these following tips when creating meal plans:

  1. When building customised resources for a client, you must first assess their unique needs, this includes both dietary and lifestyle factors (e.g. what are their food likes and dislikes, do they live alone, do they like to cook each night?). This assessment will help you choose recipes that are suitable for the  client.

  2. Next, you can use the EatByDesign platform to filter through our extensive and ever growing range of dietary specific recipes which may be suitable to add to their plan.

  3. Once you have found suitable recipes, you can assign certain questions to your clients about each recipe that you assign them, so that you can get real time feedback once they have cooked the recipe.

  4. Next, drag and drop the recipes into your client’s meal planner.

  5. Send to your client, and they have instant access to the recipes you’ve created for them.

  6. Your client can build their own shopping list and email this list to themselves or whoever is doing the shopping!

To Register for our platform and get your first three months free, head here.

Thea Doyle