Transitioning to a Whole Food Plant-Based Diet – Week 1
Week 1 Game Plan: This week you are going to:
- Develop a weekly approach for meal planning, food shopping, and batch cooking.
- Decide what you would like to eat for your routine breakfast.
- Decide what snacks you would like to have on hand at all times.
- Throw out or give away (to family, friends, local food banks or shelters) all of your unhealthy breakfast foods and snacks.
Eating whole-food plant-based (WFPB) has tremendous benefits, but it does require some advanced planning for what you ARE going to be eating. Since it is a lot easier to eat WFPB when you are preparing your own food, we are going to concentrate on the meals you prepare yourself.
Making your plan
You need to decide when in your weekly schedule you are going to create a meal plan and shopping list, when you are going to shop , and when you are going to do your batch cooking. Many people have more time during the weekend than during the week so it makes sense for them to do their meal planning and shopping on Saturday and do some batch cooking on Sunday. THIS IS INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT ! If you do not have a workable plan for picking out what you are going to be eating as well as when you will buy and cook your food, it is highly unlikely that you will be successful in fully implementing a WFPB diet.
Give this some serious thought and map out a plan, knowing that it is not set in stone. You can always try a different plan if the one you start out with is unworkable, or you can adjust it if your schedule is going to be different one particular week.
Decide each week when you will:
• Create a meal plan and shopping list
• Shop for groceries – see this helpful information sheet.
• Cook
While you may be tempted to say, “I’m too busy”, you need to realize that there are very few things in life more important than the health of you and your family and that a MAJOR determinant of health is what you eat. So you need to move planning and preparing healthy meals near to the top of your “to do” list. If you are in a relationship or have a friend interested in WFPB you may also be able to come up with some creative ways to share these tasks.
The good news is that once you implement a WFPB diet, your energy level will increase so you can channel some of that energy back into your new WFPB lifestyle.
IMPORTANT: Before you start week 2, get rid of ALL the junk you used to eat for breakfast and ALL of your unhealthy snacks like chips, candy, and ice cream. This is essential.
Another good idea during this planning stage is to take “before” pictures, weigh yourself and measure any other key parameters (eg blood pressure, blood sugars) as well as set aside a little money for some new clothes.
Click here to go to Week 2 (Breakfasts and Snacks)
