What Sundays Are All About

With a bit of planning and organisation at the weekend, the entire week of Paleo meals can be planned, ingredients bought and almost all of the cooking done, leaving your weekdays easy and stress free.

Being organised like this is not only a far cheaper way of following your Paleo diet, but it also ensures you won’t come unstuck in the week – when a lack of time and imagination would otherwise make it far harder to make the right food choices.

Step One: The Weekly Planner

Are you going to be home every evening? Do you have friends over? Have you been invited out to dinner? Write out a plan of the upcoming week and work out how many breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks you will need.

Now it’s time to hit the recipe books for inspiration and decide what you would like to eat everyday! Bear in mind if you cook a large portion of a dinner recipe, you can either freeze the remainder to enjoy another day, or you can use it for lunch, or breakfast the following day.

If you have cooking facilities at lunchtimes, it’s a great idea to do some batch cooking, so you can have a quick, hot Paleo meal every lunchtime – with no cooking required

Step Two: The Ingredients

Once you’ve decided on your weekly Paleo meal planner, you can make a list of all of the ingredients you need to buy and head to your local farmers market, butchers and grocery store/ supermarket to buy everything you need. No more shopping required for another week or two! It’s good to be flexible and prepared to swap ingredients, for example where certain vegetables are in season or on sale.

Step Three: Cooking & Preparation

Once you have your Paleo ingredients, recipes and weekly planner on hand, it’s time to get cooking! You can cook up big batches of one-pot recipes, such as soups, stews, casseroles and curries as these will freeze easily, ready to be reheated when you need them for lunches or dinners.

Many breakfasts, such as egg muffins can be cooked in advance and stored in the fridge for a quick grab and go breakfast.

You can also prepare vegetables in advance, ready to blanch, eat raw or throw in the steamer for the week’s dinners.

Step Four: Overcoming Potential Difficulties

This is also a good opportunity to call ahead any restaurants you may be visiting next week – or looking up their menu online. This way you can work out which Paleo options are available, or contact the restaurant directly and see how they can help.

What is your weekly routine? Do you spend time at the weekend planning for the week ahead?