I have really grown to enjoy cooking and I do my best at cooking healthy meals for my family. One thing I have found to help me do this is to make a weekly meal plan. It keeps us from eating out too much (which also saves money) and helps with our waist lines too.

So at the beginning of a new week this is what I do. I sit down and make a shopping list for each meal I want to prepare for the week. Once you have everything you need for cooking a healthy meal it makes it hard to back out of making it.

Our breakfast I like to keep simple since we have a hard time getting going in the morning. I like to stick to eggs, turkey bacon or sausage, some veggies to mix in with the eggs, original plain oatmeal (for our toddler) and milk. Some things that I consider basics.

For lunch I like to keep things on hand for sandwiches; lunch meat, cheese, peanut butter and jelly (for the little one). Usually what happens though is we end up with leftovers from dinner so I don’t have to pick up too many extras for our lunches.

Now with dinner I like to mix things up a bit to make them a little more interesting and flavorful. I can’t say that I’m the most creative person when it comes to cooking healthy meals for dinner. I grew up eating a diet of meat, rice and vegetables. So I don’t always know exactly what I want to prepare each week.

What I do though is pull out my collection of recipes from magazines and cookbooks to get some ideas. Yes I use them every week and if you choose the right ones I have found many gear towards cooking healthy meals.

Personally I like to choose any where from three to five meals that I want to prepare. After I know what they are I write down the ingredients that I don’t have on hand and add them to the list. Having a list to follow keeps me from forgetting what it is I need to buy and prevents me from grabbing a bunch of things that we don’t need.

We still choose eat out once a week because we like to have that break from the kitchen and it is also a treat to eat something that I normally would not prepare at home. We also enjoy entertaining or dining with our friends and family on the weekends. This doesn’t stop me from cooking the healthy meals I’ve planned; I just share them.