Five Meal-Planning Hacks for Supercharged Results

19.01.2018 |

Episode #8 of the course How to outsource your diet by Liam Smith

 

Hello and welcome to Lesson 8!

Today, you’re going to discover five meal-planning hacks that you can use to supercharge your results.

My shopping is delivered to my home at a time that suits me, meaning all I have to do is the cooking and then enjoy an amazing, home-cooked meal. But it wasn’t always this way. It took several months of trial and error to get to this point. Here are the five hacks that I wish I knew when I started.

 

Hack #1: Meal Plan over Four Weeks

Significantly reduce the amount of food waste and spread the cost of your shopping even further by using a special meal-planning method. Instead of selecting recipes each week, prepare recipes for the next four weeks. It doesn’t take long. Then, separate the longer-life ingredients from the fresh stuff. On week one of four, buy all the longer-life ingredients, plus the fresh ingredients for week one. Then on subsequent weeks, buy only fresh produce. And repeat.

You’re effectively buying in bulk to save bags of time and money and have the fresh ingredients delivered to your door when you need them. The best of both worlds!

 

Hack #2: Try Dried Herbs and Spices

Fresh herbs and spices can be relatively expensive and spoil quickly, sometimes before you even use them. Try using dried herbs and spices instead. They’re much more cost-effective and last for ages.

Over time, you’ll build a supply of pretty much every herb and spice you need for any meal, with no additional expense or effort.

 

Hack #3: Make Double Portions (or Triple or Quadruple …)

Why cook every day when you could cook every other day, or less? Simply make double portions of everything, and add the leftovers to meal-sized storage containers. Then eat for lunch or dinner the next day, or put in the freezer for a later date.

To give this a go, simply increase the number of portions per meal in the instructions to your assistant. You might want to reduce the total number of meals per week too, to account for eating leftovers. Next time you’re in a rush and can’t be bothered to cook, this will be a lifesaver. It’ll also save you a load of time.

 

Hack #4: Freeze It!

Freezing the stuff that you won’t use right away will save you money, as it’s convenient and keeps your food fresh. But did you know that you can also freeze ingredients like fruit, vegetables, leafy greens, herbs, spices, sauces, stocks, soups, broths, leafy greens, and more?

Try it. Make space in your freezer and see what you can freeze.

 

Hack #5: Automate the Buying of Other Food and Non-food Items

You probably have a number of stock food items and non-food items that you buy with some level of predictability: eggs, milk, toothpaste, bleach, toilet paper, etc. Well, why not automate these too? Just make a list of the things you repeatedly buy, including your preferred brand, size, price, etc., and estimate the frequency. Then add this to your list of instructions.

There are many more hacks to share, but these are the biggies. It’s now up to you to put them to good use.

Next, we’re going to talk about the one thing that you can’t automate: cooking. You can, however, make it easy with the ten cooking hacks you’ll learn in tomorrow’s lesson!

Speak soon,

Liam

 

Useful tool

To help you understand how diet hacking works in reality, here’s my meal plan—it’s not the prettiest but still brilliant to use.

 

Recommended book

The 30-Day Ketogenic Cleanse: Reset Your Metabolism with 160 Tasty Whole-Food Recipes & Meal Plans by Maria Emmerich

 

Share with friends