Welcome to the OT Meal Plan, which is here to help and guide you towards achieving your goal in 2024.

Meal Plans can be a very useful tool when trying to improve nutrition and lifestyle. They can provide structure to eating patterns, help increase nutrient intake through the use of a variety of foods, aid portion control, save time and money.

The aim of the OT Meal plan is to enable you to incorporate simple, nutritious and enjoyable meals and snacks into your everyday life to promote overall health and wellbeing. The key is to follow a plan that is sustainable in the long term and the OT meal plan promotes a regular meal pattern with well balanced meals; breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.

Guide to following the Meal Plan:

1. Pick a leader, whom you feel is similar to yourself in terms of starting point and goals, and follow their plan.
2. For the first 4 weeks there are structured meals set out that comprise of a number of breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks.
3. Each week there is a list of meal options for breakfast, lunch and snacks.

• For breakfast and lunch you can chose one option each day from the respective list for that week.
• The number of snacks you can chose each day is dependent on the leader you are following and is tailored to their (and your) nutritional requirement.

1. The evening meals are set and should be followed as on the plan. They will differ day to day.
2. After week 4, you can choose your own evening meal from the list every day, or repeat weeks 1-4. 
3. Don’t forget its recommended to consume 2 litres of water per day, which can include tea and coffee, however its best to keep those to a minimum, reducing milk and eliminating sugar.

In order to gain the most benefit from a meal plan preparation is vital. 

The OT Meal Plan has made preparing for the week ahead easy with the help of recipes for all meal options and a shopping list for the dinners which you can bring with you to the supermarket and tick off the ingredients as you go. Also included is a store cupboard list which enables you to use foods that you already have in the cupboard e.g. oats, flour, etc., helping to reduce the cost and food waste.

At the start of each week, pick out what you are going to have for each breakfast, lunch and snack, and include the ingredients on your shopping list as per the recipes provided.

It is important to note when shopping that you try and stick to the types of food on the shopping list. For example, if it states tuna in spring water try and look for a tin of tuna that is in spring water as opposed to sunflower oil or brine. 

Weighing out foods is also beneficial to help achieve positive results therefore investing in a food scale would be advantageous. However, do not panic if this is not possible, there are grams on the back of packets which can act as a useful guide if you do not have a scales.

Embrace the challenge, make the changes, and most importantly enjoy the journey.

Best of luck!