I'm too tired to cook - I'll just grab something quick and easy - I skipped breakfast today - If you've said any of these phrases recently, tailored meal planning could be your ticket to healthier living.

The Importance of Tailored Meal Planning
Busy lives can often equate to poor nutritional choices as sugary snacks and ready meals can be more appealing than cooking. Couple this with the cost of living crisis and the idea of spending additional money on ingredient-heavy recipes may deter you from powering your body with what it actually needs to effectively function. Planning meals ahead of time that complement your build, activity level, and body goals can alleviate all of these problems.

Tailored meal planning can help you in many ways:

1. If you have prepared healthy snacks for the day, you will no longer crave sugary pick-me-ups as your body is sufficiently fuelled.

2. By aligning recipes with similar ingredients, eye-watering shopping bills are eliminated and food wastage is low.

3. It ensures your diet is balanced, nutritious, and in line with your individual needs, so your body and brain are well nourished and energised.

Discover New Recipes
The 4improve app offers users a new way to take ownership of their health and lifestyle choices. Combining nutrition, exercise, meditation, and trackers, you can implement small changes that amount to huge well-being benefits.

Many people begin their wellness journey by focusing their efforts on diet without considering tailored meal planning. 4improve facilitates healthier choices by providing nutrition education, meal planning, and calorie counting. The app contains a diverse bank of recipes covering breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, beverages, salads and snacks, pre-workout, post-workout, and high protein. Each meal displays a breakdown of food groups, calories per serving, an ingredient list, and an easy-to-follow recipe. The number of servings can even be adjusted if you're cooking for others!

If your current diet lacks balance, you are able to browse a list of foods that meet your needs, for example, protein, or vitamin A. If you spot an ingredient that you like, the search function within meal planning displays every recipe in which it appears. By selecting several recipes that contain the same ingredients, costs can be kept to a minimum.

Tailored meal planning allows you to experiment with food and become excited by new recipes. If you know that your time is limited on certain days, you can prepare meals in advance or select recipes with a short cooking time. We recommend setting a specific time aside each week to assign recipes to your meal planner on the 4improve app, as you can shop or order food accordingly. Before long, meal preparation becomes a habit and you can celebrate reaching your desired diet goals. New recipes are added to the app regularly, so keep your eyes peeled!

Track Your Calories
Whether you're looking to lose or gain weight, tracking your calorie intake is a good place to start. The number of calories your body needs to adequately function depends on many factors, including age, metabolism, and levels of physical activity, although 2500/2000 calories are recommended as an average for males and females, respectively. The science is simple: if you burn more calories than you consume, you'll lose weight; if you consume more calories than you burn, you'll gain weight.

Tracking your calories helps you reach your goals in two ways. Firstly, you become much more aware of the calorie content in the foods you eat. The greater your knowledge, the easier it becomes to make healthy choices. Secondly, you can monitor your intake throughout the day and modify your chosen meals if your count becomes too high or low. Tailored meal planning reduces the need for constant monitoring, as you establish your calorie intake for the day in advance. When you're aware of what you are putting into your body, weight-related targets become more achievable.

Nutrition As Part Of A Holistic Lifestyle
Focusing solely on nutrition may not incite meaningful change to your lifestyle. Your enthusiasm for meal planning and trying out new recipes may wane, limiting future progress, as your mind is not being nurtured simultaneously. Holistic living allows all aspects of your life to merge into each other. By feeding your body a balanced diet, rich in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, you also nourish the mind, facilitating focus and meditation practice. When you engage in daily meditation, you connect to the present moment and feel more able to commit to positive changes.

Attempting too much in one go can be overwhelming. We advise making incremental improvements to one area of your lifestyle at a time. Where you start is up to you, but 4improve is the only app that enables engagement and monitoring across the four main areas of holistic living.

Download 4improve for Free for A Limited Time Only
Healthy living should always be a priority. 4improve offers a unique way of monitoring your mental and physical well-being, all in one place! Tailored meal planning is just the start of a more holistic life. To try out 4improve for FREE, download the app on Google Play or the App Store before our launch offer ends!