Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

- Carl Jung

One of the biggest excuses for not cooking meals at home is the lack of time. Whether it's the time it takes to prepare, shop, or cook, with a new mindset and a good plan you can fit it into your hectic schedule. Most people know that homecooked meals are generally more nutritious and less calorie dense than restaurant food. Mainly because cooking at home allows you to control the ingredients, as well as the portion sizes. Making time to prepare meals at home is well worth the effort and can be easy to do.

Planning for the week ahead is the first place to start. Sitting down and writing out a meal plan for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is a simple task that can be mastered over time. As you plan out the meals, keep a common theme going among your meals throughout the week. For example, using brown rice for two dinners (Spanish rice and healthy stir-fried rice) and two lunches (side dish of plain rice with a splash of toasted sesame oil and used in a rice and bean burrito) means that on Sunday or Monday you can cook the brown rice in bulk making sure to prepare enough for all four meals. The time-saver here is that you've cooked rice once and used it four times.

Once all the meals have been determined, it's time to write the shopping list. Again, using some of the same ingredients throughout the week will cut down on time and money, as less food will go to waste. Be sure to check your list twice before heading to the grocery store to avoid having to make multiple trips for forgotten items. The time-saver here is shopping just once for the entire week.

The meal plan for the week should be posted on your refrigerator or somewhere clearly visible in the kitchen and updated each week. This practice cuts back on the time you would normally spend searching inside the refrigerator to decide what to cook. Instead, you look up the day and meal on your list and know that all the ingredients are in the pantry and refrigerator ready to be used. The more you prepare meal plans and shopping lists the easier this process will become as you can reuse previous week's menus and lists.

The following items should become staples in your refrigerator:

• Cooked whole grains like brown rice and quinoa
• Mixed lettuces for salads, wraps, sandwiches, etc.
• Prepared salsa, guacamole, and hummus to use as toppings and dips
• Nuts and seeds for snacking and adding to breakfast porridges, salads, and side dishes
• Seasonal fresh fruit for snacks, juicing, and making smoothies
• Fresh vegetables for salads, steaming, sautéing, stir-frying, roasting, grilling, etc.

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