How should I plan my diet?

[kisrobyyy]

Hey, guys!

I've been eating the same meals (4 meals) for 2 months now and as you can imagine I'm pretty tired of it, also I have a hard time making the meals because of school. I try to cook for the next couple of days but even with this
it's hard sometimes. So, I'd like to change my diet for something easier to manage. I have a couple of questions:

Where do you look for easy to make & budget friendly meals or meal plans? Or do you make up them and calculate calories & macros?
How do you make time to make your meals?
How many times do you eat a day?
Do you cook tasty and elegant or just put everything (rice, chicken breast etc) in a dish together and it's done (this is what I'm doing, I'm an absolute noob at cooking)? I'm worried about all those beautiful meals that I see on the web, meanwhile mine looks like crap.
What do you eat in/after school?

Also, feel free to write any advice or anything that you think was helpful to you. I hope this thread will help me and other teens who struggle with this.

[SuffolkPunch]

I used to maintain a spreadsheet of foods I commonly eat with their calories and protein grams per serving. It would only take about 1 minute out of my day to just populate that with numbers to provide me with how many calories/protein in total I was getting that day.

It obviously takes some effort to get the numbers initially but it's worth it.

One key point is don't be too restrictive: you don't have to have 4 meals a day. You could have 2 big meals and 2 protein shakes for example.

You can also get required nutrients from ordinary foods like sandwiches and breakfast cereal. It doesn't all have to be brown rice, chicken breast and broccoli.

[kisrobyyy]

So basically meal frequency doesn't matter that much? Would 3 meals/day and 4 meals/day result in building the same amount of muscle mass as long as I eat the same amount of calories? Is this something that is proven by science? 3 meals/day would make a lot of things easier

[SuffolkPunch]

So basically meal frequency doesn't matter that much? Would 3 meals/day and 4 meals/day result in building the same amount of muscle mass as long as I eat the same amount of calories? Is this something that is proven by science? 3 meals/day would make a lot of things easier

To be clear: protein timing matters a little bit - but not that much compared to just reaching your daily needs any which way you prefer. Which is why I gave the example of 4 meals vs. 2 meals and 2 shakes.

Timing of other nutrients intraday is not that important at all.

If you want more detail, this is a very long discussion on the topic:

https://www.nutritiontactics.com/mea...ein-synthesis/