You've made a commitment to improving your eating habits and have taken a big step by engaging with a health professional to help you make the changes.

Lucky for you, your practitioner understands the ins and outs of successful changes and is equipping you with access to their Meal Garden.

You can use the table of contents below to skip to a particular section, or just read the document (estimated 5 minutes).

Click on the headings to jump to that section.

In addition to the written instructions below, we've put together a set of short videos in a playlist on youtube, the first video is linked below and will provide you access to all the other videos at the end.

By this point, you've already been invited to Meal Garden and have created an account.

You'll have seen a screen that looks similar to this:

Depending on your plan of care, you'll see any of the following four types of content in your Meal Garden.

Recipe Collections

When you click into a collection, you'll be presented with a series of recipes.

You can sort the recipes, or just browse by scrolling up and down.

Each recipe is presented as a card and includes key information.

When you find a recipe you like, you can click on the card to access the full recipe.

Now that you're looking at the recipe, you can scroll up and down to read the instructions, review the ingredient list and check out the nutrition label.

The actions available to you are:

Favorite - click the heart to 'add to cookbook'

Schedule - add the meal directly to your calendar (and automatically into your shopping list)

Edit - If you want to change or remove an ingredient, you can click Edit. This will automatically make a copy in your cookbook.

More Options - With more options, you can download the recipe to a PDF or report it to Meal Garden (in cases of errors, etc.)

Finally, you can click 'back' in the bottom left-hand corner and go back to the collection.

When you click schedule, you'll open your scheduling window, as illustrated below.

It's very simple to add a meal to the schedule, just click on the '+' of the meal slot you'd like to add the meal too.

Or, if you've made a mistake or changed your mind, you can click the back button to return to the recipe screen.

Once you've selected the day and meal for the recipe, you'll see the adjustments screen.

Here, you'll have the opportunity to:

Adjust who's eating: If you've created your profile, you may have added additional people who you eat with on a regular basis (family, roommates, etc.) and they'll automatically be added to the meal, for scaling purposes. If they aren't eating, you can click on their names to remove them.

You'll also have the opportunity to add additional people.

If you plan on freezing some servings (or, you just want to cook more) you can and, finally, if you already have the ingredients or it's a frozen meal, you can click on 'out of the freezer and the meal will be removed from your grocery list.

You'll also see two other tabs on this screen, both designed to make things easier for you.

Leftovers - you can add a recipe to other days/meals and Meal Garden will automatically update your grocery list to accommodate leftovers.

Make Again - Not all recipes are suited for leftovers/re-heating. Use Make Again to schedule the same recipe for multiple days. For example, the same breakfast or lunch.

Once you're happy with the adjustments, click on 'Finish'.

If you want to make changes, just click on the meal and you can access a quick menu of choices.

You'll also notice a real-time grocery list under the schedule.

You can review the list and adjust measurements for ingredients right from this screen.

Meal Garden makes it easy for you to arrange, consolidate and share your shopping lists.

Let's take a look at how you can use Meal Garden to make shopping a breeze.

Within the shopping screen, you can:

Once you've got the list the way you want, you can either print it to PDF or move to your mobile device and get shopping :)

In addition to collections, you may have access to Pre-Made Meal Plans.

To explore a pre-made plan, just click on it.

Once you're in the plan, you can scroll and explore recipes. Similar to collections, when you click on a recipe you'll have the option to favorite, edit, or add directly to your schedule.

You can use these actions to review the shopping list and view advanced preparation instructions.

You can also download the plan as a PDF for printing.

Protip: be sure to scale the plan to reflect who's eating before you print it

Click on 'Nutritional Details' to view nutritional facts about the week, each day, and each meal.

Finally, you can click schedule and you'll be prompted to select a week to schedule the plan on.

Now that it's scheduled, you'll have the same options to adjust the meals and arrange your shopping list.

It's that easy!

Resources can be simple hand-outs or multi-media content (videos, etc.)

Just click on the resource to engage.

Programs are wide-reaching and can be anything from a class or tutorial to a challenge.

They can be free or paid and can include plans, collections, and resources.

When you click on a program, you'll be presented with a summary page and the opportunity to subscribe.

Once you've subscribed you'll have access to the content in the program.

You'll also see a new option on your top navigation bar called 'My Library', click here to access your content.

You're now equipped to use Meal Garden to follow your plan of care and achieve your goals.

There are a few other aspects of Meal Garden that you might want to take advantage of, to do that follow the links below.