Meal Planning can sometimes feel overwhelming. You may feel that you don’t have the time in your day to sit down and plan out meals for the entire week. Hey! Sometimes I feel that I don’t have the time to sit down and plan a meal for one day. How could I sit down and plan meals for an entire week?
Would you be willing to trade a little of your time one night a week for the chance to go the rest of the week without worrying about “What’s for Dinner?” That is what meal planning is for.
What is meal planning?
Meal planning is making a plan of what you are going to cook for the entire week. It’s writing down the meals, listing the ingredients and then shopping for the ingredients that you will need for the week. I sit down Friday night to plan my meals, I shop on Saturday, and I do a little meal prep on Sunday.
Meal planning can be a simple plan, or it can be an elaborate plan. If you are a beginner to meal planning, start with a simple plan until you find out what works for you. If you start with an elaborate plan, it will be too much, and you are going to quit before you even have a chance to be successful. My suggestion for you is to start with only planning dinners for the first couple of weeks until you find what works best for you. After you have accomplished planning dinners, then start adding in breakfast and lunch.
At first, it may seem like a lot of work. Finding which recipes to use, listing the ingredients, making a shopping list, shopping, and then finally cooking. But the more you do it, the easier it is going to be. The first time you start anything is harder because you have to think about each step you need to take. As you plan meals each week, these steps are going to become easier and, in the end, your dinners will go much smoother.
Now that we know what meal planning is, let’s take a look at what it is NOT.
It is NOT written in stone. It’s a flexible plan that works with you. If your schedule changes, then your meal plan may need to change to adjust. Some days I’ll come home from work and it had been a harder more stressful day than usual. If I had a new meal planned for that day, I am not going to want to take the time to prepare a new meal. I want a meal that I can throw together and be done. This is where flexibility comes in. I may decide to swap this meal with another meal I had planned.
Meal planning is NOT making new meals to eat every night of the week. It is selecting meals you and your family enjoy. If you want to try out new meals, I suggest picking one or two new recipes to cook a week.
Meal planning is NOT throwing away weekly traditions like Taco Tuesday or Pizza night. No one said you couldn’t work these into your plan. If your family enjoys their weekly Pizza night, then that goes on the meal plan. If your family has Taco Tuesday, then plan for Taco Tuesdays. This plan is to work with your schedule and what your family likes.
Look at your schedule 
The first step for any meal plan is to look at your schedule. This may seem like a simple step, but it is a step the many people tend to forget. Your schedule will determine the types of meals you are going to cook and the nights you are going to cook.
Take a look at your calendar for the week. What nights are you going to be home for dinner? Do you work late some nights, do the kids have practice? Maybe you have dinner plans with some friends. Make sure you write everything down. You don’t want to plan for a meal and then realize that you won’t be home.
Now that you have your schedule down, decide on how many days that week you are going to need to cook. Do you only need to plan for two dinners that week, or maybe you have to planning for five? You are also going to want to use your schedule to know what kind of meals you are going to cook for each night. You want to plan the simpler meals when you know you won’t have much time to cook. If you plan to try out new meals, leave these for the nights that you know you will be home earlier and will have more time for cooking.
Choose your recipes
Now that you have your schedule, it is time to get down to choosing which meals you are going to cook for which night. The first meals you should put down are weekly traditions you want to keep up. (Pizza night, Taco Tuesday). Now you will know how many more meals you need to plan.
Make sure to plan meals that you are going to enjoy eating. If you are going to spend the time cooking, make sure it is something that you and your family will eat. There nothing like spending your time making a meal and then your family taking one look at it and asking if they could order pizza.
Another thing to consider is how many people you are going to be feeding. Make sure the meals you plan will feed your entire family. You can always double a recipe for a bigger meal or half a recipe for a smaller meal. If your family uses leftovers for lunch, plan meals that you know will have leftovers, so you will have enough to lunch tomorrow. Always try to plan one or two new meals a week. This will add a little variety to your meals. Also, make sure you include some of your favorite meals.
Finally, when you decide on a recipe, make a note of where you found the recipe or print it out for easy reference. Nothing is worse than going to cook a meal and not being able to find the recipe you wanted. I have spent plenty of time going through my cookbooks and websites to find that meal I had planned to cook.
Shopping
Now that you have your meals planned for the week, it is time to go shopping for the ingredients. This is probably the worse step in the process for me. I don’t like to shop. I would rather have someone go shop for me. The quicker I can get in and out of a store the better. This starts with making an organized list, so I know what I need.
First you are going to want to list all the ingredients that you are going to need for your weekly meals. Start by going through each recipe and make a list of all the ingredients the recipes need. After you have the master list of everything you will need, go through your kitchen and cross off the ingredients that you already have. That will leave you with the ingredients you need to go shopping for.
You could take this list and use it to go shopping, but you will end up going back and forth across the store to find all of you items. To make the shopping trip quicker, take a few minutes to rewrite your shopping list to separate your ingredients into categories: Dairy, Meat, Canned Food, Fresh Fruit/Vegetables, Frozen, Spices, pasta, condiments, breads.
Now that you have your list, it’s time to go shopping. To avoid the crowds, try to go shopping in the early morning or late afternoon. Some people would prefer to spend a few extra dollars and have someone else do the shopping for them. That is Okay. What works best for you.
One Last Word About Meal Planning
Remember Simpler is easier. If it is simple and easy to follow, the more chance you will follow through with your meal plan. Every time you go through the process of meal planning you will learn what works for you, what you can change for next week, what you can improve on, and how to customize the entire practice to fit your needs.
Just like everything we do, there are going to be bumps along the way. If something didn’t work for you, don’t scrap the whole idea of meal planning, adjust it to work for you. Maybe it’s just starting with planning a couple meals a week.
Also remember to stay flexible. If you get home and you know the meal you had planned for the day is not going to work, change a few meals around. This is your plan and your plan can change to adapt to your lifestyle.
Let me know how your meal planning is going and leave a comment below to let me know what has worked for you.