Meal planning is a great way to organize your meals so that you can save time on grocery shopping, deciding what to eat, and more. We wanted to share all about Meal Planning including what it is, how to get started, and tips. This can be helpful for anyone who wants to be more organized with their meals.
What is Meal Planning?
Meal planning is when you plan your meals in advance, usually for a week. Planning meals can help you buy only the groceries that you need and prevent you from eating out or buying take-out meals. This is different from meal prep since you don’t necessarily have to prep meals in advance. Meal planning and meal prep can also work together if you want to be even more organized, but it is not necessary.
Why should you meal plan?
Reduces time deciding what to eat every day:
We recommend meal planning to anyone who spends time deciding what to eat every day. Meal planning eliminates this since it is already planned out. This means that you have more time to make more important decisions in your daily life.
Grocery shopping is simplified:
By meal planning, you’ll only need to shop once per week. By planning out all the ingredients you need, grocery shopping is much easier. You’ll also avoid those impulse buys at the grocery store!
Healthier:
When you’re planning the full week of meals, you can make decisions on your eating without feeling hungry or stressed. The meals you choose are likely to be healthier since you’ll be in a better mindset. On the other hand, when we plan day by day we tend to choose foods based on our mood that day.
Saves money:
Along with simplifying grocery shopping, you’ll notice that you spend less money on food. By shopping once a week you don’t buy all kinds of unnecessary items that you might otherwise get. The other thing is that you plan your meals so there are no more takeout or eating out when you don’t need to. You can also try and use the same ingredient in multiple dishes and buy in bulk.
How to get started on your Meal Planning:
If you need a nice way to plan your meals, be sure to check out our free Recipe Book & Meal Planning Notion Template!
Here is also a step-by-step on how to get started with meal planning:
- To get started you’ll want to list out all the go-to meals that you enjoy cooking. You can also find new recipes that you think would fit well in your schedule and diet. Make sure to note down what kind of ingredients you’ll need for each dish.
- Then, write a list for each day of the week of your meals. Write the ingredients under them and put the ingredients all into a list.
- Use that ingredient list to shop for groceries and follow each day of the week as you planned.
Tips for Meal Planning:
- List out your go-to recipes and their ingredients so you know what to buy for each meal.
- Try to use an ingredient in more than one meal
- Make a larger quantity so you can eat it as a leftover the next day
- Keep track of your weekly receipts to know how you did financially
- Reflect on your weekly meal planning so you can keep improving. Ask yourself questions like “Did I waste any ingredients?”, “Which meals had leftovers?”, “Did I buy any unnecessary things?”, or “Did I enjoy the meals and recipes I chose this week?”.