How To Be A Successful Meal Planner
Meal Planning is an approach used to chart out what you're going to eat for the week. This includes shopping for the ingredients and in some cases, preparing the ingredients beforehand. This may seem like meal prepping, but you are not actively cooking the ingredients. Instead, you are cutting, seasoning, and storing you ingredients to be cooked later. Although it takes a bit of time upfront, meal planning will save lots of time daily. Other benefits of meal planning include:
Eating healthier
Saving money
Allows for better portion controlling
Allows for variety
So how exactly do you get this meal planning train a chugging?
First, you start with finding the best type of planner for you. Some planners are simply a monthly calendar, others are weekly. My favorite meal planner is one that has two columns.
The first column list the days of the week with breakfast, lunch, and dinner listed under them
The second column is for groceries. The best planner will split your groceries into produce, meat/protein, bread/grains, snacks, dairy, frozen, and miscellaneous.
I created my own meal planner that you can purchase here:
Now that you have a bomb planner. It's time to fill it in. My first tip for choosing meals for the week is to know what you like and choose two to three staple meals for the week. For my fiance and I, it’s Taco Tuesday and Pizza Friday. With those selected, the next is to choose the rest of the meals for the week. This is when Pinterest becomes your best friend.
If you haven’t already, create a board where you pin recipes that you would actually eat. As a pro tip, divide your board into subcategories. Subcategories can include Tacos, Salads, Sheet Pan Meals, Sandwiches, Apps for Dinner, Light Dinners, Soups, and Fast Food Alternatives.
My next tip is that if you can, to plan meals that share ingredients. This will help cut down cost on the groceries as well as cut down on time to prep the ingredients. This will also ensure that you are buying ingredients that you can eat over and over again without getting tired of them.
If you are on a budget, then you can plan your meals around the weekly grocery ads.
After you’ve chosen your meals, it's time to write out your grocery list. As you write out your list, be sure to check the fridge and pantry to double check that you are not buying extra groceries.
With the hardest part over, it’s time to shop for your groceries. If you are going to the store remember to only pick up what you need. If you’re cooking more healthy meals then most of your groceries will come from the perimeter areas and not the internal aisles.
I have also been using instacart as another means to shop for groceries. This really eliminates buying extra groceries as you can just search for what you need.
With the fridge full, the last and most important step is to stick to the plan. You can either prep the food the day you get the groceries or in the mornings before you get your day started. The last step is to stick to the plan! Cook what you bought and save leftovers for lunch the next day.
And that is it! That is how you become a successful meal planner. If you start on your journey of cooking at home, then tag me in your pics!!! Until next time :)
If you have any questions on meal planning, feel free to reach out and comment below! If you like what you read, sign up for my newsletter so you are first to know when new physical wellness blogs are posted!
Until next time :)