How to Create a Meal Plan that Works for You

My husband and I ended the year with the common problem of carrying a few excess kilos into the Christmas season. We decided together to have a healthy January. We're not doing anything drastic, and we're not following a 'diet' program. We have cut out sugar, and don't eat bread, rice or pasta after 1 pm. It's working well, and seeing the results helps me reach for a banana or handful of nuts rather than a KitKat when the mid-afternoon munchies grab my tummy.

I loosely follow a meal plan, but a number of my go-to weekday meals are quick pasta and rice dishes, so I needed to redo my plan for this month. There is nothing worse than trying to eat well and not having the ingredients you need at hand. I've looked at several meal planning systems before, but they are often relatively complicated and structured. I've developed a system that is flexible and simple.

Step One: Brainstorm

Begin by brainstorming a list of meal ideas. Keep it simple, realistic rather than ambitious. List the regular meals that you like to prepare and eat. I usually have the same thing for breakfast most mornings, and I’m happy to eat the same thing for lunch two or three days in a row.

Step Two: Plan your meals

Draw up a grid to draft out your plan. The number of weeks will depend on the amount of variety you prefer in your meal plan. I like to keep it simple. Two or three weeks of meals work well for us. We don’t mind eating the same meal once a fortnight for a season as long as it is fresh, tasty and easy to prepare. 

On your grid, start to plot out your meals. Consider the evenings you come home tired or late and make sure you plan the simplest meals then. Consider which ingredients are repeated through the week's menu to make shopping easier and avoid wasting food.

You may like to include a night each week or two to try a new recipe. Great idea! Just make sure you are realistic about the extra time and energy it will take and schedule it on a day that will suit. If your plan is too ambitious, you won’t be able to stick to it. I write mine out in pencil so that I can easily swap things around while I’m putting the plan together.

I also tend to follow patterns: salad with a protein on Monday, Mexican on Tuesday, Fish on Wednesday, pasta on Thursday etc.

Step Three: Shopping Lists

When you have plotted the meals on each day of the week, it's time to write your shopping lists. Write out the master list for each week beginning on the day you do the grocery shopping. I do our grocery order online on Saturday and pick it up on my way home from church on Sunday, so my meal plan begins on Sunday. If you shop on Thursday, start yours then.

Write out the ingredients you need for the whole week. Even if you only use a small amount and have a supply in the pantry, add it to the master list. This list is to jog your memory when you make your weekly shopping list. You may find at this stage that you decide to swap a couple of meals around.

When you are happy with your meal plan and have the weekly shopping list for each week done, write it up neatly in pen and keep it somewhere handy. When I'm in a productive headspace, the entire process takes about an hour. 

How to use your meal plan

Having a plan is one thing. Making it work is another thing altogether. This is the process that works for me.

On Saturday I spend some time planning the week. I pull out my master plan and look at my calendar. I consider any left-over food that I have in the fridge, and what events are happening, and I plan the meals for the week ahead. If I have people coming over or plans to go out, I adjust the plan accordingly. If there is something I don’t feel like cooking, or something new I want to try, I switch it out. Then I order my groceries for the week from this amended list. Because I order online, I save my list each week and then just go back to the same week in my meal plan next time and make changes rather than starting a new order.

With a little thought and planning, meal preparation is so much easier for me. My brain doesn’t have to keep solving the “What’s for dinner?” problem every, single, day. I repeat the process every three or four months as the seasons change. 

Would you like to give it a try? You can download my meal planning worksheet and build your Meal Plan suited to your family and schedule.