How to Start Meal Planning

Meal planning can make all the difference when it comes to setting yourself up for health success. Consider the following scenarios:

Scenario 1: You haven’t put any thought into your meals for the week and you either end up putting together an unbalanced meal with what you have on hand, you must go out and get ingredients on a given night which leaves you little time for other evening activities, or you end up ordering in because you simply don’t have the time to cook.

Scenario 2: You already know what meal you’re going to be making on a given night and when you come home, you know you already have the ingredients needed on hand, and perhaps, some of the ingredients are already prepped!

Which scenario do you think is going to make you more inclined to make healthy choices?

In scenario 1, you may find yourself making less healthy and less balanced meals. For example, perhaps you have pasta and tomato sauce in your pantry, but you don’t have any vegetables or salad on hand, leading to an unbalanced and low fibre meal. It can also end up being more time consuming if you must make last minute decisions and go out grocery shopping constantly to get the ingredients you need.

Meal planning on the other hand can help you eat healthier and have more balanced meals, and actually save you time AND money! Planning out your meals can help you add variety too which is good for your gut health. It can help save you money too by reducing food waste, utilizing ingredients in multiple meals, and cutting takeaway costs.

Here are a few things to consider to meal plan with success:

Step 1: Collate your recipes

Whether you’re a fan of cookbooks or online recipes, the key is to ensure you’ve got your favourite recipes handy when you’re putting a plan in place. This could mean bookmarking your recipes online, printing them out and putting them on the fridge, or organising them in a folder based on your preferences such as “vegetarian recipes” or “slow cooker recipes”. Any time you cook a new meal you like, you can add it to your collection so all your favourites are in the same place.  

Step 2: Write the meal plan

Schedule in a time that suits you so that you can be consistent to help you build this habit. You may find it helpful to write it in your calendar. When writing your plan, consider using a template that works for you. It also doesn’t need to be for every meal, you can tailor it to suit your lifestyle. If you’re someone who struggles to prepare lunches, you may find it helpful to focus only on work-friendly lunches for the week. If you often come home from work and feel unprepared for dinner, perhaps this is where you could focus.  If you’re stuck, a good place to start could be theming your nights. This could be based on different cuisines, recipes, or main ingredients! Some examples include: Meatless Mondays, Taco Tuesdays, Wrap Wednesdays, Traybake Thursdays, Fish Fridays, Stir fry Saturdays and Soup Sundays. This option can work well with families and can help you get the kids involved too!

A Final Word

If you’re just getting started on meal planning, you may want to start by planning a couple of meals first and then building on this as you go. We also have a free meal plan template and shopping list template available to download to help get you started!