meal prep for a week

How To Plan Your Meals for a Week

March 24, 2021

And stop wasting food and money!

Meal planning for some can be so overwhelming but in actuality, it is super easy to do and makes life that much easier.

Here are four simple steps to take to start planning out your meals for a week, plus a free printable to use as your template.

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THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT TO EAT

Sounds easy enough, right? I will admit, sometimes trying to think about what to eat for an upcoming week can be a challenge when you’re not in the mood to eat or think about what you’re going to want to eat days from now. Once you get into the habit of weekly meal planning, it becomes so much easier to make those decisions. 

Think about what you have a taste for, what you haven’t made in a few weeks or months. Get creative with new recipes you’ve never made or ate before. Recreate a favorite from a restaurant, that you have been meaning to try yourself.

Remember to include breakfast and lunch, as well as snacks and drinks!

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PLAN OUT THE WEEK

Now that you have decided what you want to eat throughout the week, now it’s time to think about your schedule and when would be the best days to cook what. If you know a day is packed with work or activities, that’s a great day to make something quick and easy. It may be a day where you cook the night before and have leftovers that night. Or maybe you want to have a themed night for dinner like taco Tuesdays or seafood Fridays. This is another great way to make meal planning easier each week, you already know what you’re going to have. If you’re like me and can’t eat the same thing every week or more than twice a month, you may want to do a monthly or bi-monthly rotation with your meals.

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SEE WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE

This step could be done now or even first. You can decide what to make based on what you already have in your fridge and need to use before it’s expired. However, the goal of weekly meal planning is to make sure you are not being wasteful and buying what you don’t need/use. Ideally, you’d do this step after planning out your meals as you are planning your grocery list. See what ingredients you already have for the meals you plan to make and jot down everything else you need to buy. This is also helpful to make sure you don’t forget to get any of the ingredients. Oh, I know, it will most certainly still happen. Hopefully, by doing this, it will only happen a few times a year.

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BUY YOUR INGREDIENTS

Now for the shopping. If you’re an online grocery shopper like me, who prefers to just pull up and have your groceries placed in your trunk or dropped off at your door, weekly meal planning makes shopping like this oh so easy. Without meal planning, you may be one of those people who make figure eights throughout the store because they keep forgetting what all they need or are deciding what to cook while in the store. For those of you who prefer to shop for yourself, here’s a great tip to make your shopping trip that much quicker. When you write out your list, write the items based on where they are located in the store. When in-store, I go straight to the back of the store and make my way forward. Therefore, my list will have eggs at the top and fruit and vegetables at the bottom because the eggs are on the back wall and the products are smack at the door. Doing this is like you’re creating a map of the store and your pathway to gather all of your groceries in a way that’s quick, effective, and again, less likely for you to forget something on your list. 

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Here’s a great Weekly Meal Planning sheet for you to use to begin or organize your meal planning. 

Weekly Meal Planner

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xoxo Tish

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P.S. Some days you just have to create your own sunshine. – unknown

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