Meal planning is mission-critical to maintaining a heart-healthy diet. I love it because it takes all the stress out of “What’s for dinner?” I think a lot of people believe that meal planning is a daunting, overwhelming task, but it’s not! Meal planning is pretty easy once you’ve built a system around it! Let me teach you all about my meal-planning system.
Table of Contents
- Meal planning is not:
- Benefits of meal planning:
- Step One: What’s your schedule like this week?
- Step Two: Use up what you already have
- Step Three: Look for recipes
- Step Four: Make your grocery list
- Step Five: Start prepping right away!
- Avoid overly ambitious meal plans
- Use a meal planning app
- Meal planning looks different to different people
- Give yourself plenty of time for meal planning
Meal planning is not:
Meal planning is not complicated: I don’t have an elaborate tabbed binder full of recipes. I write meal plans in the “notes” app on my phone, and just jot down a few words.
Meal planning is not expensive: Meal planning will save you money because you aren’t buying excess groceries you don’t need. You’re making sure you’re actually using up the food you already have. Did you know the average family of 4 throws away $1,500 worth of uneaten food each year? That’s bonkers!
Meal planning does not require a bunch of extra work: Well, I spend an hour on Friday planning and looking at cookbooks. After that, I don’t need to think about food for the rest of the week. I find that meal planning actually saves a tremendous amount of time and work. It takes all the guesswork out of “what’s for dinner?”
Meal planning is not inflexible: Once you’ve made a meal plan, it isn’t CARVED IN STONE. I move meals around a lot.
Meal planning needn’t be entirely home-cooked: Our family is on a special diet due to my husband’s heart condition, so we can’t order takeout or eat out in restaurants too often. There’s no reason you can’t incorporate restaurant and takeout meals if you aren’t dealing with dietary restrictions.
Benefits of meal planning:
You save a ton of money because you aren’t overbuying. You aren’t buying what you don’t need, or letting things go to waste. It’s expensive to walk into a supermarket without a clear plan!
Meal planning prevents food waste: You aren’t buying what you don’t need. I hate wasting food, or any kind of wastefulness in general. Because I meal plan, I don’t find myself ever needing to throw away food. I don’t let food go bad before I use it up.
Meal planning saves my sanity: I never have to worry about “What’s for dinner?”. Meal-planning takes a big mental load off my plate. When 4:30pm, 5:00pm rolls around, everything’s all ready to go.
Meal planning reduces temptation: It’s easier to avoid Grubhub or pizza delivery when I have all the ingredients for a healthy stir fry sitting in my fridge, prepped and ready to go.
Meal planning helps us stick to a heart-healthy diet: I take an hour on Friday to plan everything. I do a bunch of data-entry in the LoseIt app, so I can figure out the calories, saturated fat content, sodium content, macros, etc etc, and ensure that I’m feeding everyone healthy, well-balanced, nutritionally-optimal meals all week. Once I’ve done that, I don’t need to think about it again until next Friday.
Step One: What’s your schedule like this week?
How many meals do you need to make? Do you have a late-afternoon swim practice on Monday? Dinner out with the family on Friday? You should note any event that will alter or limit your ability to cook dinner during the week. Perhaps you need a crockpot meal. Perhaps you need to cook a large batch on Monday, and portion it out for Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Meal planning looks different to different people, so your weekly schedule is always the place to start.
I like to keep a general meal planning rhythm for the week:
It’s not set in stone, but I usually plan meals according to this loose schedule:
- Monday: Meatless Monday
- Tuesday: Tacos
- Wednesday: Noodles
- Thursday: Chicken
- Friday: Fish
- Saturday: Wildcard!
- Sunday: Soup or salad, depending on the season
Step Two: Use up what you already have
Once I know what my schedule is going to be, the next question I always ask is “What needs to be used up this week?” This informs the rest of my meal-planning.
What needs to be used up? What do you already have in the freezer? In the fridge? The pantry? My primary objective with meal-planning is to see how far I can get with ingredients I already have. This means buying fewer groceries.
Since I really, really, really detest food waste, I mainly plan meals around “What’s about to go bad? What needs to be used up right now?” Got a big head of cabbage to use? Okay, stir-fries! Kimchi! Half an eggplant about to go bad? Eggplant parmesan!
It’s like a game. I try to see how little I can buy each week. How far can I go without buying any new groceries?
For this reason, it’s very important to keep a running mental inventory of everything in the fridge, freezer and pantry. It’s easier to see what I have when I keep my food inventory levels low. It’s important to keep things minimal and avoid overfilling my cabinets and fridge with food I don’t have any plans for. Knowing what I have makes it easier to keep a mental list of what’s on hand.
Step Three: Look for recipes
Once you know which ingredients you want to include in your meals this week, you can start looking for recipes.
I’ve been working through the American Heart Association Cookbook and making note of which recipes use the ingredients I want to include in the week’s meals. A cookbook’s index will usually tell you which recipes use the ingredients you want to include. If you’re looking for recipes online, recipe websites often have a search function to help you find the recipes that match your ingredients.
Bonus win if you find one recipe that uses up multiple ingredients! For me, it’s basically a game to see how much I can avoid waste. I win when I avoid spending unnecessary money at the supermarket!
Step Four: Make your grocery list
As I’m reading through the recipes, I’ll jot down items I need and don’t already have on hand. For the most part, that’s produce because produce doesn’t keep as long as dry goods.
I don’t buy weird, obscure ingredients unless I’m very certain that I have a plan to use it up before it goes bad. If a recipe calls for an obscure ingredient, I usually skip it or substitute something else.
Check what you already have and cross it off the list
I hate it when I go to the supermarket and buy something I don’t need, because I forgot that I already had a bunch in the kitchen cupboard. Look through your refrigerator, freezer, pantry and cupboard and make sure to cross off what you already have. You don’t want to accidentally buy more of what you’ve already got!
It’s much easier to meal plan when your fridge and pantry are well-stocked. I replace pantry staples as I run out of them. I have refrigerator staples that I automatically add to the grocery list each week (yogurt, milk, almond milk, eggs, egg whites, chicken breasts, apples). Pantry and refrigerator staples are the bulk of my weekly grocery list. When meal planning, I skip over those “staple items” when making lists of what I need to buy.
Step Five: Start prepping right away!
Cutting up vegetables ahead of time is one thing that makes life tremendously easier. This saves a lot of time later!
Also, account for leftovers, because leftovers are great. We love putting leftovers in those takeout containers from Olive Garden! We love them so much that we ask for extras whenever we go to Olive Garden. Best leftover containers ever!
I bought some glass meal prep containers years ago at Stop&Shop and I love those. I also have a bunch of clear plastic containers from IKEA – these ones here, they’re called “Pruta”
Avoid overly ambitious meal plans
If the recipes are too hard, or too elaborate, it’s harder to follow through. Start small, don’t commit to making home-cooked meals seven nights a week. Start with 2 or 3 home-cooked meals. Do what’s going to be sustainable in the long run.
Start with recipes you already know by heart. Cook a big batch of food and eat it for days.
I love multi-functional recipes! For example, a marinara sauce that can be a spaghetti sauce on Monday, and a pizza sauce on Tuesday. Or a pork roast that provides leftovers for sandwiches the following night. How about a salad with a corn-and-bean salsa that can be used in quesadillas later in the week?
Use a meal planning app
It’s important to jot down your planned meals so you won’t forget what’s on the menu. I use the notes app on my phone. Paprika Recipe Manager is supposed to be a very good meal planning app, although I haven’t ever used it. I like to input recipes into the LoseIt app to calculate all the nutrition data for the week.
Meal planning looks different to different people
We have a heart issue. This informs everything I buy, plan, prepare and cook for my family. Your concerns might be different from mine. Maybe your kids play sports, so you’re never home at dinnertime. Maybe you’re cooking for yourself, or for two adults instead of an entire family of four. Your meal planning should fit your lifestyle, and your family’s needs.
For example, I don’t really “meal plan” breakfast or lunch, because I’ ve found it leads to overbuying. Breakfast is a big pan of oatmeal that I eat all week, or an omelet that uses up random vegetables. Lunch is usually leftovers, a sandwich, or a cobbled-together salad. My husband likes to boil chicken breasts for his work lunches all week.
My husband often travels for work, and I hate cooking dinner when I’m the only adult in the house. When he’s traveling, I cook one big batch of food and portion it out over several days. (Lasagna is always a top choice!)
It’s always good to have some backup recipes that you know by heart, and recipes that you know will come together quickly. On busy weeknights, I just want to throw dinner on the table! I don’t have time to learn anything new!
I like to meal plan two weeks out because it gives me more lead time for knowing what needs to be used up. I find this gives me more flexibility with frozen meats and longer-lasting produce items (like cabbage, potatoes, or onions). You might not find it helpful to meal plan two weeks ahead of time. Perhaps meal planning for the next 3 days might be a better fit, as it all depends on your individual needs.
Give yourself plenty of time for meal planning
Especially when just starting out. It takes time to inventory your pantry. It takes time to look for recipes. It takes time to compose a grocery list. As the weeks go by, meal planning becomes habitual and automatic. After a while, meal planning requires less and less effort.
Meal planning ahead of time reduces stress, saves money and helps you stick to a healthy diet. If you set aside an hour a week to think about what you plan to eat, everything else about cooking becomes so much easier. It’s easier to grocery shop. It’s easier to prepare dinner at night. It’s easier to manage your kitchen when you meal plan. Food is no longer a source of waste in your household. Meal planning takes away the daily decision-making around food, which is a huge load off.
