:: FREE!! week-long, clean eating meal plan and shopping list included
Mmmm MM M Mmm. This is all I think of when I think of my mom’s lasagna or chili. I was spoiled growing up with two parents who are extraordinary cooks and grew up eating mostly from scratch meals. Even in college, I would get off work late then head to my parents house because I knew my dad would have a warm, delicious meal on the table for me no matter what time I got home.
Then I became an adult who was in charge of her own meals. Which, frankly, has caused me no end of stress. And since this Italian girl is a big eater, what I eat is maybe a little too important to me. I knew how to cook. (Thanks, Mom and Dad.) But that doesn’t help if I get home and find nothing in the fridge. So since I am a big planner, I started meal planning. Over the years, I have developed a process that is working well for me. It is by no means a well-oiled machine, but it gets a clean eating, from scratch dinner on the table 99% of the time. It also saves Hubs and I about $100 a month in grocery bills and takeout bills.
And, here’s the real secret. It is so easy. Once you find a method that works for you, you can plan endless meals in very short periods of time. And, if I can keep a meal plan going, you can too. To make this even easier, I have shared a weeklong, clean eating meal plan with you for FREE. Scroll to the bottom or click on the graphic below to download your FREE week-long meal plan with shopping list and meal plan template.
Get Ready
The meal plan may seem tedious when you first start out, but don’t fear. I am here to give you the full tour with a week-long meal plan already done for you. (download it here) So exactly what does a meal plan entail? The answer is, whatever you want! Everyone’s meal plan will look a little different. Hubs is a little picky and will not eat the same thing more than once or twice a month (unless it is hamburgers). After a couple of months on the meal plan, he gets sick of eating the meals and will tell me he is tired of them even though they rotate about once a month. So I have tried different meal plan methods until I found one that worked. Believe me when I say, I have tried almost any method of meal planning I could find or think of. This is what I learned.
Set a guideline
Putting together a plan takes rules. Do you like variety? Are you the type of person who likes the same thing week after week? Do you have picky eaters? Are you into flexibility? Do you want to take all the thinking out of planning meals and just make whatever comes up next? Whatever you like, plan around that. As I mentioned before, we like variety, so I have a huge list of meals we like then pick seven a week that we haven’t seen in a while. I usually do one Mexican style meal, one Asian style meal, one slow cooker meal, something on the grill, and one chicken meal a week. The other two are pretty flexible days depending on what we want. I do not assign those themes to a day because I like the flexibility to change my mind. Some weeks Hubs wants to cook more. Other times the store was out of one of the ingredients we need, so we wait to cook that meal until after one of us runs to the store again. The most important thing is we have a plan before the week starts so we don’t have to agonize over what to make when we get home from a long day at work, and we have our shopping list ready by the time we go to the store. I have found there are three basic guidelines or types of planners. Which one you are really depends on your personality and your family’s needs.
Power Planning
Power planning is for super organized people who like to fix it and forget it, per se. They like to do a large amount of planning all at once if it makes things easier later, and they don’t mind a little repetition. Power planners will sit down and map out a whole month of meals and snacks. This way is very beneficial for super busy people, and it has the added bonus of saving more money because you can plan far enough ahead to use leftover ingredients from the week before. The biggest downfall to this method is pleasing picky eaters. Eating a meal once every four weeks may seem like plenty of variety, but even for me, who will drink the same smoothie for breakfast every morning for months in a row, the meal rotation seems a little blah. Weirdly oxymoronic, I know. Another pitfall is merely finding that many meals that the whole family (yes, all two of us) likes. Because of this, power planning does not work well when you have picky eaters to please.
Loosey Goosey
Loosey goosey people need structure, but not too much structure. They are more than willing to plan out their meals, but they want it to be quick, easy, and flexible. Their success hinges on variety. Loosey Goosey planners collect a huge list of meals they like. Pinterest, anyone? They choose a theme for each day so they don’t have to think too hard when planning. Then, they choose a meal from their list that fits the theme. With this method, you can pick and choose what you want based on sales at your local store and what you are craving. It allows for a larger variety of meals and can be kept up continuously with very little tweaking. This is an excellent planning structure if you are trying out a new diet or working on a lifestyle change. Your daily meal categories may look like this:
- Low-maintenance Monday (make a crockpot or quick meal)
- Taco Tuesday (Tacos or Mexican style meals)
- Wok Wednesday (Asian style meals)
- Chicken Thursdays
- TGIF (grilled meals)
- Shameless Saturday (eat one of your favorites)
- Something New Sunday (try out a new recipe)
The downfalls to this method are that it requires a very large list of base meals or you will end up eating the same thing week after week. Since each day of the week is themed, it is easiest to store the meal ideas by theme so you can choose one from each category. Pinterest now has folders that can help you do this, or you could keep a master meal list in your bujo.
Note: This is the method we are currently using. I love the flexibility, and it allows enough variety for Hubs.
Non-planning
Non-planners really hate the whole planning process. It almost stresses them out more to have to plan out the meals. Often non-planners are super busy and prefer to not put a lot of time into thinking about what they are going to cook. They like to plan on a day by day basis or shop for a couple meals at a time. Non-planning is great for people who don’t like to get caught in a routine. There is a lot of room for flexibility, and a lot less time goes into the planning part of meals. The downfall to this type of planning is it eats up time in other areas. Shopping, for example since multiple trips to the store are made every week. It can also cost quite a bit more money if there is no set plan making it harder to keep track of how much money has already been spent. Non-planners are much more likely to just grab take-out on the way home from work because they don’t know what to cook. Non-planners can benefit from having a strict budget that they keep careful track of. I suggest taking their food budget our in cash so they know exactly how much they have already spent for the budget cycle. They can also keep your pantry stocked with basics, core ingredients to meals you know they like, so they can always whip up something delicious at home.
Get Set
Now that we have established that you can plan, no matter your planning style, let’s get into the nitty gritty of planning.
Mindset
For me, dinner starts when I begin planning our meals for the week. As silly as it sounds, from that moment on, I am creating a relationship with the food I am going to eat. I get excited about one of the new recipes I am going to try or look forward to my favorite meal all week long. Even grocery shopping, which I try to do at breakneck speed to just get it over with, is part of the process. Then, when dinner time actually comes, I am involved in the process. Planning and preparing the meal is part of the meal. I think this helps me enjoy my food more because I get to put such a personal touch on each dish. By these standards, meal planning is an extremely important ritual in the T household.
Goals
One unexpected side effect of using meal planning as part of our meal process is that I am much, much more likely to eat healthy meals. When I don’t take time to think through our meals, I am more stressed and tend to eat out or grab some convenience foods. Not that there’s anything wrong with those choices occasionally, but one of my priorities is planning and making healthy meals for my family.
As you begin, take time to think about your goals for your meals. Are you wanting to try clean eating? Are you needing quick, delicious meals with little prep? Are you wanting to take a lifestyle change? Begin to build a foundation of exactly what you want your meals to be like. As you do this, you build a mentality around your food that helps you stick to meal planning and eat healthier. If you are planning dinner for Monday, realize dinner actually starts at the moment you sit down and begin planning. As you plan, make a list, and shop, you will be setting yourself up for a successful week and save yourself a lot of time.
Go
We started today with one goal, make your meal plan work for you. Now that we have covered the basics, I think we are ready to jump into the actual planning. So, without further ado, my four steps for an effective meal plan.
Organization
The way you organize your meal plan is completely up to you. I have done mine several different ways: directly on my shopping list, a meal plan board, and in my bujo.
Writing it directly on my shopping list was so simple and kept my meal plans in mind as I created our weekly shopping list. Buuut, I did manage to lose the list pretty often, and I’ll be honest, I often forget what I planned for meals unless I look at it each night.
So, from Pinterest, craftiness, and inspiration, this menu board was born. I used a cheap frame from Walmart, some clothespins, pretty scrapbook paper, and two crayon boxes. It was so simple to put together. The most time consuming part was typing up and printing all the meal cards. As I said before, we like variety in the T home, and I would put the untried meals in the bottom box then move them to the top box after we had prepared and enjoyed them. The best part of this my frame, though, was that I tediously put each ingredient on the back of the cards which really helped with writing a quick shopping list. A couple of years later, though, we completely changed our diet. I really didn’t want to type up a bunch of new menu cards, so I moved on to this third idea.
I was starting to get into bullet journaling around that time and put a menu plan into mine. Currently, this is the method I am using. I keep my shopping list and meal plan all in one place. Since I bring my bujo with me almost everywhere, it is really convenient.
And that is the word we really want to focus on. Convenience. Without that, what are we really doing here? As you begin meal planning, think about how you want to keep track of what you will be preparing. You could create a meal planning binder, add the meal plan page to your command center in your home, write the meals right on the calendar…the possibilities are endless. But come up with an organization method that is convenient for you.
Choosing what to eat
It is a great idea to look around at what is in your fridge/pantry already. Often I will plan to use the leftovers from last week or purchase meat or veggies with the intent on using them for two consecutive meals. This way, we use up our food, less goes to waste, and we can keep our food budget down. If I don’t check my food stash first, I tend to double purchase items. Then we have to scramble to use them up.
Once you know what you have, the fun part happens. Pour yourself a cup of wine tea. Grab your meal planning organizational method. Decide what you want to eat. Yum! This used to stress me out. I would sit there and agonize about what I wanted to cook. A cup of tea would be no consolation compared to the frustration of having no idea what I wanted to eat the next week. What would be easy for this night? What would be a special treat for that? With a bank of meals to choose from, a lot of the work went out of it. I still like to try new recipes but am more than happy to just pick and choose from some of our tried and true favorites for most of the week. Now I no longer sit in the parking lot of the grocery store after work scrolling through my Pinterest and frantically calling my husband hoping for inspiration to strike. I just get out my meal bank, grab a couple of sticky notes, and organize them in my bujo.
Make a shopping list
Now that you know what you will be eating each day, you can quickly make a shopping list. I start by listing the ingredients I need for each meal. By now, I know what the ingredients are for most of the meals we eat. But if necessary, I get out my recipe books *ahem* Pinterest and check to see what I need.
Then, I move on to sides. I often just write “fruits” and “veggies” on my shopping list and purchase whatever is on sale. I do sometimes plan exactly what I want as a side but, more often than not, the sales guide me.
Last, I add on snacks and extras. We often just eat fruit or veggies for snacks. So, I have to make sure I always have our staples. I also try to plan at least one other snack, and I make sure to add the ingredients for it to my list. By the end of our list, I usually don’t have a lot of room for extras, but if we have a few extra dollars from our budget, I will grab some unsweetened tea, dark chocolate, or a box of Cheez-its.
The Plan
Now that we have talked about how to make your own meal plan, here is one of mine to get you started. I plan each meal out but do tend to shuffle the meals around to suite my needs. In other words, I don’t always make Monday’s meal on Monday, but if it is easier for you, stick to each day. Remember, our goal is to make this as convenient as possible. Click the picture below to download this week-long, clean eating meal plan for FREE!
Finish Line
The whole idea of a meal plan can be daunting. Especially if you do not already have a method that works for you. But I can personally promise you that it will be worth it. Make meal planning a part of your weekly ritual and make your life more convenient. If you are not convinced yet, read my ways you are missing out by not having a meal plan.
I would love to hear about your method for meal planning. If you are doing it better than me, I want to be like you.