How to Meal Plan… If You’ve Had Trouble with Meal Planning!

I was convinced I was just one of those people that “couldn’t meal plan” after having several failed attempts. It seemed like I would fall into several categories when it came to meal planning. Can you relate to any of them?

1. Attempting to meal plan, but still end up with a lot of food waste (half a bunch of cilantro there, 2 extra zucchinis here)
2. Not meal planning, and then having to go to the grocery store every day
3. Meal planning, but then not liking what I had planned
4. Meal planning, but then going out to eat a lot more than expected

But if meal planning is such a struggle, why do we even want to do it in the first place? My motivations are 1) budget, 2) I generally like some structure/plans, 3) I don’t have time to grocery shop every day and 4) if I have healthy options available to eat, I will generally choose those over going out and buying a less healthy option.

I took a hard look at what was working for me around meal planning and what wasn’t, and I totally shifted my strategy. I wanted to share these tips and tricks with you, and hopefully you integrate them into your life if you have #mealplanninggoals but aren’t quite there yet!

Recently, what has been successful for me while I’ve been working from home has been to plan dinners and breakfasts Sunday - Thursday, and then either organize lunches out with friends/colleagues or have basic staples around that I use in other meals to cobble together lunches.

Other key takeaways:

• Build your daily menu around ingredients you can use two or three times during the week (i.e. make this enchilada bake one night, and then have tacos another night - lots of similar ingredients)
• Write it down and put it up! Putting up our weekly dinner menu almost held me accountable to sticking to it. And I think Nate liked having an idea of what he was eating throughout the week too.

• If you like eating out for lunch…eat out for lunch. This one was huge for me. I realized that if I like/prefer having lunch out of the house most days that I’m working from home, I shouldn’t work against it. I would often buy groceries to have lunch at home, and then eat out a lot and have it go to waste!
• On a similar note, always have versatile ingredients around that you can easily whip up into a meal for the meals that you don’t have planned (i.e. your lunch plans fall through). For my pantry, those items are sweet potatoes, eggs, frozen proteins, and greens. I can make like 10 different meals with those ingredients, and I use them throughout the week for all of my other meals too.
• Take note of what ingredients you tend to have food waste at the end of the week. For me, it was often HERBS. So I learned to either use cilantro in several recipes throughout the week, or freeze the leftovers, or I even tried buying a basil plant for a while so I could just pick off the leaves whenever I needed it. Great success until plant death…but would totally work for those who had a green thumb 🙁
• Be flexible for the nights that you say “screw it, let’s eat out!” and cook dinner on one of the planned going out nights instead. What I had planned for Thursday night’s dinner turned into what we ate for Friday night. No food waste, just changed up the schedule!

Remember this Instagram post? Yeah, a pint of ice cream was definitely not on our meal plan!

• Don’t be worried about what Nate is going to do for breakfast/lunch. This was oddly big for me - maybe because I take such pleasure in feeding others (sign that I definitely need a pet). I can’t believe I’m admitting to this, but I needed to realize that he’s a big boy. The weeks that I wasn’t traveling he obviously figured out how to feed himself. Nowadays, I make sure we buy stuff for his smoothies to have in the morning, and then if there are leftovers for him to take for lunch that’s great. If we don’t, he will figure it out.
• Have some pre-prepared or frozen stuff around for “emergencies”. What do I mean by emergencies? When you burn something, something goes bad before you cook it, or your boyfriend needs a hefty 3pm weekend snack. Perfect Fit Meals sent us a bunch of health conscious, perfectly proportioned pre-packaged meals that are all around 300 calories, and these will “fit perfectly” into our flexible meal plan. I actually ate one yesterday when I had meetings all throughout lunchtime - not enough time to cook or go out.

This was their Turkey Enchilada Casserole. Pretty tasty, especially when served with a side salad!

• Cook things you actually WANT to eat. How many times have you brought your lunch to work just to toss it aside when you realize you’d rather prefer a fresh sandwich? This is key to meal planning. Sure it may sound pretty obvious, but if you don’t meal plan things you are excited to eat throughout the week then you will detest your plan. As simple as that.

I’ll keep you up-to-date with our weekly meal planning and any other good tips and tricks I pick up along the way!

Also - congrats to the three winners of the Safeway giveaway! The winners were notified!

It's only fair to share...