Tips For Meal Planning & Staying On Track

After a day of work or school oftentimes the last thing you want to do is try and come up with what to make for dinner. And then dinner comes again the next day, and the next day, which can feel overwhelming. Meal planning can be a helpful way to stay on track and ease the burden of coming up with what to eat on a daily basis.

The first tip for successful meal planning is to take time to put together a collection of recipes that you truly enjoy. Otherwise you’ll spend so much time picking recipes that when it comes time to prepare the meals you won’t actually want to make them. Instead curate a list of recipes you and your family enjoy and then use those when meal planning. You can source recipes from your favorite blogs and cookbooks to create a list of recipes you’ll enjoy over and over. 

Another tip to help you successfully meal plan and stay on track is to prepare some of your ingredients over the weekend. If you know you’ll be using chicken in two of the meals, you can batch prepare the chicken over the weekend to cut down on prep time during the week. Additionally you can chop vegetables or prepare additional ingredients over the weekend so that when it comes time to prepare dinner, you can skip over the prep and just get straight to cooking.

If you are looking to save money through meal planning, a helpful tip is to meal plan alongside weekly grocery specials. Depending on what’s on sale each week you can meal plan accordingly and use those ingredients. Meal plans during a week with a great chicken special might include several chicken dishes. Whereas meal plans during a week with a great beef special might include more beef dishes.

If you are looking to meal plan for your whole family you can also assign each family member a day of the week where they need to plan the meal. This helps ensure that each person has at least one meal they are particularly excited about each week. This also takes the pressure off needing to come up with all the meals for the week and spreads out the workload. This can also be an opportunity for each family member to plan a fun and creative meal!

With some careful planning and preparation you can successfully meal plan and stay on track.