Meal Planning 101: From Beginner to Pro

This meal planning guide will help you go from beginner to expert meal prepper, and answer all your meal planning questions! Plus learn the benefits of meal planning, the best meal prepping tools, and how to start creating your own meal plans.

Salmon, green onions and lime.

Even if you love cooking like me, figuring out what to eat for three meals a day, every day, for the rest of your life, can feel a little daunting. Throw in all your other responsibilities like work, family, and taking care of yourself, and planning out dinners can easily become another chore. Enter the solution: meal planning

What is Meal Planning?

Meal planning is the process of figuring out what to eat and cook ahead of time for the rest of the week or month, so you don’t have to do it on the fly.

The general idea is to pick out the recipes you want to make, scan your pantry and fridge for the ingredients you already have, and make a grocery list for the items you need to buy. Planning out meals for the week will help reduce dinner time stress, decrease food waste, and even help you save money!

Along with planning out your meals for the week, you can also take one day to “meal prep”. Meal prepping is preparing and cooking all or part of your meals for the week on one day. 

Lauren’s Approach to Meal Planning

If you think meal planning means eating the same meal every day for a weekthink again! While that might work for some people, I do not want to eat the same thing five times in a row. 

My approach to cooking for the week is a meal plan + meal prep combo. After planning out my meals, I spend some time on meal prep day to prepare ingredients, some full meals, and some partial meals. Then I’ll do some light cooking (usually 30 minutes or less) a few other days to keep it fresh and repurpose ingredients. This prevents meals from getting boring, and reduces time spent in the kitchen – especially on busy week days!

Why Meal Plan?

Meal planning might sound like a lot of extra work upfront, but really it saves you time and money in the long run (um, heck yes!). Here are some reasons meal planning can benefit you. 

  1. Save time. How many times have you stood in front of an open refrigerator staring into the abyss, waiting for a delicious dinner idea to jump out at you? Spending some time to plan out your meals will end up saving you time throughout the week and prevent dinner time decision making paralysis. 
  2. Save stress. Knowing your recipes for the week ahead of time will reduce stress during dinner time and help prevent you having to run to the grocery store through the week to grab last minute items. 
  3. Reduce food waste. Have you ever bought a pack of celery to use one or two ribs for a recipe, then find the remainder pushed to the back of the fridge and rotting a few weeks later? Yuck. Plan to make meals that share some of the same ingredients to limit wasting food. You’ll also be reducing food waste by only cooking what you’ll need. 
  4. Save money. If you’re cutting down food waste, then you’re also saving money! Having food planned, prepped, and ready to eat means less last minute take-out runs too.

*Bonus – Cooking meals for only two people can be a challenge since there’s only two people to eat the leftovers. Meal plan ahead of time so you’re only cooking the food you will eat. 

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How to Create a Meal Plan

Sold on meal planning yet? Let’s get started creating your first meal plan!

  1. Pick a tracking method 
  2. Gather your recipes
  3. Gather your ingredients
  4. Meal prep
  5. Enjoy your delicious meals!

Pick a Tracking Method

Once you make your meal plan, you’ll need a place to write it all down. Decide if you’ll be using a meal planning printable, a meal planning spreadsheet, a calendar, or just a plain notepad to write out your meal plan. You’ll want it written down somewhere to come back to throughout the week. 

Next, grab your calendar and take a look at your upcoming week, and ask yourself the following:

  • How many days are you cooking for?
  • Are you planning for Monday through Friday, or weekends too?
  • Which meals do you want to plan out? Work lunches only, all three meals, or dinners only?
  • Who are you feeding and how many servings will you need? Meal planning for two means fourteen servings of dinner, but don’t forget to account for dining out, date nights, work dinners, etc. 

My best advice for all of this – keep it simple to start with! Start with one meal only for Monday through Thursday and see how that goes before adding more meals. 

Gather Your Recipes

Next it’s time to pick out a few of your favorite recipes. It’s best to start with simple, tried, and tested recipes. Pick out some meals you already know you love and are easy to make. 

Is your grocery store having a sale on a certain ingredient? Try picking a recipe that uses that ingredient to save some money. Are there any ingredients in your pantry, fridge, or freezer that need to be used up? Pick recipes according to what you already have on hand. 

Check the servings on the recipes so you know how far they will stretch. Will there be leftovers? Are those leftovers something you’ll be excited about eating again? Some recipes definitely make better leftovers than others!

Decide if you’ll be cooking every day, or only on meal prep day, and choose those recipes accordingly. I prefer a hybrid approach of prepping and cooking most of the ingredients on meal prep day, then doing some light cooking on already prepped meals throughout the week. 

If you’ll be prepping and cooking everything on meal prep day (day 0), make sure the recipes you are making will still be good to eat by day 5, 6, and 7. A fish dish cooked on day 0, won’t be good by day 6, so plan accordingly. Can any of the meals be frozen to preserve their freshness? Can you break up the meal prep day into two to spread out the cooking during the week?

Gather Your Ingredients

Once you have your recipes picked out, go through each of them and write down the needed ingredients. Don’t forget to write down the quantity of each ingredient too!

Next, take a scan of your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer. Cross off any ingredients you already have. Take it a step further if you want to save time in the grocery store by reorganizing your list according to grocery store section (produce, frozen, dairy, canned goods, etc.) Now you can head to the grocery store!

Tip: I use an app called Todoist (Apple or Android) to make my grocery list. It allows me to reorganize the list and group the items based on the department in the store. This helps me make one swoop through the grocery store and get in and out fast. 

Meal Prep

Now for meal prep day! Scan your recipes and figure out what can be prepped ahead of time, cooked ahead of time, and what needs to be made fresh. Should anything remain frozen until the last minute? Can anything be made now and frozen for later in the week or month?

Look for any similar ingredients that you can prepare together. Chop your vegetables first, then move on to preparing proteins to prevent cross contamination. It saves time to prep all similar ingredients first rather than prep all of one recipe first. 

Be sure to label and date ingredients and meal components and store properly so they last until meal time. Decide if you want to store individual portions in separate containers or store it all together. 

Enjoy Your Food!

Now it’s time to enjoy your delicious meals! If all goes according to plan, you should only need a few extra minutes of prep or cooking time throughout the week. Time to get planning for next week!

Chicken, broccoli, and rice meal prep bowls.

Tips for Meal Planning

  • Start small! Meal planning every meal for a whole week can get overwhelming. If you’re new to meal planning, pick one meal to start with. 
  • Check your schedule. Plan around the needs of your week. Are there any scheduled date nights, late working days, meetings, etc planned that mean you won’t be home for dinner? Are there especially busy days that mean you won’t have time to do any cooking? Make sure to plan around your schedule. 
  • Raid the pantry/fridge/freezer. Chances are, you already have a lot of food that is just waiting to be incorporated into a meal. Take a good evaluation of the food you already have. Start with the oldest things first, and find recipes that use those ingredients. 
  • Check the sales! Planning your meals around the weekly grocery sales is a great way to save money. I usually start with the meat section first to see what’s on sale, and start finding recipes from there. 
  • Don’t forget about the leftovers! Many recipes will yield leftovers, especially when meal planning for two people. Incorporate these into lunch or other dinners later in the week. If you don’t love eating the same thing back to back, save the leftovers for another day and plan for something different in between. 
  • The freezer is your friend. Have a family favorite recipe that freezes really well? Think foods like spaghetti sauce, chili, soups, and casseroles. Make a double batch, portion out individual servings, and freeze it for later. These ready to go meals will eventually come in handy on a day when unexpected plans come up, you get sick, or are just out of energy to cook. Your future self will thank you!