If you’re still eating, you are meal planning without even knowing it. My husband loves that he can just breeze by the board whenever he wants and get the scoop on dinner. It also gives him something to look forward to during the week when he sees his favorite meal on the menu! Step 5: Keep track of your past meals Put your weekly Menu Board in a place that can be easily seen by the whole family. Or if you’re impatient and indecisive like me, throw a cute whiteboard on your wall and add some fun weekday magnets. It’s both practical and cute! There are hundreds of DIY Menu Boards online to get your creative wheels turning. If my weekly meal plan is not literally staring me in the face, it’ll be grilled cheese sandwiches and ordering pizza that week.Ĭreate a visible Menu Board and put it in a prominent place. And keeping a list on your counter or in your smart phone might not be enough. Let’s face it, if you can’t see it you’re gonna forget about it (step #1). Step 4: Create a Menu Board (and put it in your kitchen) Your Mom is still eating, isn’t she? Your friends haven’t given up food for life, have they? We’re all eating dinner every night so why not ask for advice? It may spark ideas for your own family and give you food for thought. When I’m in a meal planning drought, I literally ask my friends or family what they had to eat that week. I’m not saying don’t read blogs (obviously you’re reading one right now)! But please recognize we have a wealth of resources only a phone call away people who actually know us and love us (and most likely have similar tastes in food)! When we need help we turn to blogs, social media, magazines, TV, and some random stranger on the internet and then blindly follow their suggestions without giving it another thought. One thing that drives me absolutely nuts about my generation is that we’ve stopped asking the people closest to us for advice. Need meal ideas that don’t taste like cardboard? Don’t have time to browse Pinterest for an eternity? Want an awesome resource for good food? This step is especially crucial for those of us with digestive issues! Step 3: Phone a friend Planning in advance will take the stress out of the last-minute scramble while giving you the time and space to prepare healthy, nutritious meals for your family. Instead, set aside 30 minutes a week to browse recipes on Pinterest, look through magazines, read nutrition tips, or check out the recipes on this blog. If you try to figure out all your meals for the next two weeks AND build a collection of new recipes at the same time you may get overwhelmed and quit altogether. Trying to find new recipes can easily waste so much time – it’s no wonder our go-to is ordering pizza! In fact, this is probably the #1 reason why people don’t meal plan. The answer? Try new ones.Įasier said than done. So I get bored rather quickly with the same cyclical foods. And I have the attention span of a goldfish. I don’t know about you, but I love variety. Keep your meal plan visible (more on this later). By the end of the week I would find myself staring blankly at the fridge, trying to remember why I had bought so many vegetables.įree up some mental space and write it down. My biggest mistake was trying to plan in my head. These 5 steps can revolutionize your weekly meal planning with little effort and big results! Step 1: Keep it Visible But when I created my own system around these basic principles, I was shocked at how meal planning became much easier to maintain! These ideas are so simple you might be tempted to overlook or dismiss them. But the desire to eat healthy, not waste food, and feed my family was what kept me going back to the drawing board. Finally, after years of haphazard meals and last minute take-out runs, I am happy to report that I may have finally found the answers to my dinner planning problems! Or the “I just bought this!” surprise discovery when my bag of green beans have grown a few hairy friends.įailed attempts at meal planning can be discouraging. Or the multiple Pinterest fails that make me want to throw in the towel. Maybe it’s the endless hours browsing recipes that I know I’ll never try. So why does the task of putting together a plateful of meals feel like nails on the chalkboard of my food soul? If there’s one question that makes me cringe inside, it’s the one that awaits me at the end of every day.
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