What is Meal Planning?
Meal planning is exactly what it sounds like – it’s simply deciding what you’re going to eat in advance.
There’s nothing complicated about it and you definitely don’t need a fancy planner, an elaborate spreadsheet or a perfectly organised fridge to make it work. For me, meal planning is just about sitting down once a week and working out roughly what we’re going to have for tea over the next few days.
It sounds like such a small thing, but it can make a huge difference to how much you spend on food, how much you waste and how much time you spend wondering what on earth you’re going to cook.
How does meal planning save money?
The biggest saving for me comes from knowing what I actually need before I go shopping.
Before I make my meal plan, I have a look through the fridge, freezer and cupboards to see what we already have. I’ll then try to plan some of our meals around those things, particularly anything that needs using up.
Once I know what we’re eating, I can write a shopping list based on what we actually need rather than wandering around the supermarket buying things that look like they might make a meal at some point.
It also makes those last-minute trips to the shop less likely. They’re never just a quick trip for one ingredient, are they?
How does meal planning save time?
The other big benefit is that it gets rid of the daily “what are we having for tea?” question.
I don’t particularly enjoy getting to teatime with no idea what I’m cooking and having to stare into the fridge hoping for inspiration. If I’ve made a meal plan, I already have a few options and I know I have the ingredients to make them.
That doesn’t mean I decide on Sunday that we absolutely must have spaghetti bolognese on Wednesday and then force myself to cook it even if nobody fancies it.
My meal plans are much more flexible than that.
You don’t have to stick rigidly to your meal plan
I’ve never been super strict with meal planning because real life doesn’t work like that.
Plans change, people are late home, you might end up eating out or sometimes you simply don’t fancy the meal you’d planned.
When that happens, I usually swap things around. If I’d planned a chicken dish, for example, I might make something completely different with the chicken using ingredients we already have and move another meal to later in the week.
And sometimes the meal plan goes completely out of the window for the night. That’s fine too. I just pick it back up the next day and make sure anything I’d planned to use doesn’t end up being wasted.
A meal plan is there to make life easier, not to give you another set of rules to follow.
Meal planning helps me waste less food too
Reducing food waste is a big part of the way I meal plan.
I’ll often cook extra portions of meals that freeze well so we have an easy meal for another day. Leftovers might go into the freezer or become lunch the following day, and I try to use up anything hanging around in the fridge before buying more.
It all feeds back into the next meal plan too. If there’s something in the freezer that needs using or half a packet of something left from this week, I can build one of next week’s meals around it.
How do I start meal planning?
Keep your first meal plan really simple.
Have a look at what you already have, think of a few meals you know you enjoy and plan those before you write your shopping list. You don’t even have to plan seven meals to begin with – start with three or four if that feels easier.
Once you’ve done it for a few weeks, it becomes much quicker because you build up a bank of meals you know work for you.
My Meal Planning for Beginners guide takes you through the whole process step by step, and you can also have a look through my weekly meal plans if you need some inspiration.
Meal planning doesn’t need to be perfect to save you time and money. It just needs to make feeding yourself and your family that little bit easier.
