Simple Meal Planning Tips to Make Life Easier

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Meal planning is a great way to save time and money, but it can be daunting if you’re not used to doing it. 

But, it’s really not that hard. You just need to have a few simple tips to make meal planning easier.

Meal Planning and prepping ahead also means you’ll have healthier meals and snacks on hand, so you can stay on track with your wellness goals. 

So, in this post, I’m going to share with you my top tips for meal planning. 

Keep these in mind, and you’ll be able to plan easy and stress-free meals week after week.

Tips on Mealing Planning

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Use a Planning Notebook or Planning Tool

It’s important to organize your meal planning in one place. You don’t want to have one meal written in one place and another meal written somewhere else. This will make it overwhelming and you won’t know where to start. 

So, if you prefer paper you can use a notebook or a meal planner. The good thing is that if you have no idea what to cook for the upcoming week you can use previously planned meals and reuse those ideas and/or recipes.

If you are more interested in digital meal planning then you can use project management tools like ClickUp, Asana, or Notion. 

I love and swear by Clickup as my go-to project management tool.

With ClickUp you can set up a personal folder and then have a list specifically for meal planning. You can organize by meal type or day of the week, up to you.

I love that with ClickUp I can add pictures and capture ideas for later whenever I come across recipes I want to try.

Schedule it in Your Calendar

Time block some time on your calendar to meal plan, grocery shop, and then meal prep. 

For this, you can use a paper planner or something like Google Calendar. Make this a high priority on your calendar. 

Time blocking is important because if you are like me you will end up spending hours looking for recipes to make or get distracted when it is time to actually do the meal prep. 

Organize Your Plan to Make it Efficient

First, spend about an hour or so, looking for recipes you want to try. You can do this by browsing Pinterest, food blogs, or even recipe books. 

Depending on how many weekday meals you are looking to prep, you can choose between 2-3 recipes. Try to find recipes with the same ingredients that way you can utilize all the ingredients and not spend a ton of money. 

Write out the meals for each day of the week in your planner or a digital tool like I mentioned above.

Second, write out your shopping list and designate a day to grocery shop. Either go to the store or in this day and age, you can just buy your groceries online via Amazon Fresh or another grocery service.

Lastly, in your calendar schedule a day and time to meal prep. A lot of people like to do this on Sundays. But, of course, you have to do what works for your schedule and lifestyle.

Give yourself time and grace

If you are a beginner at meal planning take it one step at a time. Don’t expect it to be perfect. 

You may end up forgetting an ingredient or making too little food that’s okay!

Give yourself grace and be proud of yourself for making the effort and working on this habit. You are taking the initiative to do better.

What matters the most is that you are building a healthy habit eventually it will flow and become easier for you. Most importantly just enjoy the process.

Is Meal Planning Worth It?

Meal planning is totally worth it. Think about how much time and energy you will have. 

As a business owner, it is hard to stop in the middle of the workday to cook a meal, and sometimes you may get so caught up with working you forget to even eat.

And after a long day of calls and computer work, the last thing you want to do is cook a meal. Knowing that you have a meal already prepared makes life easier where you can eat and wind down without worrying about what to eat.

As for your health and wellness goals, you have meals already prepped so it helps to prevent you from ordering a pizza or take-out. 

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re on a tight schedule like most entrepreneurs, trying to stay healthy, or just want peace of mind; meal planning can be the answer. 

It saves time and money while ensuring that you have healthy meals at the ready all week long. 

It’s important to remember to just keep it simple. Don’t overcomplicate it and overwhelm yourself. 

I hope these meal-planning tips help make your life organized and easier.