5 Ways to Meal Plan & Why to Have a System
How do you plan and organize ALL the dinners EVERY DAY in your home and not lose your mind?
If you’re responsible for feeding a family 365 days a year and dread every minute of it, this post is for you!
What is Meal Planning?
Simply put, it’s deciding what to eat for dinner in advance, typically a week or two at a time.
Most people plan 3-5 meals per week with the assumption that they’ll eat leftovers, carryout or “fend for yourself” meals on the other days of the week.
Types of Meal Plans
Finding the meal planning system that works for your lifestyle and preferences might take some time. Choose a method based on what’s important to you — is it variety, efficiency, flexibility, or making as few decisions as possible each week?
Method 1: Brainstorm/Browse
You sit down with a blank note and come up with meal ideas for the week. You might browse cookbooks or online food blogs for ideas.
Pros: involves no pre-planning, lots of opportunity for variety
Cons: time-consuming, requires a lot of brain power since you’re starting from scratch, inefficient, difficult to find recipes that “work” if family members have different food preferences. Honestly, this is how I started out meal planning, and I absolutely dreaded it!!
Method 2: Meal “Library”
Create a list of all the meals and recipes you like and put them all together in one place—your meal library. When it’s time to meal plan, reference this library and choose 4-6 meals from the list each week.
Pros: Having a list to reference requires less brain power and time than Method 1
Cons: Still involves a good amount of decision-making each week…it’s like choosing what to wear from your closet every morning.
Method 3: Theme Days
You decide on a theme or category for each day of the week ahead of time, like Taco Tuesdays, Fend For Yourself Friday, etc.
Pros: Reduces decision fatigue because it narrows down your choices
Cons: It may be difficult to fit every meal within a specific category. You may miss out on some variety and flexibility with this plan. Committing to the same category every single week may feel confining for some people.
Method 4: Rotation
You repeat the same dinners every 2 weeks or so.
Pros: This eliminates decision-making — woohoo, no thinking involved!
Cons: Not very flexible (ex: what if you don’t have time to cook the scheduled meal because of an evening activity?) It can get boring quickly for some people.
Method 5: Combo System
Over the years, I’ve developed a system that combines a rotating menu AND a meal library. The 6-week rotating menu provides 3-4 meals each week that you know you like. Then, you fill in the rest of the week’s meals by using the meal library.
Pros: The rotating section eliminates decisions. Choosing from the meal library offers flexibility based on your schedule and energy level. You’ve Marie Kondo-d all these meals so you know they work, even for family members with different food preferences.
Cons: Requires pre-planning, but don’t worry — I got you! We can create it together in my Menu Creation Program
Create a Meal Planning System
I used to DREAD meal planning every week. (I mention how hard it was in this blog post.) But now? Not only do I easily meal plan for my family, but choose to help others meal plan as well!
What changed? I figured out a SYSTEM.
See, meal planning actually has 2 parts…
(1) You need to know which meals everyone likes and you’re cool with preparing.
(2) You also need to decide which of those meals to make this week.
If you’re doing both of these tasks at the same time every week, you will DREAD meal planning, like I did.
But when you have a system in place (as simple as a list of meals that everyone likes), deciding what you’ll have on a particular week is simple, fast, and dare I say…fun!?
Meal Planning Systems Save Time
The more robust of a system you have, the less time your weekly planning will take.
If you follow the Brainstorm/Browse Method, you don’t have a system.
You are starting from scratch each week.
You’re searching for meals that everyone likes AND deciding what to make EVERY WEEK
Of course you don’t want to meal plan—this takes a lot of time and energy!
If you’ve put in some pre-planning (see Methods 2-5 above), you have a SYSTEM.
You are not desperately scrolling food blogs on Sunday night.
You simply choose from the list you’ve collected, and you are DONE.
This version of meal planning saves time.
How to Create a Meal Planning System
A meal planning system takes some up-front time and intention to create. Finding meals that everyone likes is like purging your closet. You take a good look at each piece, get rid of what you don’t like/don’t wear/doesn’t work for you, and keep only the good ones!
You can do the same for your meals. It’s what I call Marie-Kondoing your meals (after the popular tidying expert).
Write down a list of dinners you typically eat or keep a food log.
Evaluate each meal by labeling “YES/NO/MAYBE.”
Throw out the NO meals. Stop making that dish that nobody eats and the leftovers sit uneaten in the fridge for weeks. Stop cooking that recipe that is not worth your time. Ask yourself why those meals aren’t working and avoid those in the future.
Tweak the MAYBE meals. What’s keeping this from being a “yes” meal? Use convenience items as short-cuts if it’s too complicated to cook. Make a simpler version by taking out an ingredient if not everyone likes it. Consider how you can deconstruct the meal for any picky eaters in the family.
Keep the YES meals. Find the keepers that you love and include those in your dinner rotation. Ask yourself why those meals DO work and find more like them.
Let Me Help You Meal Plan!
If you’re longing for a more structured way to plan meals, but feel overwhelmed by the upfront work of creating a new system by yourself—check out the Menu Creation Program.
I’ll walk you through the process step by step. Food logs and worksheets help you gain insight into what works and what doesn’t. It includes a virtual 1-on-1 meeting where we can Marie Kondo your meals together. Then, I create a menu system for you that includes meals you love and new ones picked strategically for you. It’s followed up by video encouragement and learning modules to ensure you’ll use the menu!
If you’re not sure you need outside help with meal planning but want to stay in touch, I invite you to sign up for my newsletter. My weekly emails are fun to read and include helpful nuggets of info to give you a “taste” of my paid services. (Sometimes I just can’t resist the food puns…)