5 Tips to Make Meal Planning EASY (that you can actually stick to! 😉)

as a mom to many kids, my biggest tip aside from having a plan is to prep your meal early in the day. right away in the morning I'll make sure to defrost meat (night before is even better) chop all veggies/fruits. get my dinner ingredients out and ready. if making rice I have the ingredients measure out in rice cooker and ready to make later. Or I"ll fill the crockpot or instant pot early. this has saved me so many times as I'm too tired later in the day. having it prepped or already in the crockpot helps so much

A tip from myself as a trained cook - when meal planning, always block yourself out a “FIFO Day” (I do FIFO Friday) where you go through the fridge and pull out everything that is on its last legs - that bagged salad, the sad bell pepper you never used last week, etc - add a starch like rice or noodles and make a dinner from those. It’s like a free space on your meal plan bingo card and reduces waste. It’s how those of us who work in kitchens eat our 4pm lunch. 😜

A video on snacks and lunches being home all the time would be beneficial

Having a category for each day of the week has kept is the most successful with meal planning! Great tips. Thanks for sharing!

Jordan Page actually recommends just making double a few nights a week and freeze those meals. I tried that while I was pregnant and didn’t want to be cooking for a few hours. 🤯 best idea! Thanks for all these tips too

I find it helpful to not think of meals as complete dishes but rather components such as protein, carbohydrates, fiber and fat. These can most often be paired interchangeably. If I have these components I can make a healthy meal easily and it makes prep super easy. We usually have staples such as chicken, beef, mince and fish for protein. Bread and pre-cooked brown rice, pasta and potatoes for carbohydrates. Avocado, olive oil, butter and Greek yoghurt as fats and some vegetables for fiber. Then you can just combine them throughout the week like a capsule wardrobe but for food ✌🏼

I’m Polish; I don’t do fast food, take outs etc- I cook everything. It’s done the way you just presented, I just didn’t know it was called meal planning😉

In Croatia most important meal is lunch. That one has to be freshly cooked and worm. Dinner is usually leftover lunch or breakfast food.

I make a meal plan for 2 weeks. It’s fluid and by this I mean just because something is written for Tuesday I might feel like cooking what I wrote down for Friday. What my meal plan actually does for me is keeps me on track at the store, makes me use what I have and gets me planning for dinner in the morning so I am not at a loss at 5 pm. Brinner is made weekly at my house.

Lots of good ideas. I always look through my fridge/freezer/cupboards before I meal plan to see what I need to use. It makes me a little creative and I don't throw away as much.

Grill night Italian night Mexican night Asian night (stir fry, potstickers etc) Air fryer meal Soul food night (fried chicken, meatloaf etc 1 eat out night Lunches we prep once a week and freeze everything That’s my plan 🤗 makes it easy

Don't forget those Fish Fridays for all the Catholics out there. 😁 Another category is leftovers. If your family doesn't like "leftovers", call it Soup night and toss all the leftovers in a pot with broth and add some onion or garlic if it needs something and you have a very quick soup meal. Some of our most loved soups are leftover soup. The sad part of that is they are impossible to replicate.

The droopy eyes comment had me laughing so hard. I think I almost spit my coffee. Thanks for keeping me grounded Angela 😆 always keeping it real.

“When you buy bags of salad for the person you wanna be”. 😂😂😂

Meal plan and meal prep.

An absolute game changer for me was what I learned from Diana Rene (The Decluttered Mom). I don't want to share all her tips here because she has a whole program dedicated to meal planning - but I will say that her method makes so much sense! You take a couple hours to plan out an entire year's worth of meals (it's easier than it sounds because you basically just plan out 4 weeks and use that same menu for one quarter of the year, then rotate to the next quarter, etc.) and make a shopping list with all the ingredients you will need each week. Then you just open up the chart, pick a week, and buy all the ingredients listed beside that week and you're done. I seriously never have to meal plan anymore because I did it once and now it's done forever! If I look at a particular week and think "I'm not really feeling that right now" I'll go to another week or even go into another quarter (who says you can't eat grilled chicken in the middle of winter!?) and go from there. I love all your tips, Angela, and they are actually right along the same lines as Diana Rene's! Thanks as always for your fun and helpful content!! :D

😂😂😂 I don’t have a life either! It’s all good I love it.

Working on my meal plan and weekly grocery list while watching this. Grocery pick up was a game changer for our family of 7. Fewer impulse buys, less time, and better thought through.

I've incorporated what I call themed days for a while now, and it's worked very well. For example, one day a week is soup day. There's various soups that I know how to make and occasionally I'll try a new recipe. It helps so much to just plug in which soup I'll be making. Saves time and energy on decision making.

Super great advice! My meal planning consists of many of the same tips. Only, I don’t use a calendar. I just put a list of meals on my fridge for the week and buy those ingredients that week along with staples were low on. Then I can pick and choose what I’m in the mood for each day but I have all the ingredients for each of those choices.