As humans, we like to plan a lot of activities in our life. From the time we are kids and make plans with our friends to when we are adults and are planning almost every aspect of our life. However, we seldom plan what we are going to eat. Taking the time to plan your weekly meals can be a game changer in your life.

The benefit of meal planning

Planning gives us control and helps keep our life organized. Meal planning can help reduce stress and keep us on track to meet our goals. Whether you're looking to lose weight, gain weight or even maintain weight, meal planning keeps you on target. 

Just think how many days you left work, too tired to think of what to make for dinner so you throw some simple stuff together or even worse, go through a drive thru. With meal planning you know exactly what you’ll be having and all you may need is some fresh ingredients the day of. 

If you want to simplify your busy week even further, you can prep all or some of your meals on Saturday or Sunday. Some like to meal-prep all of their breakfast and lunch meals for the week. Or you can just prep the ingredients to save you time in the kitchen and cook each meal the day of.

If you don’t want to meal prep for the whole week, you can also meal prep for a few select busy days. For example, you may know you’ll be working late on Tuesday and have a late event on Thursday. Be meal prepping your dinner for those two days you will have a fresh made meal ready to go and save you time and stress. 

Meal planning also helps you plan out your grocery list. By planning out all your meals for the week you’ll know exactly what you’ll need for the week to come. This can also be a big help with budgeting and keeping you from impulse buying food. Just think of all those poor veggies you buy that end up spoiling because you didn’t have a plan for them.

Planning out your week

In order to properly plan your meals out for the week you need to know some nutrition details. On the simplest level you need to know your daily calorie intake and macronutrient distribution. You can get into more details if you want but this can become cumbersome. 

You can figure out your calorie and macronutrient needs with online calculators or get help from a dietitian to get all the calculations done for you. Keep in mind that everyone’s numbers will be personal to them so try not to copy or emulate other’s calorie and macro intake. 

Once you have your caloric intake and macronutrient details ready, you can plan out your weekly meals. I find it easiest to use a calorie tracker to ensure I am hitting all my goals and not exceeding any values. You may find it surprising how unbalanced some meals can be!

For simple meals such as breakfast or even lunch you can input each food into the meal tracker. For more complex meals, you can input the recipe into the calorie tracker and it will calculate the rest for you. Once you have a recipe saved you can reference it quickly for future planning.

If you like to use recipes you find online, the majority of these have nutrition information available that you can apply. Sometimes this information may be hiding at the bottom of the page. Most new cookbooks will have nutrition details included with the recipe. 

Basic steps to meal planning:

• Start with breakfast as this commonly is a repeated meal and an easy place to start. 

• Next, move on to lunch and think about what you have on a routine basis. Input it into your calorie tracker and see how the meal fits into your nutrition goals. Modify as needed.

• Dinner meals get tougher as it can be hard to think what you’ll want 3-5 days out. Go through some recipes and pick out a few good ones you may like. You can always change your meal plan throughout the week.

• If you’re still lacking some calories or other macronutrients, then add in snacks between your meals to fill in the gaps. 

Make sure to build your meals around your activities which may differ each day. For instance, if you know you’ll be doing a run-on Monday you may want to choose a higher carb lunch then on your rest days. 

If you are planning for multiple people or young kids as well, make sure to make them part of the meal planning process. This can become a fun family weekend event and can teach kids how to make healthy food choices. 

Keep in mind that meal planning for multiple people may make it difficult to achieve everyone’s target calorie and macro goals and sometimes may be impossible with only one meal. However, taking the time to meal plan early can help reduce the stress of what everyone will eat the day of. 

If you want help getting started with meal planning, contact me at dietitian2go@gmail.com or schedule a time to meet over the phone or Zoom. Meal planning can be difficult at first but with practice it can become a fun weekly activity you look forward to!

Written by: Adam Skowyra MPPD, RDN, LD