Let’s face it. Meal planning for families can be daunting. Life gets busy and cooking healthy meals at home can be challenging. Whether you work unusual hours, go to the gym several times a week. or your kids are monsters at mealtimes, planning healthy nutritious meals may feel stressful and sometimes impossible.
Learning Outcomes
The focus of this module is on introducing you to the process (or system) of meal planning. Having a meal planning S.Y.S.T.E.M will Save You Stress, Time, Energy, and Money.
What Is Healthy Meal Planning?
Meal planning is asking “what’s for dinner?” once for the whole week, instead of every night, taking into consideration the nutritional needs of each family member. And then shopping for and prepping the ingredients before cooking.
You make a plan and follow the plan. If you have kids, you can let them be involved in the planning as well, which will help them get excited about the healthy foods you are cooking and be more willing to try them.
Think of meal planning for families like using a GPS to get somewhere you haven’t been before vs figuring out the way on your own. It’s kind of nice to sit back and just follow the directions.
Pro Tip: Print your meal plan and stick it to the refrigerator, or somewhere else in the kitchen, where everyone can see it. This automatically takes care of the daily “what’s for dinner?” question from family members.
The most successful family meal planners approach meal planning with five steps. More on them in the next learning units:
- Define your family’s needs/goals.
- Plan your week – check in with the family calendar.
- Plan your meals, and their recipes, if needed.
- Shop for ingredients.
- Prepare those ingredients.
What Healthy Meal Planning Is Not
The holy grail! There’s so much fanfare about how meal planning can change your life that it’s easy to blow its effects out of proportion. And while it does solve so many problems, you’ve got to tailor it to fit your needs (which means you’ve got to be clear on what those are) and give yourself lots of leeways to experiment and find a system that works for you.
Boring and inflexible. It’s not based on boring dietary dogma and it’s not cast in stone. The beauty of meal planning is that experimentation and being flexible is welcomed, not frowned upon.
Counting calories and weighing portions. You are not planning a scientific experiment or a starvation diet. Forget about calories and portions. Healthy eating is a way of life, it’s not a diet. Focus on eating delicious healthy well-balanced meals.
According to Dawn Blatner, author of The Flexitarian Diet, several studies found that you can lose weight on a vegetarian diet without measuring or counting calories.
A lot of work. Not true. You do a bit of concentrated work upfront, but it’s plain sailing once you begin to work your plan.
An expensive monthly app membership fee. Nutrition apps and paid recipe websites make your job a whole lot easier, and you can’t do proper meal planning without them. But apart from a once-off setup fee, you shouldn’t have to pay a recurring fee to use them.
Just for families of four. Meal planning is for everyone. Obviously, there are different strategies to employ depending on the number of people you’re planning for.
The sole domain of dietitians and nutritionists. Sure, they can be very helpful if you have special dietary requirements that you cannot address on your own. But anyone can create a healthy meal plan with just a little bit of knowledge.
Take Action
- What are your expectations for meal planning? What do you hope it will solve? Please share your thoughts in a Reply below.
- If you have any questions about anything in the Healthy Meal Planning Masterclass, don’t be shy to leave a Reply (comment) on the learning unit where the question arose. There are no stupid or silly questions.
I’m here to help and I usually answer all questions within 24 hours.
I do monthly meal planning and completely agree with all of the above. It’s like a headache once a month instead of every day. And I’ve tried so many methods but finally found one that works for me. Now it’s not even a big deal to create one. And yes, having the meal plans in place does not mean you can’t be spontaneous or change plans. It actually sparks creativity for me
I hope that if i could plan at least a few meals a week I could help my kids eat healthier.
It’s nice to have fewer “what’s for dinner” conversations! Having a plan saves so much time in the long run!
The mealgarden tool makes meal planning an interesting proposition.
Sorry! meal planning is not my thing. I am too busy and prefer to be spontaneous and creative when deciding on what to cook next.
I have been meal planning since I was young and newly married. In doing so, I was able make prudent use of what we grew, raised, and preserved to make our food last throughout the year and provide my growing family with nutritious meals. Even though my children are grown, I still meal plan because it is just a convenient, easy method for me.
Meal planning besides healthier eating also helps save on the budget leaving room for other items not normally bought. It ensures the right quantities for nutritional benefit without over eating or bingeing.
It creates a healthy lifestyle of eating.
I use a very basic meal plan. Multiple protein options in the freezer. Multiple veg options in the freezer. Multiple fresh cut garden & salad options in the fridge. Bowl of fresh fruit on the counter for 3pm snacks. Single serve microwave brown rice for roughage. Herbs and sauces to add flavour. Mix and match as I go.
I have not been using a meal plan and our dinners have been disorganised chaos. In the past, I have used one, and it has made things significantly easier for us, in terms of planning, grocery shopping, etc.
As someone who struggles with executive function and planning, it has seemed overwhelming to start up again…. But, it’s worth the effort.
I am retired and my husband and I both like to cook. We do a weekly shopping trip, so it is good to have a list of ingredients for that trip. Mostly, I am happy to know in the morning who is cooking that night and if it is me, I want to have a general idea of what it will be. I just have to be good about stopping what I am doing in time to enjoy the prepping without feeling pressured by time.
Meal planning makes life easier
I have tried meal planning and always end up spending hours looking at recipes…. LOL
I need to create a template, print it out and do a hand written meal plan that’ll take 10 minutes.
I meal plan pretty regularly already so I know how helpful it can be. I got out of the habit over the summer letting my kids take over most of the meal prep and cooking since they enjoy it and we’re home all day. Now back into the school year, I need to get back into my habits of planning and sticking to the plan
I just hope it can save me time .I’m sometimes good at planning but with lack of implementation I think involving kids on meal planning will come in handy.
I am an avid meal planner. But I appreciate the listings that you’ve made. It has definitely saved me money and time. With a large family all running through life, enjoying activities and therapies and regular busyness, it is essential to us for our healthy meals.
I used to really stress about giving my family proper nutrition, but I think years of practice trying new dishes and incorporating lots of different foods is key to developing a long list of family favorites. And learning to adapt them based on what you have on hand when necessary.
I hope that meal planning can help me expand the amount of recipes I have and help get me out of the funk that I get into from making the same meals over and over.
staying home during covid got me out of the habit. Now that we are working I need to start meal planning again.
Have not done meal planning in a while.
Am yet to learn and take meal planning into consideration because i have not been planning before
I have never meal planned but it looks worth a try.