How to Use a Meal Planner
Meal planning programs are available over the Internet, both for a subscription fee and for free use depending upon which one you choose. Most meal planners function the same way, providing slots to plan breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for the next week, two weeks or even month ahead. This makes grocery shopping easier as you know what you will need to make each meal, cutting out emergency trips to the grocery store. Meal planners make scheduling easier too; knowing what you are making and when is much easier than trying to think up something on the fly.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Lay out seven main options that you enjoy for breakfast, seven options for lunch and seven options for dinner. Write down the ingredients used to make each meal. Your meal plans will be based around these seven options for each meal so that monthly grocery shopping is easier. If variety is not an issue, consider lowering the number to three or four menus per meal.
-
2
Choose six different snacks that you enjoy and write down the ingredients needed for each snack. Most meal planners allow for three snack slots each day, one between breakfast and lunch, one between lunch and dinner and one after dinner. This allows you to mix up snacks each day while keeping the grocery bill down.
-
-
3
Enter your meal choices for each day sorted by breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks into the meal planner. Remember that this will be your daily menu, so plan each day in an appetizing variety. As you enter each one, you will be asked to enter the ingredients needed to make each one. The ingredients will be used to form your weekly, bi-weekly or monthly shopping list.
-
4
Print out your shopping list and head to the grocery store to stock your refrigerator, freezer and pantry with the ingredients you need to follow your meal planner. Organize everything so that it is easy to find when you get home. The idea of a meal planner is to save time, so spending 15 minutes looking for the right ingredient defeats the purpose.
-
5
Print out your weekly meal plan and begin following what you've laid out for each day. This will make meal times much more pleasant as there is no scrambling to find something to eat or ordering expensive delivery food.
-
1
Tips & Warnings
A meal planner helps when following a healthy diet. Consider revising your diet with healthier choices when you begin to use a meal planner.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit daily planning image by Kathy Burns from Fotolia.com
