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If you fail to plan you plan to fail!
Let me show you my process for easy meal planning for a week. Plus, I have some free resources for you too.
This is one of the things that really got me hung up at the beginning of my wellness journey, so I thought I’d talk a little bit about my process for meal planning and prep:
Get Organized
I normally like to get my tracker, recipes, and some scrap paper for dumping my ideas out.
You’re going to want to find a space where you can spread out with your supplies and take some notes.
It should take about half an hour to plan it out.
30 Day Mindset & Meals Tracker Spotlight:
▪️ Planning Section Every Week
▪️ Weekly Grocery List Section
▪️ Daily Mindset & Tracking
▪️ Comes Free In Your Total Solution Pack
I have some other printables you can use in the Free Resource Library too.
Pick Some Recipes
Next, I grab my recipe books and I pick out a few recipes I’d like to try.
The key here is to not go too hard too fast. Here are some tips I’ve picked up over the last couple of years:
- Prepping too many different meals for the week can get expensive, and end up with a lot of waste if the meal was a bust.
- I’ll usually pick up two main meals and have some snacks as I don’t mind having the same meal for dinner and supper every day during the week.
- If you are not like me and need a few different options during the week, what I would do is choose 4 recipes; 2 on one day, 2 the next day, then leftovers for the other days. That’s where the planning comes in handy.
Some Of My Go To Recipes Are:
▪️ Oatmeal with cinnimon and maple syrup
▪️ Plain greek yogurt with mixed berries
▪️ These chicken stuffed peppers are amazing
▪️ Love this spaghetti squash lasagna
▪️ I'm obsessed with the breakfast enchiladas recipe in this book
Go to my free resource library for a TON of recipes!
Pencil It In
When I decide what recipes I’m going to use for the week, it’s time to schedule it in, then set up a time to prep.
I know I’m going to have my shakes as afternoon snacks, so I pencil it in the weekly planner sheet. Then I know I’m gonna have oatmeal for breakfast all week so I’ll add that in too.
Finally, I add in my dinner and supper meals I just picked out and work around that.
Now it’s time to schedule the actual prep session.
I like to plan my prep sessions in a couple of sittings; maybe two or three.
If you don’t want to spend all your extra time prepping, make sure to strategically plan it during the week.
For example, my oatmeal only takes 5 minutes to cook so I will wait until the first time I'm ready to eat it that week, and make the whole batch then. Another example, if i'm doing a sandwiches, they will be made on the spot during meal times and will not be added to the prep schedule. On the other hand, my 2 main meals for the week will need to pe prepped and stored so I set up 2 seperate sessions to make them and mark it on my calendar. For example, Chicken and veggies will be cooked on day 1 at meal time, then I will package and put in the fridge for the rest of my suppers that week. So I cook all my meals on day 1, but at that specific meal time.
I try to get my prep done on Saturday or Sunday when my husband’s home and I have the extra time, but if I don’t then I’ll do some during the week too.
Grocery List
Alrighty, are you still with me?
Next, we need to build a grocery list so we know exactly what ingredients we need, and how many of each to buy for prep day.
I’ll take a look and write down the list of ingredients I need, then how many batches of each recipe I will be making, which will give me the final count.
For myself, I'm gonna need:
▪️ 7 of my lunch time meals
▪️ 7 of my supper meals
▪️ My snacks like muffins, cookies, or bananas
▪️ My breakfast ingredients which will be prepped on the spot
Add your items to your list and hit the grocery store. Or try out Instacart if you want, I use it to get my groceries delivered. If you use
** If you want to get $10 off with your first order through Instacart, you can use coupon code "AGOOSSENS12E1C0" or my link here 🙌
Easy Prep For A Week
The first thing I do is cut up my veggies.
If I will be doing a double prep day, sometimes I’ll cut up all the veggies at once then put day 2’s veggies in a container and stick it in the fridge for my second prep sesh.
I don’t like spending a lot of time in the kitchen, so being efficient is a top priority. Once veggies are done, I move on to the first recipe, then the next, and so on.
When complete, I store my prepped meals in my prep containers, and boom, done!
I recently went from plastic containers to glass containers and love them:
▪️ Here are some glass ones like I use (Amazon CA/ Amazon US)
Challenge, Recipes, & Habit Tracker Too
If you are looking for some meal plans and trackers they are in the Free Resource Library.
Some things in there currently:
- Tracker & Coloring Sheets For Kids
- 25 Healthy Recipes Ebook
- 21 Day Health Habit Tracker
- 14+ Full-Length Workouts
- 15 Kids Snack Recipes
- Free Community
- And So Much More…
Check out the free resource library here!!!