Want to get into meal planning? Meal planning is a simple way to make meal times cheaper and less stressful. Today we will go through a step by step guide on how to meal plan efficiently and effectively, saving you money, stress and time. Don't worry about making a meal plan from scratch, we already have our 'A5 Weekly Meal Planner' which can also have magnets added to so that you can stick your meal plan to your fridge.

1.Consider Your Schedule 

When planning what meals to make on what day, consider your schedule. For example, don’t say you're going to cook a roast dinner every Sunday if you know that you will be too busy or won't have the time to cook. To plan effectively, make sure your not unrealistic with what meals you want made and ensure that busy days have quicker meals to counterbalance the stress of a busy day.

2. Use Themed Nights

To make picking meals easier, consider using themed nights for each day of the week, for example Mexican Monday, so that you can come up with meal ideas weekly more quickly. You can then use this to expand your meal variety, such as one week's Mexican Monday being tacos, and the next week's being fajitas.

3. Pick Your Meals

Using your themed nights, narrow down and choose which specific meals you want for each day. At this point, also remember to start developing a backup plan. Meal planning along side the use of our Meal Plan's handy shopping list will mean less food is wasted as you will always know when you need more of a certain shopping item.

4. Have A Backup Plan 

Things can always go wrong so it's a good idea to always have a backup plan aside from your usual weekly meal planner for your meals. For example, a food item may have gone out of date before you expected and so would need a back up meal for that day. Also, for those days where you are too stressed to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, these backup plans can be quick and easy meals so that you always have the best option for the day it is.

5. Keep It Simple

Planning can get complicated so stick to planning one week at a time so you can keep less stressed. Once you are more comfortable with planning, you can increase this to biweekly or even monthly meal planning. Once you have done this a couple of times, you will get used to it and be able to plan much easier for weeks and weeks in advance.

6. Improve Upon

Through using your meal planner weekly, you will start to develop a better understanding of the way in which you like to cook and eat your food. For example, you may recognise that you don’t make enough quick meals in the week and this could be tiring you out. Through the use of meal planning, you can analyse your weekly eating habits and improve upon them. Furthermore, you could notice how you eat a lot of the same meals, and so meal planning will allow you to discover a wider range of meals and switch up those that you have repeatedly, making meal times different and the amount of food wasted will be lower.