Meal prepping is such a good habit to get into. It saves you time throughout the week preparing your meals, helps you stay within your caloric restricts, and can help you to eat healthier. That’s a win, win, win; if you ask me!
A few months back my husband and I decided that we wanted to start meal prepping hard core. I quickly found out that two things were necessary for me to stay on plan with what I was eating:
- A written plan/ schedule of what to eat and when that I could look at throughout the week.
- A grocery list and day designated for meal prep.
While looking around Pinterest for meal ideas and planning tools, I couldn’t find a super simple worksheet that I could print out and write down the meal ideas on that; so I created my own. Because I want to give others tools to make their lives easier and healthier, I decided give this worksheet to you, for free.
Click here to download and print the meal planning worksheet
I came up with this worksheet when I was early in my pregnancy and when I had to eat every few hours or I’d get super nauseous. If you don’t eat snacks throughout the day, feel free to cross out the boxes that you don’t use.
Here you can see the chart in action! If you like this photo, be sure to follow my blog on Instagram, here.
Meal prepping tips that worked for my family:
- As both my husband and I work during the week, the weekends are when we go grocery shopping. Usually, we buy a week’s work of groceries at a time. I find that we are most successful if Saturday morning I make two lists: the grocery list and a separate meal list to keep on the fridge.
- You’ll want a designated meal prep day and time. If you say, “I’ll do this sometime,” it will rarely actually get done. I speak from experience. We prefer Sunday evenings. It takes about an hour and we have meals for the rest of the week.
- Cook in bulk if you can. Both my husband and I don’t really like leftovers, so I try to use the same ingredients in different ways for our meal prepping. If I get a cooked chicken, I’ll use it for shredded tacos for two meals and plan for others, and maybe something else. It adds variety and makes me look forward to the meals.
- My biggest tip: If you want things to change (i.e. your weight, your health, not eating out as much) you need to have the unwavering desire to make it happen. If you only half do something you get half the results. When I was consistently going to the gym and recording what I ate, I lost weight. It wasn’t easy. It didn’t happen overnight, but I felt a lot better. One of my issues with losing weight is portion control. I found that the MyFitnessPal app was extremely helpful for me to stay on track. It’s free and super easy to use.
Let me know if you download my meal prep worksheet and how it works for you!
DIY Made Simple 