Meal Planning – Free Meal Planner

Posted by Tom in Cooking Tips | 0 comments

Over the past 6 months or so our family has been making use of a very simple but effective meal planner for our everyday meals. The reason we decided to adopt such meal planning is for a number of reasons, to help save money through buying food which we simply did not eat and to lead a much healthier lifestyle.

The results after using meal planners has been nothing short of astounding both in terms of our weekly shopping spend but also some additional hidden benefits we simply did not think about. One such hidden benefit of making use of meal planners is that it actually saves you alot of time. It is not until you have your meals all laid out for the month that you realise just how much time you spend debating what to have for dinner tonight! do this each day and you will be surprised how much time you spend deliberating upon what to eat.

It is also much quicker and easier to decide what to eat in one session. We sit down for around 15 minutes as a family and decide what we would like to eat each night for the forthcoming month. During this session we can also factor in such obstacles such as kids clubs and other distractions which oftentimes conflict with eaating patterns.

Once you begin to use the meal planner the job of choosing also becomes much easier as you will save copies of previous months to give you a starting point for the following month’s eating plan.

How to use the Meal Planning Meal Planner

Bring to the table a copy of your meal planner and a shopping list. Simply sit down and decide what meals you would like and list down on your shopping list the ingridients required for each meal. You can factor in leftovers for times when you have lets say, a roast chicken therefore the day after could be a chicken salad with jacket potatoes etc.

Once you have your months meals planned (not forgeting your social engagements and the kids plans) you will have a nice defined shopping list and your eating plan pre planned for a whole month. This will save you considerable amounts on shopping – we are saving around 30% on our monthly shopping bill, the savings are quite staggering when you take the time to plan ahead.

So what are you waiting for – download your free Meal Planner below, print out a few copies and begin saving time and money!