You've heard it said, and it actually works if followed, having a meal plan will save you a lot of money. But all that is easier said than done. I have meal plans but most of the time I find myself cooking something different "for a change." That kind of makes saving [money] by planning meals ineffective. For those of you who plan your meals weekly or even monthly, do you stick to your meal plan or do you give in to cravings and cook something you never planned to?
Food Network and all these food blogs I tend to read are often the bane of my meal planning. I know what you mean when you say it's hard to stick to the meal plans. Some of the things I generally avoid, since they seldom work for me, are preparing meals in advance (such as for the week ahead) as well as trying to plan out all the meals for a week or so, in terms of having a variety of meals. This may seem counter intuitive, but if I actually sit down and try to plan out a whole variety of different meals for the week, then go shopping for all the ingredients for them, 95% of the time I am never in the mood for any of those meals during the week when the time comes to make them and the ingredients go to waste. If I plan stuff like baked salmon and grilled vegetables on Tuesday, I will get home that evening and be craving a pizza or philly cheese steak or chinese takeout instead. If I plan a beef stew on thursday, I will be craving a salad with grilled shrimp instead. It's crazy. What I try to do instead is think of certain meals that are old standby's - the things I gravitate towards the most, and make sure I at the very least have those on hand to make. It may be redundant, but at least I'm not wasting extra money buying extra ingredients to make meals I won't ever get around to making. And once in a while when I do want to make something different on a whim, I can just swing by the grocery store on the way home and grab those few items.
Usually I do not have a meal plan. I eat whatever is available or what I can afford. I believe it is totally sad to eat only a certain amount of food and ignore the rest. I do not think I can ever do dat.
I give in to the cravings because I think satisfaction is still somewhat more important than just saving. If I end up shorting myself of an experience then I would contest that I am not giving myself a good enough reason to save since it only ends up making me unsatisfied and miserable. A good balance of both is what I think is best. Sometimes I will favor sticking to the budget but sometimes I'd also give into indulgence.
I stick to my meal time as much as I could, as much as I enjoy the meals that I'm eating. Usually it would last for more than a week, then after, I would feel like I can't do it anymore. Then I resort to binge eating. Usually my meal plan would consist of the same food each day which makes my eating quit boring. For some time, it feels fine as long as I'm enjoying the food that I'm eating, but over time, I just get use to it and I get unsatisfied and I crave for something else.
Yes both my wife and I will complete a meal plan 1 week in advance. This way we can budget exactly what we want to spend and make adjustments if need be. There is always room for shuffling the meal plan around a bit, depending on our mood. But overall, we find it takes stress off having to worry about what to cook, and we end up spending less at the grocery store.
As a wellness coach, I'm actually the one creating meal plans for people to follow. I help people lose weight or gain weight. Everyone's meal plan is different based on their body's capacity to burn calories and the activity they usually do on a day-to-day basis. I then create a meal plan wherein they will need to follow for 10 days. We check their body's stats on the first day, which includes their fat percent, muscle mass, metabolic age, etc. Then we check their stats at the end of the program. There then is the result whether they followed their meal plan or not.
I usually do not have a meal plan that I stick to and I think it is better to eat whatever you get. I believe it is best to try and understand what your eating and to think whether it is healthy or not. I only categorize my food based on healthy and unhealthy
When I'm really pressed for money or there's something important that I need to save on, I usually end up planning my meal. If my motivation's on an all-time high, there's no way I'd forsake my plan. On regular days where money isn't scarce and I have nothing important to buy, I hardly plan anything and eat wherever my appetite takes me to.
What I do is each Sunday plan the meals for each day for the week, depending of my budget. I try to vary the types of food and follow it the best I can. I rarely need to deviate from my plans, but no idea if that really helps to save money. I haven't really paid attention to it, besides, there is normally a new recipe I want to try and sometimes it ends being expensive. It's possible that what I save in food in one week gets spent in the next.
I have never really had a special meal plan. I have been a vegetarian for over 20 years now, and I simply stick to what I have been eating for a long time, which is a balanced diet of grains, nuts, fruit and vegetables. On some rare occasion I will try something new and "exotic" but that doesn't happen too often.
I do have a meal plan which I try to stick to. When the family has to go out for activities it can cause the plan to get messed up if I have not had time to cook in advance or if they have eaten out already. When I see an item on sale that is not in my meal plan I will purchase the item and work it into the meal plan.
I was just discussing this with someone. I recently started batch-cooking on the weekends. While I love the money and time it saves me, sometimes I get super bored with my menu choices by the end of the week. So I’ll end up adding things to the dish to switch it up. Some days I’ll also end up buying my lunch (or if I’m lucky, having someone else buy it for me) if I’m bored. I might be somewhat frugal, but I’m becoming less averse to forking out a few extra bucks to keep myself satisfied. I know I’m capable of cutting back when I need to, and that’s enough for me. That said, I could probably eat veggie frittatas 24/7/365, but I doubt that’d be healthy...
We don't usually have a meal plan simply because we don't plan our meals that often. I'm trying to get on the coupon sale dealing train but it is hard. I'm sure I will eventually get there but for now I'm not in to it.
It's so difficult to contain myself within a meal plan. It works for the first 2 days, but after that I get sick of following it for the sake of regime. The fact that I'm not the greatest cook doesn't help either. In addition, my good schedule can collapse with the smallest nudge. Friend invites me out to lunch? I lose all motivation to follow the rest of the plan. I really hope I can break this habit soon.
I keep saying we should start meal planning, but I just never get around to it. We just go to the store, buy everything (fresh and whole) and throw together all our faves through the week. I guess we don't need to plan really, but for the kids sometimes I wish we did.. they have a slightly different menu than we have.
Much as I do agree that meal planning very definitely does save a considerable amount of money - I'm not sure that it would work for everyone - particularly as being able to do it successfully very much depends on the type of foods that are regularly eaten. For example - although it works for me - as my meal planning doesn't have to be too rigid - mainly because I eat a Mediterranean style diet which mostly consists of rice, pasta, pulses and vegetable based dishes and as all of which can be cooked and served in so many different ways - as well as the flavor easily altered just by interchanging the ingredients or adding different herbs or spices etc - it means my menu is so versatile that it never gets boring - as no one meal ever really tastes exactly the same from one day to the next - whereas for those whose diet consists of meat/fish and a couple of veg - it probably wouldn’t be very effective - particularly as the majority of the ingredients of each meal would probably have to be altered regularly in order to avoid it becoming monotonous.
Nope, I sure don't! And I'm actually okay with that. Instead of doing a full meal plan, I just keep a mental list of meals I want to make that week and make sure I have the ingredients for those. For the other days, I have generic items on hand so that there's always something to make. I don't follow a strict "Monday, I'm making this. Tuesday, I'm making that..." meal plan because chances are, on Monday, I'm not going to feel like making 'this' and on Tuesday, I might be out or craving something entirely different. I just make sure that by the end of the week, any perishables have been consumed so they don't go bad.
Yes is my answer to the thread's title. Or maybe mostly yes, hahahaaaa. My husband is actually the one who makes the weekly menu for our food. It would depend on the budget so the combination of dishes are neatly calculated to balance with the budget. But when house guests would come unannounced, there would be a big change. And sometimes we just order food for delivery. That would definitely ruin the plan.
Meal plan? What's a meal plan? My wife and I work so much that we seldom take time for a meal plan. Instead we use a site called Supercook, which allows you to input ingredients in your fridge and receive a long list of meal suggestions. So long as we keep our list updated we have meals jumping out at us without having to put much thought into it ourselves, which is nice when we finish work and don't want to think anymore.
