← Go Back to Weekly Meal Plan

8 great reasons why you need yummy meal planning recipes!

8 reasons why you need to meal plan

Have you been wondering how to plan your meals?

Of course, weekly meal planning is easier said than done, which is why we created FiveDinners.com – meal plan recipes help you get out of that dinnertime rut, adding variety to your meals while reducing the stress of deciding what to cook every night.

Weekly meal planning is to ensure you wouldn’t need to start from scratch each time. Without it, you’re most likely to:

  • Shop ingredients that you don’t need
  • Overeat or undereat (without realising it!)
  • Waste both cooked and uncooked food
  • Spend more than your budget
  • Order food from restaurants, making your diet unhealthy and imbalanced
  • Eat the same food over and over again, having no clue about the calorie intake
  • Make mistakes in cooking similar meals (adding too much salt, not boiling well, excess sugar, etc.)

With meal planning, you can cut through the worry of having a perfect, well-balanced diet. It can be very time consuming; working out what meals to have, trying to bring all those ingredients together into one shopping list, being honest – it can take hours out of your day. Which is why we started FiveDinners.com – so we can do all the heavy lifting for you – all you need to do is choose how many you want to cook for and press a button to get your shopping list and meal plan recipes for the week!

Why meal planning is good for you

Not only is meal planning super delicious for your family, it has so many endless benefits!

Meal plan recipes don’t take extra effort to cook. And almost all of them can be made within half an hour! You can also save time and money spent shopping for unnecessary ingredients and determining how to keep well-balanced nutrients in your diet. It’s not just great for you, but also for all the family members.

1. More meal planning recipes, more cost-effective food!

Keeping some ingredients in mind will allow you to save plenty of money!

Effective meal planning is all about using everyday ingredients to come up with recipes for the entire week!

How many times have you told yourself, “I would need more of this item,” or maybe “I will run out of this soon”?

When it comes to meals, we’ve all been in a situation where we’ve bought unnecessary ingredients, sometimes even exceeding our budget! Whether it’s herbs, dairy products, or essential items like baking soda, stocking too much of anything is never a good idea.

So with meal plan recipes, you will also not have to order extra items or even readymade food. Imagine how much you can save, especially if you’ve always wanted to buy that sofa you really loved (or something else).

FiveDinners.com meal planner on laptop, PC, mobile or tablet

Sign up for FiveDinners.com subscription today from only £4per month – click here

2. Want less food waste? Meal plan recipes are for you

Without planning, so much food can go to waste!

Excess food and unnecessary ingredients contribute to global waste, causing harm to the environment.

Overbuying is one of the most common causes of food waste. Meal plan recipes allow you to shop only the food and ingredients you need.

When you shop for unnecessary ingredients, the food would most probably stay longer on the shelf, in the fridge, or in the freezer. And of course, neither of us would want that to happen!

With weekly meal planning, you will no longer have to worry about food getting expired. Instead, you’ll be using all the ingredients as soon as possible, so no food waste. And this also means you’ll be contributing to the environment, so meal planning recipes are super eco-friendly!

3. Meal planning recipes = A healthy, personalised diet

What is better than having complete control over your diet?

A personalised diet is more focused and well-balanced, tailored to an individual’s needs.

We’ve all heard about having a healthy, well-balanced diet. Perhaps most of us have even dreamt about it (literally). But when it comes to taking action, maintaining a proper diet program can be pretty puzzling.

Meal planning recipes are more than different dishes brought together casually – all recipes on FiveDinners have a nutritional breakdown showing you calories, protein, carbs, etc.. You can also customise your weekly meal plans with the recipes you like by browsing via category; low-calorie, GF, DF, etc. It’s about personalising your meal plans to what you like; while keeping one eye on the nutritional breakdown. These meals are all about personalisation, so you can enjoy your week without spending time worrying about what to eat or your calorie intake.

Swedish Meatballs
Everyone loves our Swedish meatballs on FiveDinners.com

4. Improve your cooking skills with meal plan recipes

Are you an absolute beginner in cooking?

For beginners in cooking, knowing the ingredients, the nutrients, and how to cook great food can be very difficultbut we’ve got your back! Every member on FiveDinners.com gets access to our exclusive text-hotline; meaning you can text our chefs (for free) for real-time help in the kitchen.

Be it a cooking question, something about the ingredients or just a quick question to clarify something – we’re only one text away!

With meal planning recipes you can take your cooking skills to the next level. But, even if you’re not a beginner, you may find it hard to cook something in the heat of the moment.

Perhaps, you even ask yourself questions like:

  • What are the essential ingredients?
  • How much of something do you need?
  • What are the minimum costs you should be spending?
  • What are the different methods of cooking?

Cooking is like a blend of science and art. And meal plan recipes will help you figure out the answers to all the above questions. Not just that, but you’ll learn how the majority of the recipes have pretty similar instructions.

For instance, you could be cooking one meal that includes boiling and frying, and another similar meal would have the same process. All it takes is a difference in some ingredients and perhaps some tweaking in the stirring, frying, boiling, cutting, etc. Hence, meal planning recipes take your learning curve higher and beyond the basics of cooking.

5 star reviews from FiveDinners.com members

5. You get more organised at meal planning (and shopping!)

A healthy diet is just one part of meal planning recipes. What about grocery shopping? We don’t want to brag – but we thought of that as well – with our weekly meal plan recipes you just need one click of a button and we’ll automatically generate a weekly shopping list for all the ingredients you need for the week!

You can change the serving sizes of your meal plan and the shopping list updates; and we’ve even put the list of ingredients into the different shopping isles to make life even easier (i.e. Fresh Produce, Frozen section, Meat, Fish, Bakery, etc.) and if you’ve already got a bunch of the ingredients; simply tick them off our shopping list!

Weekly meal planning recipes allow you to brush up on your organising skills. In general, shopping becomes a breeze as you’re armed and ready to go!

You can’t go wrong with meal planning recipes, as they are scheduled for the entire week. But, seeing how things work, you’ll get to manage your shopping lists and align the items with your budget!

If you’re someone who makes long grocery lists, you’ll love the help of our automated shopping list.

6. Each meal plan recipe gives you new food to taste

You never know what’s coming up next!

Meal plan recipes combine a variety of food. This also brings together dishes from other parts of the world, adding to the overall flavour and splendour.

Ah, the excitement of new food. Who says each weekly plan needs to have repetitive meal planning recipes? As you get to explore fresh food, you also open up to various flavours and cultures from across the globe!

You can taste Spanish cuisine one day and try out American the next. There are endless possibilities, and you’ll get to learn and appreciate other cultures as well.

But we also know everyone has their favourite recipes; so with one click of a button (or in this case a heart) you save your favourite recipes for future meal plans.

7. Know your eating habits with meal planning recipes

Get to learn about your portions and eating habits!

Meal planning recipes allow you to explore your eating habits, which may have been unhealthy previously. Moreover, each person’s diet needs to be customised according to their health condition.

Meal plan recipes help you keep an eye on your calorie intake and give you a ‘birds eye view’ of what you’re eating for the whole week. Plus each suggested meal plan by FiveDinners has a well balanced week of meals including meat-free day, fish day and a mix throughout the rest of the week. This ensures you don’t end up eating the same thing all week – just in different dishes (chicken bake, stir fried chicken, chicken soup… you get the idea..) weekly meal planning really helps to achieve a well balanced week of variety, ingredients and nutrients. You may never know if you might be overeating or undereating.

Not everybody needs the same amount of calories. Not only does it depend on age, but also the health conditions of a person.

So meal plan recipes lets you see what your calorie intake (amongst other nutritional needs) are for the week. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting meal plans just for yourself or for the entire family.

Andrea McLean Sneaky Vegetable Spag Bol FiveDinners.com
Guest chef recipe – Vegetarian Spag Bol FiveDinners.com

8. With meal plans, make time for your family

All the time you save goes to your family too!

With meal planning, you can decrease the time spent on coming up with new ideas for meals, deciding what ingredients you need, making shopping lists or experimenting with new recipes to find out they don’t work… (you’re in safe hands – our chef is well acclaimed!)

With meal planning recipes, you don’t just save the cost of food; you also get to save time! And while time is money, it is also equally needed just to enjoy life.

Picture all the time you could save to spend with your family. No last-minute hassles, no confusion – only you, some excellent food, and quality time in the dining room!

We can help craft your weekly meal plan recipes!

Meal planning recipes at Five Dinners are the most interactive you’ll find. We have something for every kind of taste! Whether you’re looking for vegetarian, GF, flexitarian or any other meal type. We make sure each meal in your weekly plan is super fast to cook (in 30 minutes or less) and packed with healthy nutrients!

Also, bid farewell to the chaos of creating shopping lists. You shouldn’t be buying what you don’t need, so you can count on our automated shopping list to fulfil your every need (while saving you money, time and reducing your time spent shopping on for your weekly meal plans).

Choose from our monthly or annual membership, with the flexibility to cancel anytime. With our meal planning recipes, you have the added advantage of getting help in real-time. So let’s start our journey of weekly meal planning dinner recipes together!

Choose your membership plan

Get a rolling monthly membership or save £12 per year with our annual membership

Don’t take our word for it either – here’s what other members have to say!

Brilliant for families!

05/07/2021

Delicious food which my children love. No waste and super simple. Can’t recommend highly enough!

Avatar for Sarah
Sarah

Stress has gone from cooking and food shopping

28/05/2021

I’m only a week or so in with this but already it’s made a huge difference. It’s so easy to use, lots of really great recipes that I know my family will eat, and has got me out of a rut with dinners. I love how the shopping list is all done for you, this saves loads of time, and it’s such a relief to know what we’re having for dinner for the whole week! I was starting to resent cooking as the whole faff around thinking what to have took such a long time and I hated it, I’ll be sticking with this and won’t be resorting to spag bol for a long time!

Avatar for Elly
Elly

Game changer for our house

26/05/2021

FiveDinners has expanded our repertoire as well as my kitchen confidence. New flavours and different ways to cook familiar favourites (chicken pie, halloumi curry, spaghetti traybake to name a few) have been great. I’ve recommended it to loads and it’s fun comparing notes! Also awesome to have recipes I know the kids will eat. Dinner winner!

Avatar for Kim
Kim

Makes my life easier!

24/05/2021

I love fivedinners as it not only gives me great meal ideas but also sorts out most of my shopping list for me … it’s added variety to my family meal times and has given me the confidence to try different but easy to make foods during the week – thank you fivedinners !

Avatar for Sally Griffith
Sally Griffith

Life-saver

24/05/2021

Fivedinners saved me in lockdown last year and I still keep coming back to it for meal planning and general inspiration. Planning what to cook day in, day out is really stressful so I’ve found this makes my life a lot easier. Kids love the recipes and even the veggie dishes get the thumbs up from meat-loving Dad!

Avatar for Hannah
Hannah

Leave a Comment