Weekly Meal Plans: 8 Reasons Why You Need Them
Cooking can be an art form, but it mainly requires planning, especially when you want to eat great food all week; that’s why a weekly meal plan is such a huge help. I’ll explain.. From shopping for ingredients to cooking dinner every night, you can save time and money with the help of weekly meal plans. But how does it all happen? See a real meal plan in action here.
Weekly meal planning helps come up with recipes and a shopping list in advance. The dishes are catered to the needs of the individual or family. It includes balancing the budget, time and nutrition by determining healthy ingredients and appropriate portion sizes. It’s equally beneficial for everyone, regardless of whether their schedule is busy or vacant.
A FiveDinners.com meal plan subscription means you can customise your meal plans to suit YOU. Setting your serving sizes and preferences and receiving a new meal plan every week with our one-click shopping list. See how it works here.
Review: The benefits of weekly meal planning
Once you’re on weekly meal plans, you’ll feel relaxed.
- Spend quality time exploring new dishes with your loved ones in the kitchen. You could improve your cooking skills and learn new things to share with your family at dinnertimes.
- Reduce the carbon footprint by cutting down the need for plastic storage (weekly meal planning is actually #1 tool in cutting global emissions).
- You can save plenty of time by meal planning so you can enjoy cooking and eating rather than deciding what to cook every night and what ingredients you need to buy.
- Resist getting food from takeaways or buying ready-made meals – they’re not good for you and they’re usually the emergency dinner when you can’t find anything to eat in your fridge.
- Save money by ditching shopping for unnecessary food items. We all impulse buy in the supermarket – and waste over £60 per month on food we don’t use!
- Contribute to the environment by reducing the number of ingredients and storage containers.
- Set a consistent food budget that helps you manage overall finances too.
- Avoid indulging in junk food or unhealthy edibles, thanks to zero last-minute cooking hassles.
Now let’s look at the above advantages in detail.
1. Explore new dishes and be inspired to try new things
Level up your dinnertime experience and cooking skills with weekly meal plans. Learn new recipes and share the process with your partner or family. You and your loved ones will have some fun quality time while trying out new dishes and recipes with easy-to-follow instructions and videos.
Weekly meal planning helps you engage in new and exciting dishes. You’ll get more variety, which means less boredom while cooking. Moreover, the recipes would be evenly distributed into portions, which means you would have a balanced diet. So you don’t have to worry about excessive nutrients while trying out the new dishes. All meals will interchangeably target the same needs.
2. Save time in the kitchen
Being in the kitchen doesn’t sound like it takes too much time. However, whenever the week comes to an end, you find yourself struggling to find the right recipes. Even if you do know what to cook, you may run short on the ingredients. And then make last-minute runs to the shop to sort things out and no doubt pick up a few other bits while you are there… you can see where this is going!
But when you have weekly meal plans, you save time in many ways. You’ll find yourself having less on your plate by shopping in advance. You can also avoid last-minute hassles for sorting out food shopping. Even if you shop for ingredients online, you could spend the same time with your loved ones or on self-care activities rather than hours online thinking of every ingredient you need for every meal for the week – in fact that’s exactly what we do for you instead with our online shopping list.
3. Align your weight goals with the weekly meal plan
Think of food in terms of goals. Just like exercise and workout, your meals should align with your needs and visions. For example, if you’re looking forward to losing weight, you would need to avoid foods that are high in fats or calories.
It all comes down to the portion sizes and what you include in those portions (what to eat and how much of it to eat) and weekly meal plans can help you determine that. With well-defined portions, you’re less likely to go underweight or overweight. And that is what weekly meal planning helps you figure out.
If you eat without weekly planning, you wouldn’t be sure about your portion sizes. For instance, you could end up with more or less protein than needed. But with meal plans, the portions could be spot on.
FiveDinners meal plans means you can choose low calorie meals, here.
4. Avoid last minute cooking hassles
Are you a busy person? What if you don’t have the time to cook at all? If you have a crammed schedule, you’ll have zero energy to get working in the kitchen after coming back from work. Last-minute cooking can result in settling for unhealthy meals in the form of take aways, fast food, ready meals and more.. once in a while is ok, but every week? Twice a week? Three times a week?
So what can you do about it? Although it’s best to cook fresh meals, weekly meal plans can help you determine dishes that can be prepared in advance. If you’re the only one at home, you can make these recipes during your free time and heat them later, right before eating.
Pro-tip: Have a look at meals that are great for using up leftovers.
5. Minimize the carbon footprint with little food waste
Play your part in eco-friendly cooking. Imagine all the unnecessary ingredients and leftovers contributing to landfill or unwanted food that’s travelled hundreds (thousands) of miles to reach your fridge to only be thrown away when it goes ‘off’. Other than that, if you use additional plastic boxes to store more food, you would be adding more to non-biodegradable waste. Plastic takes a lot of time, even centuries to fully decompose.
All the waste material that gathers in landfills releases toxic chemicals, including carbon. But you can avoid it all by sticking to weekly meal plans. Buying only the food and ingredients you need would mean less food waste and more optimum usage of your pantry space and helps saves the planet. It’s that simple.
Pro-tip: Use your bowls and plates as storage containers if possible.
6. Use only necessary ingredients – as needed
Have you ever been in the fridge only to find expired food? Not only is it painful to throw edible items away, but it’s also a waste of money. When you have a weekly meal plan, your recipes are planned out in advance so you would be getting ingredients according to the needs of you and your family – keeping the quantity just right.
Meal planning is the #1 tool in reducing food waste – and food waste is the third largest contributor to global emissions. Seriously..
7. Set your food budget with weekly meal plans
With weekly meal plans, you would know exactly what to buy. Of course, you can be flexible with your budget as you please. However, designating a particular amount will help you manage your money better. It would also enhance your budget and financial management skills.
All in all, you would have a consistent food budget due to planned recipes. Even if the dish or ingredients for every week’s plan are different, they would be aligned with your finances. You could invest your savings in other household essentials or simply let them multiply in your piggy bank!
8. Meal planning helps you resist junk food
Without meal planning, you’ll be tempted to indulge in last-minute food options. You would either go for food takeouts and deliveries, or you could even splurge on junk food. And neither of the two options is healthy compared to scrumptious food cooked at home.
Poor choices in meals could lead to unintended weight loss, weight gain, mental health and so much more. Weekly meal plans also incorporate food intake of fruits and vegetables in a fun and creative way. The recipes contain healthy food catered to one’s needs!
So how do you make your weekly meal plans?
Making weekly meal plans could be tricky. Especially if you’re a beginner, determining meal requirements could be tough. Everybody has different needs and if you have many family members, you would have to look after their meal concerns along with your own.
If you plan by yourself, you may end up adding recipes to your schedule that are not good for your health. You could even end up with more groceries and ingredients than you actually need. So the trick is to align the ingredients with your budget, schedule, and nutritional needs, which is best taken care of by a professional.
Open the world to happy and healthy feasting with a FiveDinners weekly meal plan. The perks are simple: Get delicious, customized recipes for each week along with a shopping list! It’s swift and you could enjoy new meals per week – an absolute treat for your taste buds!
Conclusion
So weekly meal plans are for everyone. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a family of one or five. You could save time by planning meals in advance and at the same time, have a positive impact on your budget and environment too. You would also be able to enhance your cooking skills by learning more about the titbits of ingredients. Say goodbye to the torment of coming up with new and creative recipes via weekly meal planning!
FiveDinners
Join thousands of others at FiveDinners.com today and start making your dinnertimes stress-free and fun; get a new meal plan every week, fully customisable to your preferences with our one-click shopping list. Oh and you can text us for real-time help in the kitchen (bit like having your own private chef on standby!). Try us FREE for 14 days.