Have you always felt disorganised when it comes to buying your weekly groceries? Are you blowing your budget every week on food? Do you want to break bad eating habits and be more mindful about what you eat each week?
Then, you’ll love this meal planner I have for you today and it’s FREE!
Meal Planner Free Printable
How to Use This Meal Planner Free Printable
Plan Your Meals
- First of all, write down the meals you plan to eat starting from Monday until Sunday.
- Write down the main meals under the “Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner” sections.
- Anything else for morning tea, afternoon tea and supper can be written under the “Snacks” section.
Tips for a Healthier Diet
If you’re planning your meals to lose weight or want to have a healthier diet, here are some tips to follow:
- Keep your carbohydrates to a minimum about a quarter to half a cup. (White rice, bread, noodles etc.)
- Add good high quality protein (chicken breast, lean pork or beef), unsweetened greek yogurt or get a good high quality protein powder (green shake for breakfast, for example)
- Adding some healthy fats but don’t overdo this (avocado, olive oil, butter, nuts etc.)
- Increase your vegetable intake especially on green veges.
- You can have fruits too, but keep it to 2-3 times a week (once per day) as part of your snacks.
- Indulge on a meal you love once a week (best on a weekend)
Buy Your Groceries
Before you purchase your groceries, make sure to write down the ingredients for each meal and snacks on your grocery list. This is so you don’t get distracted and only buy what’s on your list. This is a great way to stay on budget and not overspend on food or worst, junk food that may ruin your meal plan for the week.
If you’re looking for a grocery list printable, this is a good one to use.
Follow Your Meal Plan
You’ve planned out your meals and bought your groceries.
Now you just have to eat the meals you plan out for the week and try your best to stick to it. Even if you’re not perfect at it and fail on one day. Pick yourself up and try again the next day.
Who say that you need to be perfect at it?
The idea of a meal planner is to be used as a guide and its purpose is to help you to be clear on what you’re eating for each day of the week. This helps you to focus and stay on track on your healthy eating.
Rinse and Repeat
Once you have 1-3 months worth of weekly meal plans (depending on your mood), you can reuse them again and again, allowing you to save much time planning.
How I Lost 10 kgs in 3 months
It was 2 months after I broke my ankle and I was in recovery. It was a huge wake up call for me to live a healthier life, take control over my eating habits and lose weight.
This was how I used the meal planner to plan my meals for the past 6 months and I lost 10 kgs in the first 3 months without exercising but following a strict healthy eating plan. My initial weight loss was fast but slowed down after 3 months, but I was still steadily losing weight. To date I have lost over 14 kgs.
The key here is to keep it simple. I planned my meals to be SUPER simple. I used one week’s meal plan for the entire month!! Basically I repeat Day 1-3 twice (to last one week) and then Day 4-6 on the following week. Day 7 can be repeated 2-4 times during the month or just take that day off to eat your favourite meal. Then back to Day 1-3 again and repeat the process again until the month is up.
After that, I plan a new meal plan for the next month. In total, I only have 3 meal plans which I reuse and rotate every month for 6 months. This is entirely up to you, but I wanted to keep it simple so I can follow through each month. I have to admit, although it gets a little boring, it simply works!
Download Your Free Printable
You can download the Meal Planner Free Printable here and start planning your meals today.
Conclusion
This meal planner free printable is such a simple planner, but so powerful when used correctly.
In summary, the best way to get the most out of this meal planner is to:
- Consistently plan your meals every week (or if you’re like me, every month)
- Do your grocery shopping and only buy ingredients from your meal plan (unless you have other household items you need or snacks for your kids)
- Follow your meal plan as closely as possible (don’t beat yourself up if you’ve failed). Every day is a new day!
- Reuse your meal plans for other weeks or months to save time (if you already have several meal plans planned out)
Lastly, the most important key to remember is to keep your meal plan simple. This is important to keep you motivated each week so you can reach your health goals, get you organised and keep your spending under budget.
If you like this meal planner free printable, you’ll love this set of kitchen planners too.
For a limited time, you can save 60% off this lovely kitchen planners when you purchase it through this link. Click to apply the code MYLOVELYKITCHEN at checkout automatically.
Love my freebies? Would love the support!
Printables, design elements, graphics and any digital products provided on this site are for personal use only. You may NOT modify them or redistribute them for free or monetary gain without the written agreement from the author, Janice Banks. You may share these with your classes or co-workers (educators/teachers/tutors) as long as they are not modified in any way. Please share the link to the blog post if you want to share these digital resources with others.
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