When getting into meal planning it can be easy to get overwhelmed and/or to try to do too much at once. With so many areas to pay attention to in your planning it can get a bit crazy and main focus areas can get lost in the shuffle. One of the biggest tips that we can offer right off the bat is to not try to do it ALL BY YOURSELF. There are tons of helpful resources to make meal planning easier, like this blog post. That’s why we are here to help offer tips on meal planning and cooking that can help you avoid them or at least to talk through them as all of it is a learning experience.
Now that we’ve covered that, let’s jump into some of the top mistakes we have seen our clients deal with when it comes to their planning and how that can help YOU!
Planning to do too Much
This is especially easy to do if you are just starting out and try to throw every meal in (breakfast, snacks, lunch, dinner). While covering every meal may seem obvious, when you are implementing a new thing doing too much at once can have the opposite effect. It can create overwhelm, stress you out, make it super hard and scary, and cause a TON of push back from your subconscious.
Over Complicated Meals
Keep things simple as you start and get comfortable with the basics. This is a great time to use your family favorite recipes or just some super simple recipes with minimal ingredients or prep involved. Add on more and different ingredients as you go. The main point is the implementation, not how involved the cooking or recipes are.
Planning out too Far in Advance
We do not recommend planning your meals out months at a time or shopping for too much at once. This leaves little room for flexibility on preferences, schedule and time for breaks. Why you ask?
- This can cause a bit too much structure that you may feel can’t be changed, which can easily lead to burn out.
- You may find that you have to make adjustments, and this will be a lot more work to fix if you have months or weeks “planned”.
- If you end up shopping too far in advance it can cause ingredients to spoil and be wasted (This is especially true if you over plan on what you can actually consume).
Freezing the Wrong Things or too Much
For some, freezer meals may be an easy way to have meals on hand, but not all ingredients do well freezing. A perfect example is turnip, we found out in a not great way that this one does not freeze well (seriously, it made every meal it was in taste like farts, which was not fun). It can also cause an issue if you freeze too much at once because even in the freezer things only last so long. While some raw ingredients can last about 12 months, a good rule of thumb for meal prep is about 2-4 months, but if it looks like a block of ice or has a ton of crystallization it’s time to get rid of it.
Not Starting
Say it with us… There will NEVER be a perfect time to start meal planning. Likewise, it will NEVER get easier if you don’t start and push through doing something challenging. The best was to get better in anything is to start and keep going.
Giving Up
It will most likely not go exactly how you want it to and there will be days that you don’t want to follow through, but if you are wanting to stick to a budget, eat more at home, be more comfortable in your kitchen, grow your passion and skills, have healthier meals, or learn how to cook for yourself DON’T GIVE UP. Keep going and you will get better at it.
What Now?
We’re sure you’re thinking, “ok, now what?”, so here are some simple ways to meal plan that have been helpful. There is of course a bit more to it but, here is a rough step by step process to start with to get your implementation going. This is also the basis of how we started and what we basically do weekly.
- Pick a day to plan out your meals (for us it’s Saturday) and do this weekly. We also started with 3 dinners planned and that’s it.
- Get you recipes organized, audit your kitchen inventory, and make your shopping list.
- Either shop or get your delivery set up (we set this for Saturday or Sunday).
- Batch cook your 3 dinners on one day (for us it’s Sunday).
- Repeat this process and add as you get adjusted to it.
Additional Resources
If you want some additional support with your cooking and meal planning journey, we have a few options to help you.
- Join the Facebook Community Meal Planning for Busy Parents: come hang out with us for some added community support in your cooking. We share recipes, tips, and go live every week with different food topics.
- FREE Confident Kitchen Kickstart Mini Course: dive into building your food mindset, organizing your kitchen, learning meal planning basics, and cooking demo. Grab your activity sheets and notes for each lesson and jump in. This is also where you can grab some free Meal Planning PDF’s.
- Get on a Coaching Call with Us!: find the details on setting up a call while signing up for the confident kitchen kickstart HERE. (P.S. you’ll find it on the checkout portion)
- Check Out the Podcast 100% Fresh with Two Chef Mission: we cover all areas of food, cooking, behind the scenes and of course meal planning. You can find it on your preferred podcasting platform. We also have it linked below.
- Subscribe to the Weekly Email: this can be found below!
We hope these tips help you avoid some common meal planning mistakes and we will catch you in the next post. Thank you for your support!
