Meal planners, which one do you use ?

Shesaid_destroy

I have always found myself with the same struggling question : what am I going to cook to dinner today ?
Now that i am careful with what I eat, the question is even more burning...

I have seen on-line various apps or websites that can help with meal planning, generate the grocery shopping list etc.

Can someone provide a little 'return of experience' ? Are they useful ? Do you keep on using them ? Did you stop ? When you input a recipe, can you input the calories as well, like in MFP ?

Thank you for your feed back, as always!

Edit : for typo

Ninkyou

I don't have to meal plan so much anymore, but when I did, I would just print out a meal planning template and then fill it in.

Now, I just prelog my day in the morning.

eylia

I don't know of any actual meal planners to recommend, but there are a number of recipe based websites that let you search by ingredient, which I find helpful. I usually have a rough idea of what I'll be making when I go shopping each week, but only preplan meals the night before or so, when I plot out my following day. I use the recipe calculator on the site to work out portions/where to save or substitute calories and be sure it will fit in to the days allowance.

ClementineGeorg

I just browse recipies site occasionally and save the recipies I like. I have a digital document where I add them and use them.
I have a weekly shopping list, I decide what recipies I want to cook, add the ingredients on my list and there I go.

To make meals to have a certain number of calories I juggle with ingredients (mostly elimiating the oils, putting less of the high calories ingredients, swapping ingredients with healthier versions) and portion size (I weight the whole cooked recipie and assign calories per 100g, rather than making servings, because it's easier to fit in the quantaty for the calories at hand). I mostly never follow the recipies to the letter, they are just guideliness from which I kind of start.

I find this better than meal planning because it's personalized.

Shesaid_destroy

I never thought of weighing the whole cooked thing and assigning calories per 100 g. Great idea!
Thank you for your input friends, as always !

0somuchbetter0

Try Big Oven. It has calories per serving on all the recipes but to get complete nutrition info you have to buy the app for $19.99