Personal Meal Plan Weekly Prep

Webdevil

My challenge is not planning my meals and snacks ahead of time. I know what I like. I have all my foods and labels to scan etc. There are “reminders” in the tool now for simple things like “lunch” to remind me at “noon”.

There are all the fully built out formal meal plans.

BUT what would make it so much easier to stay on track would be my ability to sit down on Sunday and PLAN MY WEEK.

Literally pick all my items from library and add them to specific days (and even times). Basically like filling out the log the same way… BUT in advance. It wouldn’t just log the stuff but it would prompt me at the planned time and day if I ate what I planned on in my prep log… and then just add it. I could still call audibles and add or change things. Heck I may only know what my breakfast and lunch is and not prep a dinner.

For example I typically have the same coffee each morning with the same breakfast item (or a mix of a couple).

I would be able to set my whole week. Make baggies of snacks for the week. Prep lunch. Make sure I had all my ingredients needed for my plan on Sunday.

And then as the week progress it just DINGS at the times and says “hey time for your coffee did you have XYZ as planned?”. I click yes and it enters it as if I did it all manually at that time.

I would love to just click “yup ate that snack” (and if I have to adjust the time or quantity I edit the entry just like I would a manually logged one)

This way I could balance my exact diet… my exact nutrient and calorie plan for the whole week.. or maybe just a couple days in advance or maybe just tomorrows plan one day at a time. I could copy last weeks plan… or pick a particular day so say… next Wednesday… I’d like to just use my plan from last Monday… and it fills in my coffee, vitamin set, the chicken rice lunch thing, and my go to dinner Omlette recipe again but on a different day next week.

Then I can adjust that day to tweak it.
I can choose to turn off reminders for the day.
I could have it automatically add an item to repeat on a particular cycle one week at a time in advance.

There are endless possibilities.

The key here is to be PROACTIVE instead of just REACTIVE.

I eat and try my I stay UNDER MY GOAL or HIT MY PROTEIN. Etc but I don’t know until it gets to 7pm if that dinner I need to make has to be cut in half cause I just kinda winged it for lunch snacks as I dug around in the fridge and took stuff instead of PLANNING something specific like that string cheese snack at 1pm… I can watch the clock and hold myself accountable for that phone to DING at 1pm and say… have a cheese stick and apple Now.

And know my whole day is planned to hit or be under exactly what I wanted to be yesterday instead of “as the day goes”

But again… no limits or anything. I can call an audible and go out to dinner… I just add that dinner like normal and say “no” on my originally planned one.

The idea could really be expanded and measured against what I expected my day to look like and what I ended up with and compare it. Am I hitting my own meal plan 100%.

This to me is an absolute game changer. Every app out there wants to make me pick a meal plan or use a bunch of recipes. But this app already has every bar code so I can literally plan a 2pm Snickers Bar and work the rest of my day out with a ham sandwich at 2pm but since I had the snickers bar I’ll skip adding cheese and mayo to that sandwich for that day.

Those prebuilt formal… cook all this stuff and prep all these ingredients are NOT real life. I may take an idea for one meal once in a while… but the reality of my day is to plan for a granola bar and coffee with one shot of creamer (50 calories) at 9am… and not a one egg Omlette with parfet as I run late to work.

I know it’s not a simple feature. I think it’s powerful and easy enough to hide for those that don’t want it… but you already have a PLAN button on the main phone nav and all that does is go to a bunch of “same as every other app” pre built BS formal “meal plans”… this would be a unique feature that only works because of what MFP already offers.

Would love to see some iteration of this !
Stop impulsive me from eating at random and start following what I told myself days ago.

I can get up… grab my quick things I planned on Sunday knowing I had a meeting Wednesday and planned that breakfast as grab n go.

And so long as I can keep myself to just what my plan says to eat and when… I can hit my goals. I just follow it instead of reacting every day. Or writing it on paper (cause how do I know my planned grams of sugar on a weekly plan on paper… had I logged it all in MFP… it will tell me on Friday how much sugar I had all week… but I can’t PLAN to hit a gram count on Sunday to be at a level by Friday if I just follow my own plan.

COGypsy

You can enter your meal plans as far in advance as you like. A lot of people on this site track ahead for the week.

Corina1143

That's pretty much how I do things, except I'm retired, so not Sunday, just an arbitrarily chosen day, not necessarily for a week or 5 days, just several days at a time. I chòose not to have reminders to eat. Again, because I'm retired, the clock means nothing. I choose to eat when I'm hungry.