Do you plan it out??

I actually do my meal planning on Sunday's. I will usually make a bunch of Chicken breasts, and steam some vegetables and actually portion them out for my lunches- I don't really min eating the same thing everyday so it works for me

This! I have 2 boys, work full time and have a hubby who works full time and goes to school part time. Our schedule is nuts. Sunday is still about family but now we work out and cook together most of the day. I usually have two crockpots and the oven going. The only downfall is all of the dishes!

hit your macros

I am on a strict financial budget so I have planned out my meals at least two weeks in advance using grocery sales flyers as a guide to get the best bang for my dollar.

I always have a couple of ideas for easy meals for those nights that get busy.

I also ask my teenage children what they would like to have so I don't have to hear they never get to have what they like. (They also cook once a week taking turns on whose week it is.)

I am more casual about my lunches, usually whatever I am in the mood for that fits my caloric goal for the day.

(For example tonight I am making a low calorie weight watcher recipe for dinner so I had more wiggle room with my lunch. Tomorrow I might have a higher caloric dinner so will go lighter on the lunch. Hope this makes sense?)

The important thing to remember is that it can be done easily with a little determination!

Good luck!

When I make my grocery list I usually do it according to the meals I will be eating. I know I need ground turkey and chicken, tilapia, tukey chops, chicken breast, eggs, and shrimp. I am very picky when it comes to veggies so I stick with fresh string beans, greans, cabbage, asparagus and romaine lettuce for my salads. I also love fresh fruit. When I am strapped for time I do keep fruit cups, almonds, cream of wheat, and granola bars on hand for snacking. When I am preparing for my week I select about three main dish recipes so that I will have a variety for lunch and dinner, but there are times that I find a new recipe that I want to try immediately so if need be I go purchase those items. I do plan my meals a day or two ahead of time and even fill it in to make sure I stick to it. My advice is to have a variety so you won't get bored.

I more or less eat the same thing every day for a few days in a row - I cook 4 or 5 of everything in one go and microwave as required !

my general diet

breakfast - yougurt / granola / berries
snack - fruit and some baked crunchy salty 100 cal snack
lunch - chicken / turkey / or beef low fat mince burger and veggies or salad
snack - toast / smart bagel and low fat cream cheese
dinner - lean meat, ( I make 4 servings of stew or chili or something or just cook 4 serving of chicken or turkey in advance ) veg and a carb - I have found if I just leave rice in water for a few hours it rehydrates and just needs to be zapped in a microwave to eat - I usually soak 2 servings and throw one in the fridge for the next day )
protien shake before bed

I plan around what my husband and I are going to have for our shared meal. Usually that's a talk at breakfast, so not really advanced.

I always plan out (and prepare) a day's food the night before. That way I can adjust my choices to make my macros. In the morning I pack my cooler for work, usually 24 hour shifts, with a few extras just in case that 24 turns into 36. It works for me. It also lets me know exactly where I stand ahead of time so that if an opportunity comes up for a special treat I know if a bite is okay or if I need to stay particularly strong. I also tend to cook in large batches (crockpot) and freeze preportioned meals. Easy to grab and go and I only have to enter the recipe in MFP once!

We mealplan for the week. Every meal. Now, it's a little easier for us, because we eat dinner with my mom every night and split the dinner cooking duties and she follows my dietary restrictions graciously. But we plan on Saturday after our toddler is in bed and grocery shop on Sunday and spend time prepping meals Sunday evening.

Breakfast is something that is easy and reheatbable - spinach pancakes are a favorite, or spinach quinoa bars. Egg cups or egg muffins are portable and reheatable, oatmeal can be done in big batches in the crockpot or in the refrigerator for overnight oatmeal if you like oatmeal (I don't - we make it for my daughter). My husband makes smoothies every morning that I drink on the way to work to help with meeting caloric intake easily/healthfully - it takes him about 5 minutes start to finish every day.

Lunch is nearly always a salad of some kind. That is by far the easiest thing to prep and throw together while being filling, healthy and inexpensive. We base around a protein (often beef, sometimes chicken, sometimes fish, sometimes it's tuna or chicken salad on a bed of lettuce), then greens (we always include handfuls of raw spinach, sometimes swiss chard or kale if it's in season and inexpensive), then vegetables and fruits - so much you can add, depending on your likes and dislikes and what protein you are having: cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, apples, orange slices, berries, celery, water chestnut, squash, onion, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini. Then fats - dressing helps here (we make ours at home to control ingredients and amounts - it's crazy easy and tasty) - avocados, olives, oils, nuts, seeds. Easy peasy. The most work is cooking the meat Sunday night, chopping fruit/veg, washing ingredients and then portioning. Maybe 30 mintues of prep for a week's worth of meals for 2 people? Other options include soup (make at home to ensure that you aren't too high on sodium) or chili, which can be made in the crockpot, or planning for larger dinners so that you can eat leftovers the following day.

Dinner gets prepped as well - anything we can do in advance to reduce time later in the week, we do. Chop veggies, roast veggies, make sauces, casseroles cooked in advance (or that can be prepped in advance and popped into the oven) etc. But we do a fair amount of crockpot cooking, to save time. We also like proteins that cook quickly, like fish or shrimp, so we're just reheating or steaming/sauteeing veggies to go along with the meat that cooks quickly on the foreman.

It seemed like a lot of work, and it is a little time-consuming to plan in advance, but the actual time spent seems to be less in the end, and it saves us a lot of wasted food and a lot of money, because we only buy what we need for the week and we don't have moments where we throw up our hands in despair and eat out because we don't have enough time to cook (which also saves us money). I felt like I had sticker shock when we switched to healthier, whole foods (instead of processed, pre-made foods) - but soon realized that we were spending less per month on food, even though our grocery bills were definitely higher.

It also helps me keep on track for the day, because I know what I'm eating and can input that early in the day (changing later, if I don't eat breakfast, like today), and see where I'm going to be, and plan for treats ahead of time. I am also entering recipes myself and knowing how much of something is in what I'm eating, rather than relying on guesses or estimates. I think it helps.

I plan a day in advance. There have been two or three days that I didn't plan out and each time I reached dinner time and didn't have enough calories left to have something satisfying, and no calories for snacks for the rest of the night. Each time it really demotivated me so now I plan.

After I've finished logging my diary for the day, I sit down and plan out the next day. I just use a Word document and have a space for each food opportunity I get in the work day and at home (Breakfast, morning break, lunch, afternoon break, dinner, post work out) and fill it in. I add up the calories and then put another section of how many calories I have left after eating everything there. I am not strict about it. Plenty of days I won't be hungry at X time so end up not eating what I had planned then, so I'll have something different later on. Or I go out for coffee and a snack, a friend offers me something eat, someone brings cupcakes to work... all the things that come up in life.

Mostly I just need it for my meals- I NEED to know that I have enough calories for a decent breakfast, lunch and dinner. For me there is nothing worse than getting to dinner time and not being able to have a big, filling meal! So I log my 3 meals when I get up in the morning and fit my snacks in around that. It's working so far so I'm sticking with it.

At this point I pretty much plan dinners only but more from a grocery shopping perspective. Breakfast on work days is generally the same and then I typically turn left over protein from dinner into a salad for lunch.

I usually make something in the crock pot that I can eat for lunch all week and tend to portion it out as well. This week was chicken and rice soup. I make sure I always have oatmeal on hand for breakfast, although I've been eating greek yogurt more often lately. I always have greek yogurt on hand and fresh fruit and vegetables.

Dinners I'm not quite as good about planning out like that but I generally have chicken in the freezer and can throw something together pretty quickly. In general, I try to eat less calories for breakfast and lunch and save them for dinner in case I do end up going out or preparing something less healthy and dinners I usually make larger enough so that there are left overs for later in the week. I'm feeding 4 of us, and I'm really the only one that needs to be lower calorie. My kids are teenagers in sports, so they need lots of calories and tend to be big eaters. I also stop at the store on my way home from work a couple of days a week, the store there marks down there greek yogurt, cottage cheese and veggies several times a week, so I like to get it when it's cheaper since I tend to eat usually 2 a day and my son eats some as well. This helps to keep fresh food in the house. I also shop at Aldi once a week to get their produce specials and Costco once a month or so. For me, the key is always having something healthy on hand for those "I'm STARVING" moments. Greek yogurt tends to be my go to when I'm not prepared for lunch; that and some fruit and/or veggies takes care of me and then I normally have an apple on my drive home.

For me Im happy having the same thing for multiple days in a row, so I will either make a stew, curry, soup, chilli etc which I will cook on one day and then use till its all gone. now you may not like having the same meal every day for 4 days but for me it works and meaning I don't have to log every day, log onces use same measures and repeat.

I have removed several off topic posts and replies from this thread to keep the conversation focused on the original OP and to prevent it from being derailed. Thanks to all for your constructive contributions - lots of great advice and insights here on planning meals.

You've gotten a lot of good advice here that I will definitely agree with as far as trying to be organized and making meal plans/grocery lists ahead of time.

The other thing that I wanted to mention that was a big learning for me when I first started was to also plan ahead for when you know you will be going out to eat. Take some time, if you know what restaurant you are going to, to look at their menu online and then even if they don't have calorie counts available on their website (and many chain restaurants do), you can look up a few things on MFP to see if the actual restaurant entry is in the database, or try to find something that sounds similar so you can get an idea of what you think you might order. By doing a little research ahead of time, it can help you make better decisions at the restaurant - if one of the appetizers sounds really good to you, maybe just get the appetizer and a salad and forego the entree. Or if you are celebrating a birthday and you know dessert will be involved, look through the entrees to pick something a little more calorie friendly so you can save room for a whole dessert or part of a dessert if someone wants to share!

Knowing that Red Lobster Cheddar Bay biscuits are ~150 cal apiece was very helpful because before, I would have consumed 4 or more in one meal! Now knowing that, I try to plan 300 calorie wiggle room in my meal choices ahead of time so that I can still have a couple, because seriously, who can just eat one of those...

Also by looking at the restaurant calorie counts ahead of time (and I've been known to look it up on my phone in the restaurant - maybe rude but everyone else is on their phones!) - you can avoid the "OMG what did I just do to my calorie total" factor at the end of the day when you go back and log it later.

Good luck!

Excellent advice. I, too have been known to look up calories on my phone before ordering in restaurants. I try not to do things like that on the spur of them moment and look them up beforehand as well. Less guilt that way, I suppose, even though I'm not accountable to anyone else for my weight loss and health.

EXCELLENT INFO ^^^^

one additional piece of advice when eating out...
Restaurants will ALWAYS give you at least a 2 or more size portion of food no matter what you order.Order what you want, it is only one night .. it isn't the end all be all. Portion control is what is going to help you succeed in this lifestyle, so.. moderation, don't overindulge.

a little "portion control" trick i use when going out to dinner. Always ask for a to go contain with your meal when you order. As soon as your food arrives, cut everything down by half.. and store it in the box... put it away, out of sight out of mind. If it isn't staring at you, you won't eat it. You can still enjoy your meal, but you are being accountable for your choices by using portion control. Then you have a lunch/dinner for tomorrow, and you can lose the guilt and regret of "i can't believe i ate all that".

hope this was helpful.