How much time do you spend planning/preparing meals?

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msh1978
msh1978 Posts: 3 Member
edited March 1 in Food and Nutrition
Hi everyone!
I'm trying to get on track (again) and was wondering how much time/effort you put into your weekly meals? I have 3 kids, I work and have recently started running again since plantar fasciitis took me out for almost a year! I'm trying to eat as clean as possible, no canned or boxed meals so everything is made from scratch for every meal. Add filling out my food and exercise journal to the mix and it seems all my spare time is used doing something with food! It's a nightmare preparing meals for 5 people twice a day, it's all I seem to do. Please share your tricks and methods to better manage my food prep time. Thanks a bunch :happy:

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  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,368 Member
    Well, first ask your husband to help. If you both work, it's only fair that you both share the cooking duty.

    Make extra of dinner so you can use leftovers for lunches. We use a lot of frozen veggies for quick meals in the evening, to be honest... Put that in the microwave, grill some chicken on the foreman, and it's ready in 10 minutes. So most days I spend less than 30 minutes making dinner (my kids just have sandwiches or tortillas with cheese or something for lunch).
  • seltzermint555
    seltzermint555 Posts: 10,740 Member
    We're just a 2 person household, so obviously it's different. But I find that when we've tried to just buy a bunch of healthy-ish groceries and wing it...we're not very happy with our meals and wind up going out too often, and just being kind of blah about our food and not being in a cooking mood.

    The key for us is to be really organized with our shopping & meal planning. Our "list" of meals is the biggest part of it. My husband and I sit down on Sundays with our laptops and it takes maybe 15 minutes for us to come up with a list of 10-12 meal ideas for lunches & dinners throughout the week. We get ideas from Pinterest, MFP, etc. Sometimes one of us has a random craving so it goes onto the list, and then we go out to do the grocery shopping.

    We take the easy route a lot of times by having 1 Mexican style entrée, a stir fry of some type, fish & potatoes, meal salads, healthy homemade thin crust veggie pizza usually once a week, something with shrimp, something with tofu, a pasta dish, beans or lentils, and a couple breakfast meals that we may eat for a different time of day.

    Having that list makes it a lot easier to cook and prep because we know (at least sort of) what we're having all week. Most nights we have minimal food prep to do for the next day and it goes pretty quickly. On occasion I'll prep produce or boil some eggs on Sunday night but for the most part we cook meals fresh from staples, produce, etc. We do have the advantage of my husband working from home so he can throw lentils on the stove (for example) and they're ready for us by lunchtime.

    As for logging your food on MFP, I do probably 80% of mine from work ;-) I don't know if that's an option for you but I feel it frees up my personal time a bit. Prelogging is handy even if you don't always stick to it, because you can switch it to a different day or add/delete items and change quantities.
  • yellowlemoned
    yellowlemoned Posts: 335 Member
    I try to spend as little time as possible on meal planning so I have a very simple system in place.

    We both (my boyfriend and I) sat down and made 2 big lists (1 each) of all the foods, meals, snacks, and random ingredients we love. I gave us a week or so to finish our lists since it's hard to come up with things on the spot. Once we had our lists we got a big poster board we attached to the side of the fridge and on the back of the pantry door for our meal list.

    That list has 4 columns on it. | Low Calorie Meals 0-400calories | High Calorie Meals 400 + | Low Calorie Snacks Under 150 | and | High Calorie Snacks |. What we do, is allow ourselves 2 low calorie meals and 1 high calorie meal a day. If we need snacks we decide on which list we can pick from based on what we've eaten so far that day. It makes dinner planning easier because we have a go to list of things we make and we know exactly how many calories are in those meals.

    Also, when we go grocery shopping we put aside 3 hours. 1 hour for shopping and 2 hours for prepping. We cut up 1/2 of the chicken we buy into chunks for meals that use chunked chicken. The rest is put in individual zip lock bags. Steaks (if we get them) are put in individual bags, ground beef is separated into 1 lb and 1/2 lb bags and put in the freezer. We usually cook 1 -2 lbs of ground beef and put 1/2 in the freezer 1/2 in the fridge for easy use in the next few days. All veggies are washed, peeled if necessary, and chopped if necessary, then put into labeled containers. It takes a few hours to sit down and do it, but it makes the rest of the 2 weeks (we shop every 2 weeks) much easier and less time consuming after work.
  • msh1978
    msh1978 Posts: 3 Member
    Thanks for your suggestions! Luckily I work from home as well (i work the front office of my husband's industrial shop) so i am back and forth from kitchen to office all day. If I were working away from the house I honestly don't know what I would do. Kuddos to those of you who can and do it all the time, you definitely have my respect!! I always cook, it's something I enjoy immensely, but I always had my go to recipes (spaghetti, shepards pie, soups, etc) that I could freeze. I have to not only reduce calories but carbs as well so many of my regular meals which were healthy enough for anyone not trying to lose weight no longer fit the bill, at least until I get to a weight I want to maintain. As for hubby chipping in, that's a no go. He has never cooked except for the odd BBQ in the summer. By the time he's finished work he's wiped out, it's very demanding physically. Having the kids back to school/daycare in the fall will lift a huge weight off my shoulders, they eat at the cafeteria.
  • DeguelloTex
    DeguelloTex Posts: 6,652 Member
    Pan searing or grilling chicken, pork, or steak takes very little time. Grilling, broiling, or steaming vegetables takes even less. Browning meat for tacos or taco salad is fast. Even making a decent pasta sauce isn't bad.

    I guess my trick is to use a few good spices and simple recipes rather than get too complicated. We save that for the weekends.
  • nam985
    nam985 Posts: 140 Member
    Meal planning for the week usually takes me about 30-45 minutes once a week. I figure out what I want to make, then cross reference those recipes with my pantry/freezer inventory and build my grocery list from there. I have found it helpful to spend an extra hour or so when I get home from shopping to wash and chop ingredients so I can just grab and go. For example if I want to make a stir fry having all of the veggies ready will cut down significantly on the prep/cook time. On weekdays I try to have meals that take less than one hour from prep to table.
  • drabbits3
    drabbits3 Posts: 140 Member
    I'm not sure how much time total, but this is my system: I grocery shop either Friday night or Saturday day (work full time) then do the prepping. I cut up or bag veggies and write on the ziploc with a sharpie how many calories each bag is. I usually make a pot of brown rice for the week, often put either black beans or pinto beans in the crockpot for a Mexican Bowl lunch or dinner--beans and rice with cheese-salsa-sour cream-guacamole. For me I do a Mexican Bowl with only rice and beans and salsa, sometimes guacamole if I can afford the calories!!! Also--make a grain or pasta salad for the week--think about unusual grains, like farro, spelt, quinoa--Moosewood has a great soup and salad cookbook that I use all the time. A soup or chili is a good idea too. Mind you, I don't do ALL of this EVERY week, but I do prep veggies and a lot of stuff in advance. Another quick and easy breakfast idea is egg muffins--one dozen eggs, beaten, add whatever--veggies, crumbled sausage (veggie or meat), feta, parmesan, spinach, a little milk (dairy or soy), divide among a 12-muffin tin and bake for 20 or so minutes at 350. Oh--spray the tins first. These little egg muffins are the best--one with fruit or a slice of low fat toast--perfect breakfast. My boys love them too. In a pinch we do breakfast for dinner A LOT--pancakes, frittata, scrambled eggs, mexican eggs--I do an egg white version. Try not to make different food for you and the rest of the family--that's too much work! Make something basic for you and the rest of them can add toppings/cheese/sour cream/whatever if they like. Use a crock pot--you can do oatmeal, soups, chills, I even found this breakfast bake thing that has layers of hash browns, eggs, cheese, sausage--not terribly healthy, but the men in my house love it. I have a small portion. The more time you can spend on the weekend, the easier the week will be.
    good luck
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