Do you plan out your menu each day or figure it out as you go along?

I plan it weekly! I usually pick 2 or 3 recipes for lunch and dinner that I know what the calories are and that are homemade. I make them a day or two ahead, and then plan ahead for a treat meal on the weekend with friends. It helps me a lot!

I plan out breakfast (typically none or a small snack) and lunch (typically pizza or a wrap). Dinner and everything else are just whatever my wife makes and what I have calories for. If I know dinner ahead of time I might eat a snack earlier in the day.

Not knowing what will be for dinner isn't a big deal. I always have ~800 calories for it, and eat whatever fits in that amount.

Generally, we plan daily, our tastes & cravings change too often to plan beyond that. We often try to plan the weekends just to stay on track, but that tends to change as well. I'll shop on my lunch hour if need be for dinner.

I plan, pre-log, and adjust throughout the day to account for what I actually ate or unexpected changes in the meal.

lauragreenbaum148 wrote: »

I'm finding if I plan my daily menu first thing in the morning it helps me stay on track. I work from home, so this is pretty easy for me. The only challenge is when I join friends for lunch or dinner. Any tips?? Does anyone actually plan their menu weekly?

This is the way I have adopted as well. I make my breakfast (its the same thing every day for now, because I love it) and while I am eating it I plan out my day's food based on what I have on hand.

I don't need to prelog if I am eating exclusively my food. But when I am cooking for others or going out to eat, it's easy for me to go over my calories unless I pre-log.

M-F, I usually eat the same things for breakfast and lunch. Some combination of: coffee, yogurt, apples, eggs, tomato soup, cheese, and popcorn... Sometimes I will eat a frozen meal or leftovers for lunch. In the morning I decide what I'm gonna have for dinner (usually my main/biggest meal of the day) and then I just fill in the rest of my calories with what I listed above + chocolate and whiskey.

I try to plan my meals for the week and try to do my cooking over the weekend. Then I have options for throughout the week.

The only challenge is when I join friends for lunch or dinner. Any tips??

If you can figure out what would be a good choice on the menu before you go and be the first one to order. Less pressure that way vs. if your friends all order cheeseburgers and then you chime in with a grilled chicken salad/dressing on the side.

I do all the food shopping, prepping and cooking at our house so I need to be super organized. Since I have to make a weekly schedule of meals anyway, makes sense to do it on MFP where I can see the calories, etc. I just print out the whole week, make notes on what I'm adding/changing for my husband and post it on the fridge. Makes things much easier.

It helps that we eat a lot of the same things during the week. I get more creative on the weekends.

I never pre-plan eating. Occasionally, if I know I have a special event (with celebratory food) coming up, I may reduce my calorie budget for a few days in order to cover part of the special day, but that's the extent of planning. I like being able to eat what I feel like at the moment (within reason), and it works fine for me when I have healthy food in the house, and know some healthy eating-out options. But I live alone, which makes this approach easier.

I usually plan out breakfast & lunch for the week.

sort of plan. I buy mix and match type foods... various vegetables, lean meats, and simple carbs, and combine them however appeals to me at the moment. chicken or beef? rice or potatoes? cooked spinach or salad? stuff like that.

Figure it as I go along. We keep our pantry, freezers, fridge and root cellar well stocked at all times so always lots of options to choose from.

I loosely plan weekly, in the sense that I do groceries for 3/4 days and the food got to get eaten.

Other than that, no. A meal will satisfy me more if I get to eat something I want right now and not what I had planned 4 days ago. So I typically know what I'll make for dinner in the morning, and I log that, and my lunch (when I know what I'm having for lunch, obviously), then if I get hungry and need a snack I can plan around my calories and macros. And even then, sometimes I end up changing my dinner plans because I got really hungry in the day and have less calories for dinner.

But yeah, spur of the moment outings typically end up messing things up because it's rare that I have over 450 calories for dinner, and finding filling restaurant food for that amount of calories is very difficult. I wish I was one of the people who is not hungry during the day but unfortunately it's the other way around for me - hungry during the day and small dinners.