Short answer? Meal Planning (here’s how).
Here’s the long answer and the way I save 3.5 hours a week with 5-minutes of meal planning…
I’ve always been a systems person who likes to find the fastest way to accomplish something. I’m also a (recovering) perfectionist.
Unfortunately, this led to some sleepless nights in high school and college as I stayed up all night studying or making sure a report was perfect, but over time, I’ve learned to harness my perfectionism and love of systems to actually save time rather than take time.
Some people call it mildly obsessive compulsive, I call it good time management.
The One System That Changed My Life
Whatever you call it, there is one particular system that has literally changed my life as a mom and that is meal planning. It is something I started doing almost a decade ago when I was pregnant with my first child and have done it (mostly regularly) ever since. In fact, of all the systems and planning, planning out meals for the week has saved me the most time (even more so than speed reading).
I started meal planning out of sheer necessity when we had an incredibly limited budget and I had to be sure that no food went to waste. I’ve continued doing it over the years both to save money and to save time.
At first, I made and used a basic index-card system which worked well, but took about half an hour each week to organize and plan, plus the 2+ hours of shopping each week.
It evolved into a spreadsheet and exported PDF documents that I could view on my phone which worked a little better.
Eventually, I developed a whole online system that would store my recipes, generate meal plans and allow me to customize based on family size. I began sharing this with a few readers several years ago and Wellness Mama Meals was born.
I’ve tracked the time I spent planning, preparing and shopping for meals on weeks that I didn’t meal plan ahead and weeks that I did… the difference? 3.5 hours a week on average. (I also saved about $45 a week shopping when I planned vs. when I didn’t).
Unfortunately, while Wellness Mama Meals was perfect for me, it had its limitations for you. For instance, I could add recipes since I had backend access to the system, but users could not add their own. I had a list of requests from users for improvements, such as the ability to exclude recipes with ingredients they were allergic to and better mobile usability or an app. These things were well beyond my technical ability or what I could afford to hire someone to create.
A Better Way to Meal Plan?
After attending a health conference last year, I ended up sitting next to someone at a restaurant and the topic of meal planning came up. It turns out that he was the husband of a blogger I love and have become friends with (Emily from Holistic Squid), and I realized that he shared my enthusiasm for real food and for systems.
In fact, this guy (Antony Bartlett) was a systems ninja. And he had created a meal planner. And it was better than mine. A LOT BETTER.
At first, I had an internal conflict. On the one hand, I loved my recipes and the meal planning system I’d spent years developing, but on the other hand, I knew I could never create as good of a system as he had.
Eventually, I had a long conversation with Antony and Emily and made the decision to merge Wellness Mama Meals into Real Plans. I expected that it would be easier for users and that current users would love it (they do), but I was surprised to find out how much more I loved it too! In fact, even with creating many of my own recipes each week (because food blogger…) it is still saving me hours of time!
Real Plans is so easy to use and customize that I can literally meal plan in about 5 minutes a week. It creates a meal plan automatically, which I can customize as much as I’d like and then I can view the plan, recipes and shopping list on my phone.
Seriously, I’ve been meal planning for almost a decade, and Real Plans is saving me even more time, especially at the grocery store and farmers market. Since there are also options for batch cooking or a prepare ahead day, it is even easier to save time!
Another bonus? With Wellness Mama on Real Plans, you get all 500+ of my recipes, plus over 1,000 additional recipes with new recipes being added each week!
Click Here to Test out Real Plans!
A Look Inside
Real Plans automatically generates a meal plan for you each week. You can choose in the settings to have them email it to you or just login and check it… This also works on their free mobile app so you can plan, shop and cook from your phone! Oh yeah, and if you’re going on vacation but plan to cook while there, it’s super easy to plan all your meals for the trip!
Don’t like something on the menu? No worries, you can customize with a drag and drop feature in about three seconds:
Have allergies or foods your family won’t eat? Just add them on the settings page and you’ll never see recipes with those ingredients again! You can also customize how many people you are cooking for.
You can even customize what days you want to generate meals for, what type of meals, and even if you want a big cooking day so you can batch-prepare meals ahead of time.
If you have family favorite recipes, you can add those and make them part of your meal plan.
And after you finish that incredibly long process (which might take a whole 5 minutes if you change everything 😉 ) Real Plans generates a custom shopping list that you can view on your phone via their mobile app while you shop. You can even check off items you already know you have so you only buy exactly what you need.
It’s so easy!
On top of that, you can modify each recipe, define what store you want to purchase each ingredient at, and even add a photo of the specific ingredient (in case you send your husband to the store to pick up ingredients and he doesn’t know which brand to get).
I can honestly say that few things have truly changed my life. Among them are homemade deodorant, magnesium, my organic mattress and Real Plans. Of those, Real Plans is the least-expensive and most valuable (as little as $7/month!)
Click Here to Test out Real Plans!
Meal Plan From Your Phone
Another advantage to Real Plans is the ability to plan and shop entirely with your phone. You can view the meal plan, recipes or shopping list from your phone and check off the list as you shop:
More Reasons I Love (and Use) Real Plans Each Week
- The easiest way to plan healthy meals for my family
- Mobile app for easy use, especially when shopping
- I easily save more per week than Real Plans costs per month!
- It takes under five minutes to plan our meals for the entire week
- Reduces my grocery shopping time and budget by simplifying the process
- Makes it effortless to stick to meal planning
- My children love using it and my 9-year-old can plan meals for our whole week by himself
Meal Plans Each Week Include
- A pre-made meal plan based on your food preferences
- Ability to completely change and customize the meal plan each week
- Easy to add your own recipes or recipes from your favorite website(s)
- All of my recipes (500+), plus over 1,000 new recipes and more added each week
- Simple way to sort by ingredient, remove recipes with allergens and modify any recipe
- So much more!
As you can probably tell, I’m super excited about Real Plans and I think you’ll love it too!
Do you meal plan? If not, what is stopping you?
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I signed up! But I don’t see a lot of make ahead batch cooking type stuff (big cook on sunday ideas)? Is there a trick to getting that? 🙂
You can use the Make Ahead filter in the ‘my schedule’ page in settings to set a number of meals… and/or go straight to the recipe box and grab any number from there.
That looks wonderful. I am entering the world of meal planning and am still very “homemade” on this. Only been on meal planning for a couple of months and not very consistent, although it is really noticeable when I do. The savings on time and money are real.
Is there a limited number of diet restriction categories? I’ve got a child with a list of 10 serious food allergies. Some sites let me look at gluten free & diary free recipes, but can’t handle additional filters of soy free, egg free, Nut free , sesame free, etc.
Nope! You can add as many restrictions as you need!
I’m a BIG supporter of meal planning
I don’t use an online system like this, but I have been meal planning since this past summer. It’s just the hub and I (no kiddies), but I work out of the house from 8-4 then also do some client work from my home office for my part time bookkeeping business a few evenings a week so it’s sometimes difficult to squeeze in cooking every night. We bulk shop our meats (Restaurant Depot) and I’ve stocked our basement pantry and deep freezer with vegetables and other staples and supply lasts us quite a few months. Every Sunday I work with what I’ve got (so I shop for very little additional ingredients) and keep a board of my favorite go-to recipes on Pinterest as well as other on-the-fly ones I’ve got in my head. I pre-cook 1-2 meals on Sunday so all we have to do is heat up and have enough for leftovers for at least two more nights. One night is a soup and sandwich night so that leaves 1-3 nights that I actually have to cook. It saves me time after I get home from the office and allows me to do other things when I don’t have client work to do (like working out, cleaning, laundry or just……relaxing!!)
You know, I think what Amy said was brilliant! It would be awesome if your non-food recipes were an option to add in, as well. You wouldn’t normally think of that, but with making so many of our products at home, it seems like the next logical step to keep things easy and all-together. You should consider incorporating that, since most items have “real food” ingredients in them and even if it’s not food, it would still make it easier if everything that you needed to pick up or order was in one app. Easy, peasy!
Does it allow us to put in a budget and allow it to give us back meal plans based on budget and diet filters?
It can definitely filter based on diet. For budget, there are a couple of things you can do. First, they have a seasonal filter that you can use (based on your hemisphere) to help, and you can also build meals around ingredients you already have, or find on items sale in the store. So you might, for example, leave a couple of nights without a planned recipe, take your list to the store on your phone, find the very best sales, and then look up recipes using that sale item on the phone and add them to your plan. But since it’s impossible to know the cost of food in every location, it wouldn’t be possible to filter explicitly for budget.
Will it just plan dinner or can you plan all three meals and snacks?
It’s plans breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There are also categories in the recipe section for appetizers, sides, and snacks.
If I purchase you’re recipes does it also include your non food recipes? I’d love to add all your product recipes so I have a shopping list and planner when I need to buy/make more supplies for those recipes too. Such as cleansers, sleep tincture, toothpaste, etc.
Blessings,
No, it’s just food. All the beauty and DIY posts aren’t technically “food”, but I suppose you could add them into the system so you can keep track of the ingredients, but recipes themselves are just those items you’ll be eating 🙂
Thank you! I’ll definitely be adding ALL your recipes!
So I signed up for your meal plan through Real Plans but I just have a menu plan. nothing specific to Wellness Mama. Disappointed as it is not what is listed above 🙁
If you go to the recipe box, the first filter drop down says “origin”; open that drop down list; there should be a blue link that says “upgrade” under the “wellness mama” checkbox. You have to upgrade your subscription to include the Wellness Mama recipes. Then you will start getting them in your plans. You may have some that are not Wellness Mama still in your plan but with the sorting options you can easily filter to just her recipes and easily add those to your meal plan.
Is that only if you’re on the mobile app? Can’t figure out how to find it on my computer. Also, how much extra is it to upgrade?
I have your cookbook and it is so awesome I got rid of my very first cookbook…I called her Big Red Betty…and I don’t miss her a bit. I even got rid of all my other cookbooks…if I can’t make it healthy…I shouldn’t make it at all! I have diabetes and your recipes have given me a tasteful hope for my meals. I have never had so many delicious sugar and grain free meals and desserts. To top that…they aren’t filled with junk chemicals to add sweetness! Thank you so much! I hope you open the meal plans again soon! Thanks again!