🤯 6 Meal Planning Commandments🙋🏾‍♀️!

OK Friends before we start in my usual rants and musings…. let’s begin with a commitment:

6 Meal Planning Commandments

• 🍽️ I Will Cook at Home
• 💰 I Will Have a Food Budget
• 📝 I Will Make Time to Plan and Prep
• 🚧 I will Not Complicate It
• 🍲 I Will Use Categories to Choose My Dinners
• 🌾 I Will Keep Staples in My Fridge and Pantry At All Times

Thank you, you’ve read them or spoken them and now your time with this post is complete….. NOT!

After 2 very consistent years of meal planning and a recent dive into monthly meal planning I have learned quite a bit! I’m not going to repeat some of the basics like tools to use, ect.. If you would like to learn more about tips shared in 2024 on this topic, click the link here 👇🏾

I’m preparing to teach a meal planning class at the Teaching Kitchen soon and thought what perfect way to get myself prepped than writing this post! As I write, I can hear my former Editor in my ear- spell it out, each step and explain the “why”. So here we go!

• I Will Cook at Home
  • When people learn practical skills instead of chasing perfection, they cook more, waste less food, feel more empowered, and feed their families better.
• I Will Have a Food Budget
  • A protected food budget protects your health.
    • When you plan and safeguard your food dollars, you’re more likely to buy nourishing, whole foods instead of relying on last-minute, expensive convenience options.
    • Budgeting ahead makes healthy choices the default, not the exception.
  • It reduces stress and decision fatigue.
    • Knowing what you can spend and honoring it removes daily guesswork.
    • A food budget creates calm, predictable structure so meals don’t become a source of anxiety or rushed decisions.
  • It honors your priorities and values.
    • Food is not an afterthought; it’s foundational.
    • Protecting your food budget is a statement that your family’s nourishment, energy, and long-term well-being matter and are worth planning for.
• I Will Make Time to Plan and Prep
  • Review Your Schedule First
    • Look at your week and note late workdays, activities, travel, or low-energy evenings.
    • Your schedule should determine how you cook not whether you cook.
  • Choose Which Dinners to Plan
    • Decide how many dinners you’ll cook at home (ex: 3–5 nights).
    • Leave space for leftovers, simple meals, or planned takeout so the plan feels realistic.
  • Set an Intention for the Week
    • Ask yourself: What does my body or family need this week?
    • Examples: comfort, budget-friendly meals, more vegetables, quick prep, or heart-healthy focus.
  • Build Simple, Repeatable Meals
    • Choose dinners with overlapping ingredients to save money, time, and energy.
• I will Not Complicate It
  • American Medical Association article “What Doctors wish patients knew about Decision Fatigue“; by the time the average person goes to bed, they’ve made over 35,000 decisions . Some of these decisions are conscious, some are not.
    • The article states the more choices you have to make, the more it can wear on your brain, and it may cause your brain to look for short cuts.
    • For example, you may become more indecisive on a “If your brain is worn down, it may cause you to become more reckless with your decision making or not think things through,”.
    • Let’s not complicate our decisions, with a clear plan when our brains our fresh, it’s very easy to lean on the plan when our brains aren’t.
• I Will Use Categories to Choose My Dinners
  • This is the secret to a great meal plan for me. In rotating categories I not only lessen decisions, but know which recipes to keep or which ones to throw out.
  • A few categories I like to choose from are:
    • Sheet pan
    • Grain Bowls
    • Slow Cooker
    • Asian Bowls
    • Air fryer meal
    • Salads
    • Burger Bar
    • Make your own pizza
    • One pot Wonders! (My favorite)
    • Casseroles 
    • Grill night 
    • Sunday Supper
    • Soup and Sandwich 
• I Will Keep Staples in My Fridge and Pantry At All Times
  • It’s not flashy but it’s transformative.
  • Many of the diseases that we suffer from today, like diabetes, heart disease, and obesity, were either rare or unknown in earlier times.
  • We’ll tackle my recommended pantry essentials in the next section. When you have your essentials stocked, you eliminate the need for extra grocery trips!

The $50 Pantry Essentials + $15 Fridge Add-On

A $50 pantry is powerful because it lays the foundation for consistent, stress-free meal planning especially for busy families and budget-conscious households. When your pantry is stocked with versatile, nutrient-dense staples, meals become easier to assemble, healthier by default, and less dependent on last-minute takeout or overspending at the store.

A well-stocked pantry:

• Reduces decision fatigue
• Stretches grocery dollars further
• Allows you to build meals around what you already have instead of starting from scratch each week

It’s not about having everything, it’s about having the right things that work together, support your health goals, and make home cooking feel possible, even on your busiest days.

Below is a free download I created to get new cooks, or those re-committing to cooking at home a good jump start.

I Tried Planning Meals a MONTH in advance… how’d it go?

Extremely well!! This was probably the best tools I’ve ever tried. For those new to me, I am a Mom of 1 son who’s a very active high school freshman and athlete. I work full-time, and my Husband and I have a personal family commitment that we cook majority of our meals at home. Taking the time to sit down, and meal plan our very busy month of Jan was worth every moment. This will continue in 2026!

Thanks for reading and Happy Eating!

J

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