Meal Planning 101 For Busy Moms

As a busy mom, meal planning saves time, money, and effort on busy weeknights. Learn the basics of meal planning and the best tips from a busy mom of three to help you save your sanity when it comes to dinner.

Healthy salads and avocado in bowls with text on the image.

Getting dinner on the table and making sure everyone has enough food for snacks and breakfasts is a full-time job.

And more often than not, it falls to the mom to make it all work.

As a Certified Nutrition Coach, I strive to feed my family healthy, balanced meals.

However, I’m also a mom of three, and with that comes chaos.

It took me about eight years to nail down a meal planning system that works for my family.

I first started out meal prepping everything on Sundays. And I mean everything. Making six full meals in one day is a fast way to burn out quickly. I was tired, grouchy, sick of giving up my Sunday and frankly, I never wanted to see another Shepherd's pie again.

There had to be a better system.

Fast forward to now and I do still spend some time in the kitchen on Sundays… but mostly to make snacks for the girls (learn more about how to make meal prep easy as well as tips to make gluten-free meal prep easier).

Learning to meal plan for busy days saved my sanity and gave me back time at the end of the day. It’s a game-changer.

The Basics

Before I go into my exact process, below are the basics of meal planning for busy moms that make up the system.

Don’t overcomplicate it, in fact, keep it as simple as possible.

Map out your meals – doing this in advance means you can save money by not buying foods you won’t eat.
Shop – only get items on your list. You can be strategic about this but don’t just buy things because you like them. This helps you stick to healthy meals. Also, learn how to master your family meal planning on a budget so you can shop for supplies without stress!
Execute – if you learn how to meal plan properly, you save yourself lots of prep time. Don’t try to do everything in one day and don’t think you need everything completely ready.

My Meal Planning System

Below is the system I use to create a meal plan for my family (a family of five) as well as crucial meal planning tips to make a weekly meal plan work.

As a nutrition coach for the last ten years, I’ve worked with dozens of busy parents trying to make healthy food work for their family. It's these lessons that led me to create meal templates for everyday moms and the strategies below.

Meal Planning Step 1: Pre-Plan

The pre-plan means that you need to look ahead and see what you have going on that week.

If my older two girls have back to back karate, I know I need a slow cooker meal because we’ll be in and out and cooking can’t happen.

The other part of pre-planning is looking at what meat is on sale at the store. I make a list of sales then make my meal plan around those sales.

Meal Planning Step 2: Recipes

The biggest tip I can give here is that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Stop thinking you need to try 389367 new meals. You don’t.

What I do myself and what I have my client do is to choose 8-10 meals that the house likes and rotate them. You can switch up a flavor but there’s no need to buy a ton of new food items for just one meal.

If you’re in a busy season of life, keep it as simple as possible.

Meal Planning Step 3: Organizing

You know the twelve dinners that your family likes now you need to work them in.

The old advice of “cook once eat twice” has never been more crucial both from a time but also an expense perspective. Batch cooking is gold.

For example, if I make baked teriyaki chicken thighs with rice and roasted vegetables one night, you better believe that the next night we’re having leftover chicken pasta with roasted root vegetables, teriyaki chicken, and extra gluten-free teriyaki sauce.

Another example of this is: my girls love tacos so we do a lot of “Taco Tuesdays”. Cook more taco beef than you need. The next night (or the night after) use that taco beef in spaghetti or beef quesadillas.

If you map out your meals this way you save a ton of time. It also means that you don’t have a ton of prep work to do and so everything comes together super fast.

Two glass containers with meal prepped chicken and veggies with forks and a pepper shaker around them

Breakfast, Lunches, And Snacks

For these meals again, simplicity is key for me.

We have six breakfasts we rotate through and five of them are made the night before. I tend to do this before the girls go to bed because they all take about five minutes.

Cookie dough overnight oats, banana chia pudding, double chocolate baked oats, and slow cooker porridge are our go-to's. Once a week we do avocado toast and eggs.

Simple, easy effective.

I prep snacks on the weekend and it takes me about an hour.

I typically make an energy ball (learn how to make energy balls), a no-bake protein bar, and protein muffins. All other snacks are grab-and-go like yogurt (check out these healthy snacks for busy moms).

Lunches are makeshift: my husband takes leftovers, my school girls love charcuterie, salad, or sandwiches and I eat mash-ups. No planning is required. However, having something like ground beef in a crock pot in the fridge or freezer is a game-changer for throw-together meals.

Tips To Succeed At Meal Planning As A Busy Mom

Listen I get it, having one more thing to organize and map out sucks.

But spending the thirty minutes to do it saves you hours throughout the week. Below are a few reminders, takeaways, and tips for busy moms.

Keep it simple – remember that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Stick to super easy, minimal prep recipes and rotate through 10-12 meals until you get your feet under you.
Meal plan one meal only – if you’re new to meal planning, start by just planning weeknight dinners. There’s no need to execute the house meals like an army sergeant.
Double batch – always, always, always, cook extra and use it for your next meal. It’s the best busy mom hack you can implement.
Pre-cook grains – have cooked rice or quinoa in the fridge. This makes recipes like stir fry or casserole super easy to whip up.
Buy a veggie pack – need cabbage? Buy coleslaw mix. Pre-cut vegetables if you can afford the extra buck save you time and energy at the end of a long day.
Meal planner – if you’re a paper-and-pen person like myself, grab a meal planner and put it to use. I love having everything right there in front of me and this way I can go back to previous months to see what we ate and recycle those recipes.