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Making meal planning a habit can fast track your journey to better health.
A research study published in The International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity shows that meal planning has a host of benefits. These include:
In addition to these benefits, having meal planning as a part of your weekly to-do list can help your household save up to a few thousand dollars annually.
In a previous post, we discussed the best meal planning apps that you can use to make your life easier.
We've also looked at the different meal delivery kit services such as eMeals, which is a digital service that makes it simple to plan all your meals. (You can check out the review of eMeals here.)
Today we'll continue the conversation and talk about 33 printable, weekly, meal planner template ideas to inspire and assist you in your meal planning.
Now let’s check out those templates!
Best Printable Weekly Meal Planner Templates
1. Black and White Weekly Meal Planning Template
Want a simple weekly meal planning template that gets the job done? Then our very own Black-and-White Weekly Meal Planning Template is perfect for you. This is the ideal meal planner if you’re only planning meals for yourself or as a couple. There are spaces dedicated to your daily meals, as well as your shopping list for the week.
2. Colorful Weekly Meal Planning Template
If you want to involve your kids in your meal planning efforts, this colorful weekly meal planning template can help. Ask them for their input and then post a final meal plan somewhere the entire family can see.
3. Elimination Diet Weekly Meal and Snack Plan
Some meal plans help keep track of the food you eat, especially if you need to identify triggers for illnesses or allergies. This is one example. You can immediately spot a trigger food in case there are flare-ups of a medical condition by simply looking at the meal plan.
This template is in MSWord and is editable.
4. Handsketched Meal Planner
via Future Girl
If you intend to use a meal planner, it is best to choose a template that accommodates your lifestyle. For some people, that means customizing their planners when they cannot find a suitable template. This planner is an example of that. It has no dates, so there is some flexibility within your planned menu for the week.
5. Printable Meal Planner Floral Style Template
If you’re using meal planners to enhance your productivity at home, then you might want to print out this floral-style planner. It features pastel-colored pages.
When downloading or printing, there are eight paper sizes to choose from. You can also select the start day of your planner (usually Sunday).
In addition to the meal-planning pages, there are also printable pages dedicated to your grocery list, freezer and pantry inventories, favorite meals, and a customizable planner cover.
6. Weekly Meal Prep Clipboard Design
This meal planner contains ample space for writing your shopping list, in addition to the meals you plan for the week. It is very convenient because you can see what you will need at a glance.
When you’re planning meals for your whole family, it is a good idea to have a shared calendar where you can coordinate everyone’s schedule. This ensures that everyone gets a hot meal when they’re eating at home.
7. Teal-Themed Meal Planner
This teal-themed planner features space for important notes about the meals you’re planning for each day of the week.
If you’re new to meal planning, the entire process can feel overwhelming. However, remembering three basic things will help make it more doable:
8. Kitchn Weekly Meal Plan
Having a meal plan can help you keep track of the perishables in your pantry, ensuring that you use them up before they go bad. This template has space for a pantry inventory of what ingredients or supplies you need to use up, as well as a make-ahead list.
With this type of planning, nothing goes to waste. Furthermore, with a make-ahead plan, you know how to channel your energy and resources when it comes to preparing meals. You can rest easy knowing that the things you need to get done can be reviewed at a glance.
9. Minimalist Meal Plan
Many people like to keep things simple, and this meal planning template reflects that preference.
It features a black-and-white motif and is quite straightforward as a planner, providing columns where you can write down the meals you want to prepare for each day.
10. Systematic Meal Planner
In contrast to the minimalist meal plan, this template is itself an entire system of meal planning.
In addition to spaces you can fill in with the kinds of food you intend to prepare for all the days of the week, there is also generous space for brainstorming your ideas regarding the entire week’s menu.
This is quite useful, especially if there is an important event that week, such as a birthday party. The space reserved for brainstorming ensures that you remember minute details.
You will also find that the grocery list is grouped into categories. Lastly, there is space to remind you in case you need to prepare something beforehand.
11. Weekly Family Dinner Schedule
This dinner planner has assigned columns for the planned menu, who will be cooking it, and who will be assisting.
Research studies show that chores are good for children’s personal development. With this planner, you can teach valuable life skills to your children and instill in them family values that you want to pass on to them.
Usually, older kids can be assigned to cook dinner, while the younger ones will be the assistants. However, you can also boost a younger child’s confidence by assigning them to be the cook, letting them do easy-to-prepare meals for the whole family.
12. Black-and-White Menu Plan
If you’re into black-and-white themes or you want to save on printer ink, this meal plan template does the job.
The template contains spaces for the days of the week, plus an untitled column that you can use as a grocery list, pantry inventory, or space for personal reminders.
13. Colorful Weekly Meal Plan
For those of you who love color, this planner might be what you’re looking for. It features splashes of pastel to add a fun design concept to the meals that you are planning.
14. Green-Themed Weekly Meal Plan Template
Green is a very relaxing color, and this template is a sample of an elegant green-themed meal planner. It has columns for each day of the week, with spaces for writing down the food you plan to prepare.
There is also a column for a grocery list, with ample space for writing down the stuff you need to buy for the week.
15. Violet-Themed Weekly Meal Plan Template
Here’s another template with a color theme. This time, it’s in violet. Its standout feature is food-type trackers for each day.
The concept behind this food-type tracker is that the person preparing the meals will tick off one of the dots for every dish prepared for the day, which should ideally contain the food types listed, such as grain products, vegetables and fruits, and meat.
It also features a three-columned shopping list for better efficiency.
16. On the Royal Table Template
In some households, family members only have a chance to get together during dinner. For these families, it would be impractical to plan three meals per day for the entire week. Yet it is still possible to do meal planning, as this template demonstrates.
The planner simply focuses on dinner menu plans. Of course, there are spaces provided for breakfast, lunch, and snacks, too, just in case you’ll be preparing any of these meals within the week.
Furthermore, there is a two-column shopping list for your convenience.
17. Meal Plan and Grocery Checklist
In this meal planning template, the grocery list is featured prominently. It is categorized into “produce” and “non-produce,” with a system for listing the grocery items you need and their quantity.
The designers of this template have a suggestion for how to use their planner:
18. Produce Header Meal Planner
If you are feeling overwhelmed with meal planning, this template might help you see the lighter side of things. This planner comes with a fun produce header and colorful tabs for each day of the week.
Here are some additional suggestions to make meal planning a fun process:
19. Easter Weekly Meal Plan
This charming template’s design is ideal for meal planning during the Easter season.
Meal planning is ideal for the holiday season. It helps keep things organized at a time when things can become hectic.
For example, when relatives come over for a holiday meal, you can use your meal plan to keep track of food preferences and dietary restrictions. This way, you can prepare meals that everyone can enjoy, creating happy memories and ensuring that no food goes to waste.
20. Healthy Weekly Meal Plan
This is another fun meal planner with a fruit-and-vegetable header and a colorful layout. This template is available for download as a PDF and features a reminder for “make ahead” tasks for the next day.
21. Be a Master Meal Planner
For something to become a habit, it must be done consistently. This goes for meal planning, too. You can only be a master at meal planning and reap the benefits from it if you do it regularly.
With this template, you can have home-cooked meals every day of the week. This will benefit you in at least two ways: You become healthier as you avoid fast food (which is devoid of nutrients) and you save money.
22. Meal Plan with Water and Mood Trackers
This template features a black-and-white color scheme. There is a water tracker to ensure that you are properly hydrated throughout the day and a mood tracker to help keep track of your emotional health for the week.
23. Accountability Weekly Meal Plan
This template works in tandem with the 8Fit app to provide you with a meal plan that’s tailored to your dietary preferences and health goals. The app supplies the information of what you are to eat for the week, and you can choose to write this down on a printed meal planner.
There is a box you can tick to indicate you’ve actually prepared and consumed the meal suggested by the app.
24. Floral Header Weekly Meal Planner
This meal planner is a great way to prep for your weekly meals. It has seven boxes dedicated to each day of the week, so you can plot out the meals for the entire week.
The right-hand portion of this template has space allocated for a grocery list. You can easily bring this planner with you while shopping so that you remember all of the necessary ingredients for the week’s menu.
25. Meal Planning Helper
Turn meal planning into something fun with the help of this colorful meal planner. It features two pages: one for brainstorming the family’s favorite meals and another for plotting out the meal plan for the week.
Space is also provided for your grocery list, as well as notes in case there’s something very important you need to remember.
26. What’s for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner?
If you need more examples of colorful meal planners, here’s another one to try. It features a page for meal planning and another page for a grocery list.
The meal planner has spaces for writing down three meals each for Monday through Friday. One row is allocated for the entire weekend’s menu. Meanwhile, the grocery list allows you to categorize the items you need to buy, with boxes labeled “Produce,” “Dairy,” “Pantry,” etc.
27. Elegant Meal Plan Template
If you’re looking for a simple yet elegant template, here’s one worth your consideration. It features a monochromatic design with cursive text.
There are spaces dedicated for writing each day’s menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Ample space is also provided for your notes of the week.
28. Organize the Menu
When you’re creating a weekly meal plan, it’s a good idea to set aside a certain day of the week to brainstorm the menu and prepare your grocery list. Some meal planners dedicate Sunday afternoons for this task.
This planner has boxes for daily to-dos and is ideal if you also need reminders about important tasks during the day that are related to meal preparation. There is also space assigned for listing things to buy (not just groceries) and notes.
29. This Week’s Menu
This template is pretty straightforward in its design. It features seven rows representing the days of the week, with columns for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You can easily write down the week’s menu and review it at a glance.
30. Bento Box Lunch Planner
Parents of school-age children know how challenging it can be to prepare school lunches. It often takes extra effort to prepare healthy, packed lunches that also pique kids’ interest and make them want to finish their lunch.
Bento boxes are popular these days and are a great way to encourage kids to be more interested in their food and to eat healthy. This planner features a bento box template for every school day, which you can use to plan the kids’ packed lunches.
31. Pastel-Themed Meal Plan
If you prefer a light-colored theme for your meal planning template, here’s an example that you can use.
Meal planning is a wonderful time-saver for busy households. It also helps save on food costs while making sure that your family eats quality, healthy meals.
32. Beginner Vegan Meal Planning Template
Adopting a new way of eating can be challenging for many people. One of the biggest hurdles is to learn how to eat the right foods.
If you’re starting out being a vegan or vegetarian, a meal plan like this one can be helpful. Planning out the menu for the whole week ensures you’re on track with eating a variety of dishes while adhering to the principles of veganism or vegetarianism.
33. What’s Cooking?
In addition to spaces allocated for writing the dinner menu for the whole week, this green-themed template has several extra details to make meal prep a breeze.
It has dedicated boxes for writing menu ideas for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. There are also boxes for taking note of things to prep for a specific menu and to take out of the freezer.
Finally, it has space for a shopping list organized by category, such as produce, meat, frozen goods, etc.
Make It Reusable
Rather than printing a new copy of your meal planner every week or so, one way you can cut printing costs and become more environment friendly is to make your planner reusable.
You can choose to print a single page and laminate it, or place it inside a clear file folder. Then you can use a whiteboard marker to write the dishes you plan to prepare for the week. Once the week is done, you can simply erase the content and write a fresh plan.
Final Thoughts on These Meal Planner Templates
Meal planning is a good habit you may want to start practicing in your household. You can actually feel the benefits of doing it through improved health and the amount you save every year.
Do you have a favorite weekly meal planner template from among the ones featured today?
Feel free to let us know in the comments.
If you need more in-depth information about meal planning, then be sure to check out the following articles and resources:
- eMeals (Read the review here.)
- 8 Steps to Make a Meal Plan for the Week
- 19 Best Meal Planning Apps and Websites
- $5 Meal Plan
