Transform Your Eating Habits with the Ultimate Excel Meal Planner Template!

Planning your meals in advance is a wonderful way to stick to healthy choices for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. A weekly meal plan can save you time, money, and stress, as you'll know what to buy and when. Using an Excel weekly meal planner template can make the job of meal planning easier. You can find different types of templates, like a holiday dinner planner, to suit your needs.

Why Use an Excel Meal Planner?

Organization: Keep track of your meals and ingredients in one place.
Time-Saving: Plan your meals in advance, eliminating the daily "what's for dinner?" dilemma.
Cost-Effective: Create a shopping list based on your meal plan, reducing impulse buys and food waste.
Healthy Eating: Make conscious food choices and stick to your dietary goals.
Flexibility: Easily adjust your meal plan as needed.

Getting Started with a Weekly Meal Planner Template

Choosing Recipes

The first step is to choose some recipes for your weekly meals. Look through your collection of cookbooks or search for recipes online. To find recipes that use a specific ingredient, you can search the recipes that are already entered on the Meal_Ingredients sheet. Go to the MyRecipes sheet and click the Get My Recipes button to see a list of recipes that are on the Meal_Ingredients sheet.

Entering Recipes and Ingredients

Recipe Names: Enter your recipe names in the spreadsheet.
Recipe Ingredients Worksheet: For each recipe, list the ingredients in the Recipe_Ingredients worksheet.
Ingredient Details: In column C, select the name of an ingredient from the drop-down list. If the ingredient isn't in the list, go to the Recipe_Ingred list and add it. In column D, enter the quantity required for the selected recipe. Columns E and F will display the ingredient information that you entered on the Recipe_Ingred sheet.
Units and Prices: Enter the unit for each ingredient, such as cup, lb, or 14 oz can (optional). In column E, enter the unit price, or an approximate price, at your grocery shop.
Storage Locations: On the Admin_Lists sheet, there's a small table with locations where you might store your ingredients at home.

Weekly Meal Planning

After you have entered the recipe names and ingredient costs, go to the Meal_Ingredients worksheet. In columns G:J, formulas in the grey cells calculate the costs for the shopping list. Those columns have formulas that calculate the amounts for the shopping list.

Note: The "On Hand" column might not show the total amount that you have on hand. The formula splits the total amount by the number of times that ingredient in used in the current week's menu.

The weekly meal planner uses validation drop-down lists in columns C:E. If there are other items to add to the shopping list, enter those in the "Other" row.

Read also: The Hoxsey Diet

Creating a Shopping List

The meal planner file has a macro that creates a weekly shopping list based on your selected meals. When you click the Shopping List button, it runs a macro. The macro uses an advanced filter and creates a printable meal plan shopping list on the ShoppingList sheet. Then it sorts the printable meal plan shopping list by ingredient name.

Types of Excel Meal Planner Templates

Basic Planner: A simple template to plan your meals for the week.
Basic Planner with Inventory: Keep track of which ingredients you have on hand.
Basic Planner with Meal Type: Choose meal items based on meal type (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks).
Serving Count: Enter the number of people for each meal to get a more accurate shopping list.
Meal Frequency: Set a number of times that you'd like to serve that dish each year.

Customizing Your Meal Planner

Edit Lists: Both the weekly and monthly templates allow you to edit your lists of main dishes and side dishes. The weekly version also includes lists for breakfast and lunch.
Make Copies: Except for the version with the grocery list, you can make copies of the worksheet. That will let you store multiple weekly or monthly meal plans within the same file.
Adjust Dates: When you change the month, only the dates change. The menu items stay the same.

Tips for Effective Meal Planning

Involve Your Family: Ask for suggestions from your family for meals they want to eat.
Make a List: Make a list of everything you like to cook or everything you have eaten in the last month. This will give you a start on your list of meals, and you can add to it when you find new things.
Reuse Meal Plans: Your meal plan can be reused from month to month or week to week. You can make three months' worth of planners and then rotate them throughout the year.
Plan for Leftovers: You can vary the sides or the appearance, but leftovers save time and money.
Add New Recipes: Add recipes that you want to try to your planner.
Stay Flexible: If you order pizza, move the planned meal to the first week of the next month. If you don't feel like making Hamburgers, switch them with another night.
Create a Recipe File: When you create your planner, spend some time collecting the recipes or write down the page numbers.
Put Your Menu Plan Where You Will See It: Place it in a visible location to remind you of your plan.

Beyond Weekly Meal Planning

For longer-term planning, use a monthly meal planner. This spreadsheet is great for planning for an entire month. It contains lists for main dishes and side dishes and has the same type of drop-down list selection as the weekly version.

Creating a Grocery List

When using the "Menu Planner with Grocery List" template, instead of printing all 3+ pages in the List worksheet, if you want to print a grocery list containing only the items you need, use the Filter feature. Here's how:

Select the Qty column, beginning with the label "Qty" and ending with the last line of the list.
Go to Data > Filter to add a filter on this column.

Additional Tools for Meal Planning

If you prefer something other than Excel, there are other tools available:

Google Sheets: A free, web-based spreadsheet program.
Airtable: A "smart" spreadsheet that allows you to upload photos of your meals.
Coda: Another alternative to Google Sheets with unique features.
Canva: Offers a variety of visually appealing meal planner templates that you can customize.

Considerations for Diet and Fitness

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Read also: Walnut Keto Guide

Templates are very convenient for managing your time and set your goals week by week. Utilizing diet plan excel templates manage your eating behaviour, exercises, and your life style towards healthy well-being.

Read also: Weight Loss with Low-FODMAP

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