Adulting Is Hard – Meal Planning: Do People Actually Do This?

For today in Adulting is Hard I thought I would write about Meal Planning.  Now, I love (LOVE) paper planners (yes, I know everyone and their Mom carries a smartphone nowadays) but I seriously love planning my week and daily to-do’s in a colorful paper planner – bonus points if I get to use stickers and colorful pens/markers/highlighters – but Meal Planning…I just don’t get it.

Do people really figure out their breakfasts, lunches, and dinners a whole week in advance?  I normally eat the same general thing for breakfast so as long as we have eggs, cheese, veggies, ham, and veggie sausage patties I can make eggs in a variety of styles for breakfast.  I basically eat the same thing for lunches as well – deli meat, cheese, veggies, fruit, and maybe some crackers.  I also like to have soup on hand as well as chicken sausages.  Easy things I can throw together for a healthy, quick meal.

Yes, Chef   

I’ll be honest here, I don’t do the majority of cooking in this house – my husband does, but I do help with prep or when we’re cooking in the crockpot (or he needs to work late, of course).  I guess he decides weekly what to buy from Fresh Direct, our online grocery store, but I honestly don’t know if he has a day by day plan for cooking dinner.  We text on his way home from work about what he needs to pick up at the market and that’s when I usually find out what’s for dinner -unless we already talked about the crockpot or any sides I’m helping with.

So…I guess we have a small idea, but we don’t write anything down or decide anything a few days in advance.  Do people (not on YouTube) actually do this?  And if you do, help me out – how?  I tend to follow an Intuitive Eating plan from my nutritionist – I keep things on hand that I like to eat for breakfast and lunch and snacks and then eat what I feel like eating when the time comes up.  I let the one that does the cooking plan the meals for the most part, with my help on Saturday when we order food – like, I sometimes say – this week let’s make this – but that’s pretty rare.

Buttered Noodles, Please

Maybe I would meal plan more if my kid ate what we did?  My son tends to eat one of like six things so we always cook his stuff separately – chicken nuggets, Amy’s pizza rolls, buttered noodles, etc.   And sometimes he gets hungry even before my husband gets home from dinner, so I cook his dinner early. I’m not going to starve a six-year-old.

Do you meal plan? On paper or just in your head?  Do you sit down weekly and decide for the whole week or do you shop twice (or more) a week?  We tend to order a large batch of food from Fresh Direct on Saturday (delivered on Sunday) then we hit up the Fruit/Veggie market or smaller grocery store a few times a week to buy produce and things we either forgot or that Fresh Direct didn’t have.  We don’t do Costco or the like because we have a tiny apartment, even tinier kitchen, and no pantry to speak of – so we don’t have room to store giant gallons of anything.  How do you shop and deal with meal planning?