Everyone is a meal planner. If you eat, you meal plan. For some of us, this simply involves choosing what frozen dinner, seeing if there is mac n' cheese in the cupboard,  or what drive-through to hit up. But making these choices still makes you a meal planner.

However, there are better ways to meal plan. You might still occasionally find yourself in a pickle ordering delivery at the last minute, but there are ways to help you drastically reduce those fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants moments.

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Why use a meal planner?

Meal planning with a little thought and preparation can save you time, money, and improve your family's health.

Save time

Many of us actually spend more time thinking about what will be served for dinner than we think we do. Think about it for a moment. Do you have days when periodically throughout the day you think to yourself, 'what will I make for dinner?' If you do that 5 times for 5 minutes each time, you have just wasted 25 minutes of your day just thinking about what you will make for dinner?

When you meal plan you don't spend time thinking about what to make, you already know! It's a huge weight off the shoulders too!

Save money

Meal planning can also save money...lot's of it over time! One way this happens is by reducing the amount of food wasted. How many times have you looked in the fridge only to find food going bad because when you were at the grocery store you had great intentions, but somehow, you forgot all about that food! With a plan and recipes, you know exactly what to use and when.

I bet you have also gone through the grocery store without a list and ended up with so many more things in your cart than you need. This is another way meal planning can help reduce your grocery costs. You end up only getting what you need. This is even truer if you are using a grocery delivery service!

You can also save money by eating at home more frequently. How many meals could you make at home for the cost of eating out once? I bet the answer is 2, 3, or even more!

Eat healthier

Finally, meal planning is a great way to reduce your trips to fast food restaurants and getting take-out or delivery. You won't find yourself need to utilize those generally unhealthy methods of getting food on the table if you have already planned out your meals with the groceries already at home.

As you learn to meal plan, you learn short-cuts for getting a healthy dinner on the table for those busy weeknights. Sometimes this involves using a slow cooker, meal prepping ahead of time, or cooking once and eating twice (capitalizing on leftovers).

Reduce stress

When 5:45 pm creeps up on you unexpectedly faster than it ought to, and the kids' voices are escalating into a constant whining rendition of 'what's for dinner?' your stress levels can also rise. These are the moments when we make choices for dinner that we wouldn't have made if we could have planned a little in advance.

Children can sense this ambivalence and often manage to convince you that mac n' cheese is the best option for tonight. I certainly do serve my children mac n' cheese out of a box on occasion but those types of dinners repeatedly night after night can really impact their health.

Take all that stress and indecision away by just using a meal planner!

I used to hate meal planning

Meal planning is not my favorite thing to do. In fact, I really don't like it! Or should I say, I really didn't like it until I found this amazing online app that saved me loads of time, keeps a record of all my meal plans and recipes and even creates my grocery list for me!

Do you want to get in on that? Yeah, I thought so! Let me show you how to use Plan to Eat, one of my favorite tools for helping families consistently eat healthy meals.

Lunch with Leah provides regular, sensible and realistic inspiration for all things that a busy parent could want: what to make for lunch (and how to make it look delicious so your kid will eat it), ways for effective self-care, and ways to streamline your “second shift” workflow.  I’m currently in love with her recommendation for Plan To Eat, an app that helps with meal planning, collecting and collating recipes, and grocery list making in one fell swoop.

And thanks to her link, I got a great deal in on it! Love checking Leah’s posts- helps me feed my kids food I want them to eat and keep my sanity.

 - Shahana K.

What is Plan to Eat?

Plan to Eat is an online meal planner app that allows you to add and organize recipes, drag those recipes onto a calendar to plan them, and the software automatically creates your shopping list based on your planned recipes. By providing tools that streamline the meal planning process Plan to Eat equips households to eat better food, eat together, save money at the grocery store, and have a less stressful cooking experience in the kitchen.

How to get started

Plan to Eat is a subscription service. The cost (at the time of writing this article) is either $4.95 paid monthly (works out to be about $60/year) or $39/year if paid annually (this works out to be $3.25/month). In my opinion, you can easily recoup this cost and more just by saving money with smart grocery shopping and by not eating out.

Did I mention you can try it out FREE for 30-days??

Sign up here: Plan to Eat

Get started with 4 FREE weeks of meal plans!

If you do sign up through my affiliate link, I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. As a way of saying thank you!!, I am happy to offer 4 FREE weeks of meal plans to get you started!

Once you have an account on Plan to Eat, simply add me (LunchwithLeah) as your friend and get access to those meal plans (and all the recipes I have uploaded)!

These 4 weeks of meal plans will be ready for you to simply drag and drop onto your calendar, including all the recipes, notes, AND grocery lists! You basically have ONE MONTH of free meal plans done for you!!

You can view the blog posts associated with these meal plans, which go into much more detail and explanation here:

• Week 1

• Week 2

• Week 3

• Week 4

How to use Plan to Eat

Join me in a detailed overview of how to use my favorite features in this amazing app. The video runs 21:34 and by the end, you will know everything you need to know to get started with your meal planning.

Don't forget to request me (LunchwithLeah) as a friend on Plan to Eat so you can access all my FREE meal plans and recipes!!

Don't have a Plan to Eat account yet? Sign up here.

You can try it out for 30-days FREE!!

Why not?

I've found you a great online meal planner, I've already created 4 weeks of healthy, FREE meal plans for you, and I've shown you how to use Plan to Eat.

What are you waiting for??

Save time and money, reduce your dinner hour stress, and improve your family's health by starting a meal plan today. Even if you already meal plan, you may welcome the digital method. With Plan to Eat, you have easier access no matter where you are, organized past meal plans, and the ease of copying or saving meal plans.

So, go sign up for your 30-day free trial, watch the tutorial, request to be my friend on Plan to Eat (get 4 free weeks of meal plans), and get on with the rest of your life! Now you have the time, energy, (and possibly the money?) to go indulge yourself with whatever you have been putting off!

Happy Meal Planning, see you on Plan to Eat!

P.S. You may also want to read The 9 Worst Mistakes People Make When Meal Planning (and avoid those)!