I make meal plans in advance now, which is something I picked up from
my sponsee and realized would help me too. She does it in
OA because, like, knowing what you're going to eat helps you not overeat, and I figured last year that it would help me not undereat and it would help me to know what I was going to spend on food. (I assume they do it in stuff like
ABA too.)
It is so awesome. Like, when I'm not doing this, even when I know more or less what I want to buy, I tend to go to the grocery store and buy a bunch of extra things that just look good, that I think I will want to eat. When I'm making a meal plan, I start doing that and then I realize... when am I going to eat this? I already have enough food here for two weeks' worth of meals! There's no room for $10 worth of fake sausage patties! If I really want it, sometimes I switch out what I am going to make. Or make a note to put it in the next two weeks' meal plan.
It is SO awesome. At first, I was pretty much just guessing what things would cost, trying to overestimate if I wasn't sure, so that I wouldn't get to the store and find out that my nice $100 list cost $200 or something. But now I have a pretty good idea of what everything I like (or that I eyeball in longing) costs, so I can make really good guesses about how much my food will cost for two weeks. And you know, I still overguess and get to buy extra ingredients or the extra-good kind of the ingredients as I go, and end up with more food than I needed, so I have leftovers, so I have a few extra days before I have to buy food. But that's fine. But guess what?
A few months ago I went back to doing this. And I only had enough money right that second to buy one week's worth of food instead of two. And the universe had been heavily hinting in the past that it would be great if I could do the food shopping once a week instead of planning for two weeks out. It would make it so much easier than trying to guess what I would want to eat in two weeks or figure out how to pattern the meals so I don't get tired of them. (Which is a sad thing to worry about because I really don't get tired of them too quickly, and in reality I can switch them around if I want to anyway.) So this time, I just planned my meals for one week, and it was so fast! AND... it ONLY COST ME $21.29!
I had been allowing myself $75 for two weeks, and I had been planning to increase it to $100 once I got a full-time job. Because I've been trying to make fancier food for breakfast ('cause normally I avoid breakfasts) and that costs more than just making a shitload of muffins, and also because I need to start figuring afternoon snacks into the plan because I KNOW I need to eat about every 3 hours but I don't plan for it. But this one-week food plan has grilled cheese sandwiches on cheesy garlicky bread, and meyer lemon risotto with barley, and garlicky home fries with eggs, and then organic tangerines and also seaweed (cooked like greens) and also whole milk yogurt with blueberries for a snack. Some of that is food I already have, but it always is.
So that is awesome! I will now show you how I do it!
First I think of things I want to eat. It is amazing to me that I can eat anything I want! Like, I had already made a note to myself that I wanted to try that risotto recipe, and that I wanted more of the sammiches. And that I wanted to get yogurt for the blueberries I have. And I had a ton of home fry fixings left over, so I just made a shitload of those and decided to get eggs to have with them.
Then I make a note of how many meals I think each of those things will make:
Grilled cheese 6
Sauteed seaweed (leftovers) 6
Meyer lemon risotto 6
Yogurt w/blueberries 4
Homefries w/egg 6
And then I separate out the breakfasts because I see breakfast food as different, or because I want it to be different. So in one week, I need 7 breakfasts. I have 6 servings of home fries for it, and I know that there will be leftover eggs and suspect that the home fries will last more than 6 servings, so that's okay.
Then I need 7 lunches and 7 dinners = 14 non-breakfast meals. I have 6 sammiches there - the seaweed is a side so I don't count it - and 6 servings of risotto - and I suspect, again, that I will have more than I need in reality. If not, I can always buy another something for dinner. In fact, I was going to buy a treat of those weird chicken taquito kind of things that Trader Joe's has now that are reallllly good; maybe I will get them anyway and make it a whopping $24.29.
And snacks, which I am just learning to include in this: I don't ALWAYS have a snack, and I have a lot of tangerines already on hand and some seaweed for snacking on, so I think that 4 servings of yogurt and the easily 4 servings of tangerines on hand and the 2 or 3 servings of seaweed will be more than enough.
If I don't have enough meals with what I have listed, I grab some cookbooks (or websites) and get some ideas. When I'm done, or as I'm going, I make a list of the ingredients I need that I don't have on hand, and about how much I think they will cost. Every so often, I stop and add it up and adjust what I'm making if necessary to fit into the amount I want to spend on food. When first starting out, it is good to just pay attention to what you're spending on food and see if that amount works for you or if there's something you need to change - like if you're spending a ton but you are still eating out a lot and not taking that into consideration. Over time, I decide whether the amount is working for me or if I need to raise or lower it.
Then, often, I write out a meal plan. I don't always pay attention to it, but when I do it helps me make sure that I use everything. (Last time, I ignored it completely and ended up not using a bunch of things, and then I was all, "artichokes???" In fact, I was going to use artichokes this time too. D'oh! Maybe I'll get a couple instead of the taquitos. Or I could do it as well as, since my budget for food for a week was $37.50.) Also, more importantly, it lets me know when to make food so that I always have something prepared at a meal time. And it means that I can always have at least one thing I know I can eat at a given meal, because not having anything that I know I can eat and not knowing what to eat is a big cause of undereating for me. I end up being all, "I am too hungry to think and I have nothing to make and nothing is ready aaaaaa!"
So it might look like this:
f 2/16 home fries pasta primavera grilled cheese and seaweed
s 2/17 home fries, egg, toast grilled cheese & seaweed yogurt risotto, artichoke
s 2/18 home fries, egg grilled cheese sandwich & artichoke yogurt risotto & seaweed
m 2/19 home fries, egg meyer lemon risotto & seaweed tangerines grilled cheese & miso soup
t 2/20 home fries, egg grilled cheese & seaweed yogurt meyer lemon risotto
w 2/21 home fries, egg grilled cheese & tangerine yogurt meyer lemon risotto
t 2/22 home fries, egg grilled cheese & risotto tangerines seaweed and risotto
f 2/23 home fries, egg taquitos & tangerine crunchy seaweed taquitos and miso soup
And probably not all those breakfasts will be the same. Like, maybe some will be two eggs or an omelette by itself. Also, some of the servings are smaller in my mind - like, "grilled cheese & risotto" will be a small grilled cheese and a little bit of risotto to round it out. And you can see me planning for things sort of - I added "toast" to saturday's breakfast cause I will then go meet with one of my sponsees at Bittersweet Cafe and I don't want to waste my limited money on chocolate this week - I want to be full enough that I won't be all, "Hmm, I could use some hot chocolate...."
Now you try it!
1. What do I want to eat for the next ______?
2. How many meals will that make?
2a. What else can I make? Is that enough meals yet?
3. What ingredients do I need to make these things?
4. About how much will those ingredients cost? (adjust as desired, without tripping out or sacrificing any of your needs)
5. When do I want to eat each of these things?
Regularly creating a meal plan helps me stick to my spending plan, save money, and eat really awesome things. It gives me a structure within which I can work to explore cooking and nutrition. I can look at it and think "wow, I am avoiding vegetables lately," or "let's see what happens if I only eat foods that are green!" Nowadays I do work full-time and I have raised my grocery money to a whopping $40 a week, and am in the process of creating a foodblog by that name that will offer weekly sets of recipes that cost US$40 or less to make.
The best thing about it is that when I actually follow the meal plan, I generally don't undereat. I don't have the opportunity to put off eating because I don't know what to make, and then get too hungry to think. I can notice when I'm hungry and go get the food that I have already made. I sometimes put off the grocery shopping or cooking parts of it for too long, but it quickly becomes obvious that that leads to binge-spending on restaurant food as well as dangerously low blood sugar in between. With a meal plan and the willingness to take care of my needs and work with it, I get to have great food and cooking skills as well, often, as extra treats and extra cash. It's a great deal.