How to Customize a Meal Plan

General meal plans are common these days. Perhaps you desire to have one in order to help you meet your fitness goals. Meal plans can be made to help simplify grocery shopping, avoid debates over what to eat and to help you lose weight and/or become physically fit. When creating a meal plan for yourself, it is a good idea to have a layout so that you can print it out and have it on your refrigerator or in some other easy-to-see area.

Things You'll Need

• Calendar software or spreadsheet
• Printer
• Calorie counter

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Instructions

• 1

  Consider the length of time you would like for your meal plan to last: a week, two weeks or a month. For example, you can plan out seven breakfasts, seven lunches, seven dinners, and seven snacks, and that is one week's worth of food. You can then either continue on to create seven to 21 more days of meals, or you can simply repeat the week's food you already have planned out.

• 2

  Take into account what the reasons behind making a meal plan are. If it is for simplifying grocery shopping and debating what you are going to eat that day, then you do not need a calorie counter. You can even give each day a theme, such as Italian, Spanish, Mexican, American, French, or Oriental cuisine night. This way, you can really switch up your meals and make it interesting for your family.

• 3

  Make a meal plan to help you lose weight by reducing your daily caloric intake, incorporating more raw fruits and veggies and deciding when to have tasty treats such as candy, confections and alcoholic beverages.

• 4

  Start planning out your meals. Stick with foods that you know for certain you like, but also try out different recipes that you may like. Remember, you can always switch the meal on your meal plan. Make sure that you are writing out caloric values next to meals and snacks on your plan. That way, if you end up going out to eat or skipping a meal, you can still add up your calories quickly.

• 5

  Input the information into a document that you have already prepared on the computer. When you are finished, print out an unnumbered week, two weeks or month at a time.