With all of the free meal planning templates I’ve created, I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve released a printable meal planning template for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but there it is! Somehow, I’ve managed to miss this, even though I think it’s one of the most useful tools you could have for meal planning.
Printable Meal Planning Template for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner
For the sake of my future carpal tunnel syndrome, we’re going to refer to this as a BLD meal planning page. I am going to share with you some of the benefits of using a planning page such as this one (I know, it can be intimidating to plan out all your meals).
Meal Planning for Weight Loss
If you’re trying to lose weight, you know the importance of planning your meals and tracking what you eat. Yes, it’s kind of a pain. It would be nice to eat freely, what you want and when you want it (cookies, chips, and fried foods being some of my many weaknesses). But the reality is that we need to take responsibility and ownership of our eating habits and be honest about tracking them if we’re trying to make big changes.
I have found that planning and tracking all of my meals is the number one thing I can do when I’m watching what I eat. Planning your meals in advance helps curb impulse eating along with giving you the opportunity to plan and prep a more balanced diet.
Meal Planning for a Budget
Another reason to use this BLD planning page is that planning out all of your meals is a great way to stick to a budget. If you know what you’re having for lunch every day, you’re not nearly as likely to make an impulse decision or eat out instead. You’ll eat what you have on your meal plan, and as you’ve probably experience, this is almost always cheaper than eating out!
Meal Planning for Family
How many times a day do your kids (or spouse, or elderly parent who lives with you) ask, “what’s for dinner?” (or breakfast, lunch, etc.). Having it all laid out on one page that everyone can read will literally put a stop to that question. It can also help reduce anxiety in kids (or elderly) who fixate on (or can’t remember) what meal is coming next.
Meal Planning for Meal Prep
Have you ever wanted to spend an afternoon prepping all your meals so you don’t have to worry about the next week? That process starts with planning all those meals. This BLD template is a great place to map out your meals and plan your grocery list. You can use it as a reference for all that prepping!
Meal prepping is a great way to free up time and energy in your week.
Here’s how to use this BLD Meal Planning Printable
Print out the page. It’s got a margin on the left if you’d like to punch holes and put it in a binder. Sometimes people like to save their meal plans so they can reference them in the future (I recommend this if you’re likely to skip meal planning – having a meal plan already done that you can reuse is a huge help!).
Use the page to plan out your breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. If you’re counting calories or on a plan like Weight Watchers, you can write down the calories or points for each meal. If you’re on the 21 Day Fix, I have a 21 Day Fix Meal Planning Template with space to track containers available here.
Here are some other free printable meal planning pages you might like.
You can download the free printable below.
