If you’re looking for a more efficient way to plan your meals, you absolutely need to check out the meal planning template created in Google Sheets. This template makes it easy to create a menu for the week and keep track of what you need to buy at the grocery store.
Why Use Google Sheets for Meal Planning?
Google Sheets is a free online spreadsheet application that allows you to create and format spreadsheets. It’s a fantastic tool that can help you get organized in one place. Here are some advantages of using Google Sheets for meal planning:
- Access from anywhere: Since it’s an online application, you can access your meal plan from any device with an internet connection.
- Easy to share: You can easily share your meal plan with others.
- Printable: You can print a physical copy if desired.
- Grocery list integration: You can add a grocery list to the template to ensure you don’t forget anything when you’re at the store.
- Reduces food waste: Planning meals in advance helps reduce food waste.
- Compares with pantry and fridge: You can compare your meal plan with what you already have in your pantry and fridge before going shopping.
- Easy to make changes: If you need to modify your meal plan for the week, you can do so without starting from scratch.
- Ensures accurate nutrition information: You can ensure the foods you enter have the correct nutritional information, reducing the chances of consuming the right amount of macronutrients but not calories.
- Best part? It’s free! The Google Sheets app is completely free!
Furthermore, you can use Google Sheets not only for meal planning but also to track your calories and create personalized workouts.
How to Create a Meal Plan in Google Sheets?
Now that we’ve gone over some of the benefits of using Google Sheets for meal planning, let’s see how to create such a template.
Creating the meal planning template is quite simple. Just follow these 7 steps:
- Open Google Sheets and create a new spreadsheet.
- Create two sheets: one for the meal plan and one for the grocery list.
- Label the columns in the meal plan sheet.
- Enter your meals for each day of the week.
- In the grocery list sheet, add all the ingredients you need to prepare the meals from your meal plan.
- You can add items to the grocery list as you enter them in the meal plan sheet, or you can wait until you’ve added all the meals to add the ingredients to the grocery list all at once.
- Once you have all the ingredients on the grocery list, you can check off the items as you add them to your shopping cart.
And there you have it! You now have a meal plan for the week that you can refer to when you go grocery shopping and plan meals for the weeks to come. The process is quite simple, but if you want to save time, you can get my free meal planning template on Crawlan.com.
How to Use the Weekly Meal Planning Template
Now, let’s see how to use the meal planning template in Google Sheets. It consists of three spreadsheet tabs: DATA, Meal Plan, and Grocery List.
On the DATA tab, you’ll find a list of all the foods you can add to your grocery list. This is also where you can add meals that you regularly eat, but we’ll get to that later.
On the Meal Plan tab, you’ll find a weekly meal planner.
And on the Grocery List tab, you’ll find a list where you’ll add all the food ingredients you need to prepare the meals indicated in your meal plan.
1. Fill in your weekly meal plan
On the meal plan tab, you’ll see that there are seven columns, one for each day of the week.
For each day of the week, there are rows for:
- Breakfast
- Lunch
- Dinner
- Snacks
First, you’ll need to enter the date of the first Monday of the first week, under the cell labeled “Week of”. Note that this will automatically fill in the dates for the following three weeks.
Then, you’ll need to start filling in your meals for the week.
Simply enter the meals you want to eat for each meal of the day.
You can enter the name of the meal and/or add a link to the recipe.
If you want to add a link to the recipe, click on the cell where you want to enter the link, then click on the “Insert” menu at the top of the screen and select “Link”.
A popup window will appear, where you can enter the URL of the recipe.
Once you’ve added the link, the name of the meal will appear in blue, and you can hover over it to see a preview of the recipe’s web page.
2. Select foods for the grocery list
Now that you’ve added all the meals to your meal plan, it’s time to add the ingredients to your grocery list.
To do this, go to the Grocery List tab and select the foods you need for each meal.
First, you’ll need to choose the “Food Source/Category”. In my example below, I chose – Protein.
Then, you’ll need to choose the “Food” you want to add.
In my example below, I’m adding boneless chicken breast.
You can select the food from the list, or you can type its name, and it should appear as long as it’s listed in the DATA tab, under the appropriate food category.
In the “Quantity” column, you can enter the amount of a given food. In my example, I entered 200 grams. Finally, you can add any important notes under the “Notes” column.
Once you’ve added all the missing foods to your grocery list, you can check off the ones you’ve already added to your shopping cart.
This way, you can easily see which foods you still need to buy.
3. Track the groceries from the grocery list
Once you’ve added all the missing foods to your grocery list, you can track the ones you’ve already added to your cart when you’re at the store.
To do this, simply check the “Check?” box next to the food item on the grocery list.
This way, you can easily see which foods you still need to buy.
4. Customize the DATA tab
As I mentioned earlier, the DATA tab is where you can add meals you regularly eat as well as new foods to your grocery list.
To add new foods, simply enter the name of the food under the appropriate food category, and it will appear on your grocery list the next time you try to find it under that category.
Please note that the DATA tab is protected, so each time you want to make changes, a popup window with a notification will appear.
To edit a cell, simply click “OK”.
If you plan on editing multiple cells, you can check the “Don’t show for the next 5 minutes” box.
That’s all for adding new foods to your grocery list.
Now, let’s see how you can add new meals to your meal plan. This will be a bit more complicated, but I’ll try to explain it as best as I can.
Just like adding foods, go to the DATA tab and enter the name of the meal under the appropriate meal category – breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snacks.
You’ll find the columns representing these categories in columns BK (for breakfast), BL (for lunch), BM (for dinner), and BN (for snacks).
In my example below, I’m adding an “Omelette” meal to my breakfast meal category.
After that, you’ll need to add data validation to the meal you just added.
Data validation is used to create drop-down lists in cells and restrict the type of data or values you can enter in a cell.
To add data validation to a cell, select the cell where you want to add the drop-down list for all the meals (under the specific meal category) you added in the DATA tab, then go to Data > Data validation.
Next, you’ll need to enter a range of cells containing the data you want to see in your drop-down list.
For this, go back to the DATA tab.
In my example, I’m using the range “=DATA!$BK$2:$BK$201” because I only want to see the meal I just added under the breakfast meal category.
I created a large range to account for future meals I might add – I suggest you do the same.
Click Save!
After adding data validation, go back to your meal plan tab, and you should see a drop-down list in that cell showing the meals you just added.
Now, you can select the meal you want to have for breakfast from the list.
Then, you’ll need to copy that to other cells by hovering your mouse over the bottom right corner of the cell until you see a plus sign (+), then click and drag horizontally to the other days of the week to add the same drop-down list.
You’ll need to repeat the process for the other weeks, as well as for the other meals – lunch, dinner, and snacks.
And there you have it!
Conclusion
The meal planning template in Google Sheets can help you save time and money by planning your meals in advance.
A meal plan can also help you eat healthier as you’ll be able to better control what goes into your meals.
If you’re looking for a meal planning template, you can get one here on Crawlan.com.
I hope this article has been helpful in showing you how to use the template. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below or contact me personally through the contact form on Crawlan.com.
