There is a huge myth that I am on a mission to bust! Have you ever been told, or maybe told yourself, that it’s impossible to eat healthy on a budget? In this month’s free meal plan printable and grocery haul I am going to prove that thinking wrong!
The biggest influence on this month’s healthy meal plan is that Hubby and I are currently undertaking our first ever Whole 30. If you aren’t familiar with the program, pretty much all you eat for 30 days is meat, eggs, a lot of veggies, and some fruit. That’s it.
It’s super simple which made it a major challenge to come up with a variety of healthy recipes for this months meal plan printable. BUT I DID IT!
This new diet has also forced me to rethink our meal planning strategy.
Relate articles:
- Our Family Budget Basics – The Real Numbers!
- How we Live off $400 a Month for Groceries
- September 2018 $350 Healthy Grocery Haul
New Meal Planning Strategy
You can read about how we normally manage our monthly grocery shopping budget here to see how we have been running things for the last few years. But there are two major adjustments we had to make for this month’s meal plan printable.
1.At first I thought that I might need to increase our weekly fresh produce budget but after doing our grocery haul for this month, I decided to keep it the normal $25 per week.
I’ll keep it that way this month, I’ll pay attention to what is working or not, and then make adjustments next month.
There was however one adjustment I did decide to make this month. To allow more room to allow a wider variety of meats in our meal plan, I took $50 from our “Miscellaneous Household” budget and moved it over to our “Monthly Grocery” budget to leave it with a total of $350 for the giant grocery haul.
2. In the past I made a very detailed meal plan for dinners each day of the month and then a very general list of breakfast and lunch ideas to choose from each week. That wasn’t going to cut it with our new diet!
In order to successfully stay on diet and on budget I needed to make a meal plan for lunches and breakfasts for the entire month as well. But not in the same way that I plan out dinners.
Because the kids are not eating exactly the same foods as hubby and I, there is no need to plan out a new lunch and breakfast meal for each day. That would leave us with way to much food and way too much time spent in the kitchen.
As a solution, I decided to come up with two recipes for both breakfast and lunch for each week. That gives us enough variety so we don’t get sick of eating the same thing every day. It also allows room to eat leftovers and minimize our food waste.
34 – Whole 30 Meal Ideas
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Breakfast Free Meal Plan
The strategy for our breakfast meal plan is to mix up the type of meals each week. That way we don’t keep eating meals with too similar of ingredients week after week. Click the image below to download the FREE meal plan printable.
Don’t forget that all meal ideas on my meal plans are clickable links that will take you to the recipe.
Lunch Free Meal Plan
For lunch I went with the same strategy as with breakfast. It’s hard to come up with a variety of quick and easy afternoon meals. But I think this free lunch meal plan printable will get us through our first Whole 30 without too many complaints. Click the image below to download the FREE meal plan printable.
Dinner Free Meal Plan
Just like the with this month’s breakfast and lunch meal ideas, all the dinner ideas in the meal plan are all Whole 30 compliant. It really doesn’t matter if you plan to join the diet or not, these recipes will help you feed your family more naturally nutritious meals that taste great!
Click the image below to download the FREE meal plan printable.
Thanks so much for stopping in! I’ll talk to you soon! Xoxo
