Weekly Meal Plan for Two: Easy & Budget-Friendly Recipes

Putting together a meal plan for a week can be a daunting task. If you’ve struggled to create a meal plan in the past, you’re not alone! Here’s your guide to a one-week meal plan for two people.

Five more ways to save money on groceries

Why Weekly Meal Planning for Couples Works

There are so many reasons and benefits to planning out your meals every single week. In our house, we choose to meal prep to save us time and money during the week, as well as make sure we don’t reach for those highly-processed quick convenient foods.

Meal planning and prepping for an entire week can be challenging, however. Over time, we have honed our skills and developed some great weekly menus that keep us full and nourished. I hope you enjoy this guide I've created for meal planning for couples!

Benefits of Meal Planning & Prepping

If you’re a beginner at meal planning, you’re in for a treat as meal planning is a great way to minimize weekly stress and decision making (who has time to make a decision after working all day!?), maximize your grocery budget, and keep you feeling healthy, full and satisfied.

Disclosure: If you are meal prepping to save on budget or reduce decision fatigue, your meals will probably be repetitive or boring. We try to combat repetition by switching up our weekly plans so we eat different things each. If eating similar meals each week is not for you, then this may not be the plan for you and that’s okay!

Once you’ve mastered how to meal plan for a week, which is not difficult and can be adapted for any schedule, budget and dietary needs, I’m positive you’ll find at least a little less stress in your life!

Tips for Success for a Weekly Meal Plan

Here’s exactly how we plan a week of meals in order to stay efficient with our time and frugal with our grocery budget.

Set a Plan Around Grocery Shopping

One way to find success in meal planning is to develop behaviors and habits around your meal prepping. One habit I’ve built for myself is my grocery shopping schedule. My husband and I spend every Sunday morning on the couch, enjoying our coffee, and planning out our week including creating our meal schedule and grocery list.

This time is quiet and peaceful and allows us to connect with one another as we slowly prepare for the week ahead.

After we plan our meal for the week, we write out our grocery list, then we immediately head to the grocery store, or shop online for grocery delivery.

Prep as Much as Possible on One Day of the Week

Sunday is not only our grocery shopping day, but we’ve also built a habit around prepping and cooking our food Sundays as well. We try to get as much prepared as we can ahead of time to make our work week easier.

One way we've learned to meal plan and prep for two people is not to cook specific meals on one day, but to prepare ingredients that compliment each other and can be paired with other foods we've cooked. Below you'll see our items that we make often to make our meal prepping a breeze.

Prepare your Protein for Successful Meal Prep

When prepping weekly meals for couples, one way to ensure a successful meal prep is to cook proteins ahead of time so they are easily accessible throughout the week and it makes getting a meal to the table quicker and easier.

In this weekly meal plan for couples, you'll find all the protein options are meat, but there are so many ways to get protein in your diet. You can add beans to dishes--which are a great source of protein and fiber, swap meat for tofu, or find other plant-based protein options that fit your needs.

Make a Carbohydrate

A staple of our Sunday meal prep is cooking a large batch of one carbohydrate that we can eat with our lunches all week. In my example below, we made quinoa. We make about three cups of a carb so that its easy to throw with a protein and veggies and have a complete meal.

What is a carbohydrate? Carbohydrates or carbs for short, are one of three main nutrients found in our foods. Carbs are energy or sugar molecules that our bodies burn for fuel.

Prepare Fruits & Veggies

We often will buy our fruits and veggies frozen because we are able to get them at a cheaper price, so sometimes the step of preparing our fruits and veggies for meal planning and prepping is just purchasing them from the store.

If I am making smoothies that week, I will peel and slice bananas and place them in the freezer so they are frozen for smoothie prep. Other prep we will do is baking a large batch of sweet potatoes or squash so it’s easy to pull out of the fridge and reheat during the week.

Make Your Favorite Meal Prep Snacks

Are snacks your budget and diet breakers? I’m right there with you! We are more likely to stay on track when we prep everything we will be eating that week–even our snacks. A simple snack I love for meal prep is hard boiled eggs. I also love to pick up string cheese, or make my own granola.

If you’re looking for simple and delicious snack ideas, check out this post, 5 Meal Prep Snacks to Make this Week.

Keep It Simple

When preparing meals for the week, simplicity is key. We save our more complex and “fancy” meals for the weekend when we have more time to slow down and enjoy the cooking process. This ensures we waste little time on weeknights getting meals on the table.

This doesn’t mean our weekday meals are not delicious, it just means we stick to the basics; we choose to eat a protein, a carbohydrate, and a fat with every meal, but we cook them simpy. Or we just pull them from the refrigerator and reheat.

Weekly Meal Plan Example

Looking for an example of a week of meal planning for two people? Here’s an actual week of meals that my husband and I prepped recently.