How to meal plan for the week (without spending your whole Sunday on it)

Meal planning has a reputation for colour-coded spreadsheets and hours of Sunday prep. It doesn't need to be that. A good plan is just a short list of decisions you make once, so you don't have to make them again at 6pm when you're tired and hungry.

Here's the process we recommend to anyone starting out. It takes about half an hour the first time, and less every week after.

1. Look at the week before you look at recipes

Open your calendar first. Late meeting on Tuesday? Kids' practice on Thursday? Dinner out on Friday? Mark the nights where you'll have 20 minutes or less to cook, and the nights you won't cook at all. Planning seven elaborate dinners for a week that only has room for three is the most common reason plans fall apart.

2. Pick a few anchor meals

You don't need 21 brand-new recipes. Most people eat the same handful of breakfasts and lunches on repeat, and that's fine. Choose:

• One or two breakfasts you'll rotate through the week
• Two lunches, ideally ones that use leftovers from dinner
• Three to five dinners, depending on how many nights you're actually cooking

3. Overlap your ingredients

If one recipe needs half a bunch of coriander, pick another one that uses the other half. Shared ingredients mean a shorter grocery list, less waste and less money spent. Spinach, peppers, onions, rice, yoghurt and chicken thighs are all easy to spread across several meals.

4. Check it against your goals

If you're trying to eat more protein, hit a calorie target or cut back on takeout, now is the moment to check. Add up roughly what each day looks like. It's much easier to swap a dish on paper than to fix a week that's already off track.

5. Write one grocery list, sorted by aisle

Combine every ingredient into a single list and merge duplicates: two recipes that each need an onion become two onions, not two separate lines. Then group the list by section (produce, dairy, pantry, meat) so you walk through the store once instead of zig-zagging.

6. Leave room for real life

Plans that leave no slack break the first time something unexpected happens. Keep one 'flex' night for leftovers, eggs on toast or the takeout you were going to order anyway. A plan you follow 80% of the time beats a perfect plan you abandon on Wednesday.

Let the app do the boring part

Mealful handles steps 2 to 5 for you. Tell it your calorie goal, your diet and what you won't eat, and it builds a day or a week of meals that fits. Every ingredient lands on one merged grocery list, sorted by category, and any dish you don't fancy can be swapped in a tap.