Hi Friends!
Let’s talk about Pinterest for a minute shall we? Specifically Pinterest for Meal Planning. I know I’m in the minority, but I’ve actually avoided Pinterest for quite some time. Yes I had an account and I occasionally pinned things…but for the most part it was only once every 3 months or so. However, lately I’ve realized what an effective tool it can be for a lot of people as they plan their meals.
And guess what? I want to help. SO, over the past couple of weeks I’ve been revamping my Pinterest boards. I’ve put together several boards with healthy breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack options. I went back through all my old Sunday Food Prep Inspiration posts and pinned a bunch of food prep ideas (both my own and those that were submitted!). I also made a Weekly Eats board with some pins from my weekly eats posts to give you more ideas of things I eat on a daily basis…and of course I have a Best of the Bean board as well. My hope is that you guys will be able to use them as a resource when you’re planning your meals for the week.
One of the most annoying things about Pinterest, in my opinion, is the fact that half the pins lead you nowhere. It’s so frustrating when you just go through and pin a bunch of things…and then when you actually go to make something, you click the recipe and it’s a dead end! So, I went the extra mile for you guys. I actually clicked the links on everything I pinned to these boards to make sure they take you to an actual, functioning website with a recipe. THEN, I checked the nutrition of the recipe. Although every recipe isn’t exactly the way I would make it, for the most part, they’re fairly healthy and have been approved by this RD 🙂
You guys know I’m a big fan of making every recipe my own. Here are some things I suggest when making any recipe:
- Don’t go crazy on the cheese. You can usually get away with less than what’s in the recipe without people noticing.
- Add extra veggies. Some recipes are stingy on the veggies and you can always add an extra cup or two!
- If it calls for a lot of heavy cream, try replacing some with lower-fat milk or greek yogurt.
- If canned items are used, look for no-salt added or low-sodium varieties (or make your own!)
You get the idea.
So without further adieu…here are some of the boards I made for you:
*Note- If you’re reading this on a mobile device, you might not be able to see the cool Pinterest board widgets that I embeded in this post to give you a preview of each board…so check it out on your computer! Or click the links and that should take you to each Pinterest board so you can follow it!
So there you have it! I’d love to have you follow me on these boards if you’re not already. You can also follow all my boards by CLICKING HERE. Just remember that the boards listed above are the ones where I’ve gone through and done the checking. I also have other boards where I happily just pin based on images!
Let’s chat:
- Do you use Pinterest for meal planning and food prep ideas?
- Do you have any healthy-eating/meal-planning pinterest boards? Leave us a link to your favorite so we can all follow them!
Enjoy!
–Lindsay–
After meal planning, the next step is food prep to make your busy nights even easier! If you liked this post, you’ll love my ebook – The Ultimate Guide To Food Prep. It dives into even more detail about how to food prep, troubleshoots common problems and provides tons of tips to make it easier! Click the image below for more details!
Get my free Table Talk email series where I share bite-sized nutrition information about carbs, protein, and fat, plus bonus information about snacks and sugar!
I love Pinterest – your boards are awesome. I use Pinterest for recipes and I also search the Humor boards for a little dose of laughter at night 🙂
Thank you sooo much! That must have taken a lot of time and energy, but I know you are going to help so many people through your Pinterest boards, including me!
Wow, Lindsay! Thanks for taking the time to reorganize everything. It’ll be very helpful with meal planning. =)
Now it makes sense! The last few days has been pin heavy from you on my pinterest feed 😉 Thanks so much for going through the effort to do all this- definitely will be checking them out! I actually practiced my pinning skills when you did a Fall link up recently! Still slowly getting the hang of it all!
I use Pinterest a lot for my weekly meal planning. I aim to try at least one new recipe off of it a week. It’s been a great way to mix it up and try new things.
Pinterest is my recipe super store for ideas and inspirations! I have almost 5000 pins (almost all recipes). I only pin things that I would make or are easily adaptable to be healthy, gluten free and vegan!
that’s a great idea! i need to pass this on to my sis in law
LOVE! I always go to your board / blog for meal inspiration! 🙂
OH SEE???
now this is a use for the PINTEREST I can get behind.
my girl would love helping me as well.
Wow! Thanks so much for doing all this! What a great idea to promote healthy eating on such a popular photo-sharing site.
Love it! Thank you so much for the easy to access information.
Wow love this! Thank you so so much for sharing! I love pinterest but agree it can be so frustrating when PINS lead you no where and then you can’t figure anything out! Will be using this for sure!
Wow.. I know how much time that must have taken ( I revamped mine last year) and I want to thank you for doing that!! Of course you didn’t have to, but we all really appreciate it! 🙂 There is nothing more frustrating than a beautiful picture of food that goes no where!
I love the way you organized these boards!! I use Pinterest every week to plan meals!! I am always trying to add in at least one new recipe a week so that dinners and snacks don’t get too boring.
I know it sounds silly, but one of my to-do items before 2014 is to organize my Pinterest Boards better so I can use them more effectively as meal inspirations.
This is an awesome way to utilize Pinterest! I absolutely adore the site, but I agree about the dead-end pins – the most frustrating thing ever.
Woah! You are amazing… I need to organize my boards too, but I’m so impressed you made the time to do so!! These will be so helpful!
LOVE pinterest! Use it on the daily! Were you able to reorganize boards you already had made or did you make all new ones? I want to divide some of mine up, they need major organizing!
Wow, this is AWESOME!! You rule. Every time I get your Sunday post in my email, I say to myself ‘This is the week I prep for the week!’ and then it (mostly) doesn’t happen. I am getting better, though, and these boards will help a lot. Thanks for doing this!
This is awesome! thank you! I have a healthy foods board I can share http://www.pinterest.com/foodhunter/healthy-foods/
some healthy chicken posts
http://www.pinterest.com/foodhunter/chicken-recipes/
and a dinner ideas board that are pretty healthy
http://www.pinterest.com/foodhunter/dinner-ideas/
I have my own Pinterest account and I am in charge of my company’s Pinterest (we are a small agricultural tech company) and I follow your boards with both accounts. Personally, I love your quinoa breakfast bars and how you inspire me to stay organized. Professionally, I love that you don’t exclude any food groups and include recipes that meet a variety of dietary needs
P.S. I already pinned your dairy adventure!
Thank you for doing all the leg work for me…..!!! Love these boards!! Just what I was looking for.
You are brilliant!!! Looking forward to seeing all your boards. I have recently started a “Meatless Monday” board, and I also have a Lunchbox one for easy, make ahead lunch ideas, and a Plant-Based board as well. It’s nice to have options that aren’t dessert, or cheesy/processed crockpot ideas. Thank you!
Lindsay, this is a great idea! Thanks so much for creating these boards and sharing them with your readers. I’m sharing too!
Thanks for putting this together! I love Pinterest, but I hate sifting through everything. This will be a wonderful meal planning resource!
This is awesome! I follow you already, but love that I can go to one place for a specific need. I use pineterest often, it’s one of my go to places for recipes, especially around the holidays.
Lindsey-
Seriously – you rock! The effort you put into this blog is so impressive to me. I really appreciate all your time and energy. Thanks so much! I am so excited to see where your career takes you as I know great things are in store!
I will be sure to check out the boards tonight!
I’m ALL about using Pinterest to help me meal plan! I use it pretty much every week. I get most of my recipe ideas from blogs, so it’s perfect.
Pinterest is the first place I go when planning my meals. I recently had to separate some of my boards cuz they were getting so big. I used to have all meats under protein but I separated em by Winner Winner Chicken Dinner, Seafood, Meat & Game and The Other White Meat. Haha. I admit when I first started Pinterest that did contribute to my weight gain cuz so many of the recipes did have heavy cream cheese, sour cream, etc. Now I know how to sub! I use coconut milk in place of cream a lot too. It works well. Glad to see you’re getting back into it! 🙂
This is great! I just rearranged some of my Pinterest boards too! It’s a ton of work, but a fun way to look at all of that inspiration again! I just followed all of your boards, your recipes are wonderful and I can’t wait to try more of them! I usually pick at least one new recipes via Pinterest to try each week to change up our same-old meals. Thanks!
Alyssa
Thank you so much for all of the effort you put into the boards! Can’t wait to check them out!!
I’ve used Pinterest for meal planning for a while now (and then I put it into Plan To Eat to get servings & shopping list) and it’s so helpful. What did I do before? 🙂
I use pinterest all the time for healthy recipe ideas.
I love this! What a great idea. I am a bit of Pinterest newbie but I definitely find it super helpful when planning and making some recipes… overwhelming but helpful 🙂 thanks for doing this (I already follow all of your boards!)
Such a great idea! Thanks for taking the time to put these together. It inspires me to clean up my own pins and really organize them in a way that will be useful in planning meals.
This is phenomenal! Thank you! Going to your Pinterest page right now–about to go all crazy on those boards!
Great idea Lindsay! I already follow all your boards (though I don’t use Pinterest all that often either). I should re-think that, I guess. I’m a terrible meal planner, but if I made a board for quick, unplanned meals that you can make with what’s in your cupboard I’d be set 🙂
Wow! This must have taken you quite some time. Thank you so much for this labour of love. I can see you truly care about your followers. God bless you! 🙂
I am off to check out these board now! Thank you for all the work you put into this, I very much appreciate it. I always use Pinterest for meal planning, and I know the disappointment of dead end links. Thank you for making my meal planning a lot easier! God bless you always!
Mariah
http://fit2behealth.blogspot.com
http://www.nutrisimo.com
Well,, I am not a meal planning type of person since I am boring & kinda do the same thing with different spices & herbs BUT love this & shared – GREAT STUFF!!!!!
I totally use Pinterest for meal planning! I will have Brian check out Pinterest, get some meal ideas and send them to me and then I use that to frame our meals for the week. I totally agree though…too many dead-end links! Thanks for checking everything out for us!
Your boards look awesome!!!