12 Weekly Meal Planner Apps That Will Make Dieting A Lot Easier
Dieting is tough, especially when you have no idea where to start. Luckily for us, we are in the golden age of technology, and have loads and loads of apps that make dieting just a bit easier.
There are countless weekly meal planning apps, but we've rounded up the 12 best that will make choosing and making healthy recipes a breeze. We scoured the internet for interactive, intuitive apps that have their own distinct features to ensure you have the best meal planning experience. From apps that feature their own original recipes to ones that let you order ingredients online and have them delivered to your door, this list has it all.
If you're searching for a meal planning app to ease the difficulty of dieting, but are feeling a little overwhelmed, you need not worry. We vetted the apps so you don't have to, and there's no wrong choice from this list — just ones that offer different features that might suit your needs. Keep reading to decide which meal planning app to download.
Plan to Eat
Plan to Eat is an excellent meal planning app. It takes all of the work out of meal planning by allowing you to import meals from any website on the internet and add them to your plan. Plans can be made for a week at a time, or a month if you'd prefer.
After you've chosen your meal plan, it automatically generates a grocery list so you don't have to do any of the grunt work associated with meal planning. Plan to Eat also has a nice feature called the Freezer where you can meal prep, as well. It notes the servings in the meal and how many meals it'll make, and tracks the date so you don't have to worry about eating something that's gone bad.
With Plan to Eat, there's little you have to do to ensure you have nutritious meals ready for your week. One downside is you do have to pay for the app after a 30 day free trial — a year's membership costs about $40 — but if you're willing to pay, you'll save loads of time on your meal planning, which will help you stay consistent with your diet.
Plan to Eat is available on the App Store and Google Play.
MealPrepPro Meal Planner
MealPrepPro is the perfect meal planner if you and your family members all like different foods. It has thousands of recipes for you to choose from, and you can assign who wants to eat each one.
With this meal planning app, you can customize your meals to meet your individual goals, dietary needs, and taste preferences. It will create a grocery list for you based on the meal schedule that you create for you and each person you add to the app. Plus, it'll explain to you how to prepare your meals so you don't have to eat the same thing every day.
MealPrepPro is perfect for anybody who wants to plan their meals week-by-week, but also meal prep for weight loss — you can even adjust recipes by calorie intake goals. The app does have a cost associated, which varies depending on whether you want to purchase a monthly or annual membership, but it's a reasonable cost for all of the features the app provides. Anybody who likes to meal prep will find this app incredibly useful.
MealPrepPro is availalbe on the App Store for free with in-app purchases.
AnyList: Grocery Shopping List
AnyList is an app designed to make grocery shopping easier, but it also has a meal planning feature. If your main concern when planning your meals is creating a grocery list, this is the perfect app for you.
You can upload recipes from the internet into your app and assign them to the day of the week you want to eat them. Then, AnyList will organize a grocery list for you from your choices. The list will be categorized by food group, and you can share your list with anyone else who has the app, so you can tackle grocery shopping with your partner, roommate, or whomever else you're grocery shopping with.
You can also create a favorites list to track the foods you like to keep on hand at home, and you can easily refer to your calendar and prep not just for the week, but for the month, as well. AnyList will cure your grocery shopping woes.
AnyList is available on the App Store and Google Play for free with in-app purchases.
Menu Planner
Menu Planner is a user-friendly meal planning app that is customizable and intuitive. Unfortunately, it's only available for Apple products, but its many features make up for its lack of availability. If you can download this app, definitely consider it.
Menu Planner allows you to have separate user profiles and easily edit your meal plan and shopping list. You can create templates for meals and sync your data between devices. It also syncs to your Apple Health app, so you can have your nutritional information tabulated to give you a more comprehensive look at your overall health.
Menu Planner also allows you to manage what's in your pantry by tracking how much you've used and how much is left. It updates its list according to which recipes you've made and which ingredients you've used so you're not buying ingredients you still have on hand. On top of this, you can print out a menu plan and grocery list, making things a lot easier if you don't like to use your phone or tablet while grocery shopping.
Menu Planner is available on the App Store for free with in-app purchases.
Mealime Meal Plans & Recipes
Mealime makes meal planning easier, and so far, over 4.5 million people have tried it. This app is a real timesaver as it helps you build a meal plan and a grocery list. The grocery list is especially helpful because it categorizes your items by food type; for instance, produce, dairy, cheese and eggs, spices, and meat.
Mealime also personalizes your meal plans, so if you and your roommate or partner have different specific dietary preferences or allergies to steer clear of, Mealime ensures that the recipes you cook fit your needs.
You can also customize the app through your dislikes, so if there are certain foods or ingredients you don't like, you can avoid them. In addition to these neat features, all the recipes they offer are quick to cook.
If you weren't already convinced to download Mealime, note that it comes with easy-to-read recipes that offer step-by-step directions that take up your device's entire screen. Mealime is hard to beat, especially when dieting.
Mealime is available on the App Store and Google Play for free with in-app purchases.
Weekly Chefs
Weekly Chefs is a meal planning app you're going to find useful. You can create collections of recipes from various websites across the internet, and while you are planning your week ahead, it generates your grocery list.
The app auto-populates nutritional information for you from your recipes, and learns your preferences to make recommendations for future meal choices. This way, you won't have to mull over the tough decision of what to eat.
If you have another friend or family member who would like to see what you're eating for the week — perhaps someone you're dieting together with or someone who wants meal inspiration — you can easily share your lists with them.
This app doesn't have every single feature possible in a meal planning app, but it is easy to use. Another downside is its limited number of original recipes, but if you find the amount of recipes available on other sites overwhelming, this may be a good solution for you.
Weekly Chefs is available for free on the App Store.
Eat This Much — Meal Planner
Eat This Much is for anyone who has no idea what their portion sizes should be (that means: most of us). Not only does this make meal prepping easy, but it makes dieting easier, too.
Its technology generates a custom meal plan for you that suits all of your needs — not just your dietary preferences, but your likes and dislikes, budget, and schedule. You'll enter your sex, goals, and preferences, and it'll give you suggestions for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, along with recipes and ingredients. Then, as you follow along, it tracks your diet.
You can easily track your groceries, too, based on what you need and what you already have at home. And if you're missing something, the app is connected to Instacart and AmazonFresh so you can order your ingredients to have them delivered. If you don't like what Eat This Much is suggesting, you can always edit your meal plan.
Eat This Much is available on the App Store and Google Play for free with in-app purchases.
Cooklist: Pantry Meals Recipes
Cooklist is all about planning delicious meals for you to cook at home. And if there's anything that makes dieting easier (aside from a helpful app), it's tasty food. Like many of the other apps, it has the ability to search for different recipes and easily add those ingredients to your grocery list. It keeps track of what you have in your pantry so you don't overbuy. It separates meals by time of day. But there are a couple things that make this app stand out.
For one, Cooklist is available for Android users, while many of the other apps are only available for iOS users. Another incredible feature is that Cooklist connects to your different grocery stores and compares prices and availability so you're getting the best deal. Granted, not every grocery store is going to be connected, but if you shop at major retailers like Kroger, Costco, Walmart, or Target, this is a great feature.
Cooklist also has details on the difficulty level of each recipe so you're not attempting to cook something that's out of your skill level. For the dieter who loves to cook, this is an exceptional app.
Cooklist is available on the App Store and Google Play for free with in-app purchases.
Lifesum: Healthy Eating
Lifesum is a subscription-based app that helps you track your meals according to your goals. Everything is customizable so you can meet your weight goals — whether it's to lose, maintain, or even gain weight.
From it you can choose your own meal plan or you can choose something like a three week weight loss or a clean-eating meal plan, and it will pair you with recipe options that meet those nutritional needs. It's available on Apple and Android, but if you use it on Apple you can connect it to Apple Health, proving that this app is for more than just healthy eating.
Lifesum also has a barcode scanner so you can find the nutritional information from some of the foods you already have at home. Then you can enter what meals you're going to eat, as well as your snacks, your exercise regimen, and your daily water intake. This app tracks all aspects of your diet and exercise routine, not just meal planning.
Lifesum is available on the App Store and Google Play for as low as $2.08 per month.
eMeals — Healthy Meal Plans
eMeals lets you choose meal plans based on many different options. You can search for meals that are healthy and easy to make, or based on diet and taste. eMeals even has meals available to choose by occasion, so if you're entertaining or have a family celebration coming up, you can factor that into your weekly meal plan and make sure that whatever you're serving is healthy.
You can also search from your previous weeks and choose meals that you enjoyed to have again. Then, like most meal prepping apps, it creates a grocery list for you, but it also gives you the ability to add other household items, like paper towels, to your list, making a shopping trip more comprehensive.
You can import your list to your favorite grocery store for an online order, and through various delivery services, you can have it brought right to your doorstep. This app allows you to save your favorite meals to try again, and ultimately saves you time planning dinner and grocery shopping. You do have to pay for a subscription, but there are different levels, and users have noted that they save money on food even when paying the fee of the app. Overall, it's a solid choice in a meal planning app.
eMeals is available for the App Store and Google Play for free with in-app purchases.
Paprika Recipe Manager
Paprika is the perfect meal planning app if you like to cook. It allows you to import all your recipes from around the web, then it pairs you with interactive recipes that keep track of your steps. And while you're cooking, the app doesn't allow your phone to go dark, keeping your hands free to cook, not fiddle with your phone. And if it weren't great enough for the home chef, this app will adjust recipes according to your serving size, making it easy to cook for just one or two people instead of an entire family.
Its grocery list has a neat feature where it combines ingredients. If you're shopping for multiple recipes that have similar ingredients, like tomatoes, it will combine the amount of tomatoes you have rather than just populating a grocery list in the order of how you added it. This will save you the hassle of walking all around the grocery store and returning to the same aisle multiple times.
You can download Paprika on iOS, Android, and Windows, making it one of the most widely available meal-planning apps on the market. Paprika is a step ahead of most.
Paprika is available on the App Store for $4.99 or Google Play for free with in-app purchases.
Yummly
Yummly helps you plan meals based on your food preferences. It started as an app to search for recipes, but it now allows you to plan meals that are easy and quick to cook. It has a customized diet plan and allows you to edit your meal plan as you see fit, but it has unique features, as well.
Yummly allows you to scan the ingredients you already have at home, and it offers recipe suggestions based on what you have in your pantry and fridge. This mitigates food waste, saves you money, and gives you a more creative recipe profile.
Yummly gives you nutritional information on the recipes so you can be sure you are eating healthily, and you can have your groceries sent to you so you don't have to leave your house. Yummly does require you pay a fee, but with that you get Yummly original recipes, as well as video recipes so you can have a tutorial on how to make your meal. With all its fabulous features, you won't want another meal planning app for dieting.
Yummly is available on the App Store and Google Play for free with in-app purchases.