What should a weekly meal plan template include?
In short: A weekly meal plan template needs the days and meal slots, the recipe and portion for each slot, daily energy and macro totals, and short notes on how to follow it. A good one also records who it suits (an energy range and any dietary labels), plans repeats and leftovers on purpose, and comes with a grocery list, so you can reuse it for many clients without rewriting it.
1 min 2 s videoCaptions onUpdated 28 September 2026
The parts every template needs
- Days and meal slots. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and however many snacks the pattern allows. Keep the slot names the same every day so clients can find their way around.
- A recipe and a portion in each slot. "Chicken stir-fry, 1 serving" is a plan. "A healthy dinner" is not.
- Daily totals. Energy, protein, carbohydrate and fat for every day, so you can see at a glance whether the template fits a client.
- Notes on how to follow it. Which meals can swap, what to batch-cook on Sunday, what to do if they miss a meal.
- Who it's for. The energy range it was built for, the dietary labels it meets and anything it leaves out.
- A grocery list. Grouped by aisle, built from the recipes rather than typed by hand.
If you want a paper version to start from, the free weekly meal plan template prints with all of these, and the grocery list template goes with it.
A template isn't a client plan
A client plan is dated and sized to one person's targets. A template is the reusable pattern behind it. The mistake I see most is building one template and stretching it across every client from 1400 to 2600 kcal. Portions scaled that far stop looking like normal meals.
Build a small set of templates in energy bands instead, and pick the nearest one for each client:
| Template | Energy | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Balanced, 5 days | 1500 to 1700 kcal | Smaller clients in a deficit |
| Balanced, 5 days | 1800 to 2100 kcal | Most maintenance and moderate deficit clients |
| High protein, 7 days | 2200 to 2500 kcal | Clients training four or more times a week |
| Vegetarian, 5 days | 1700 to 2000 kcal | Vegetarian clients, or anyone cutting down on meat |
Three to five bands cover most practices. Put the band and the label in the template name so you can find it again.
How many different days?
Seven different days isn't automatically better. Every extra day adds recipes to cook and ingredients to buy.
| Different days | Grocery list | Works for |
|---|---|---|
| 3, on rotation | Short, lots of repeat items | Busy clients and anyone new to meal plans |
| 5, weekend left free | Medium | Clients who eat socially at weekends |
| 7 | Long | Confident cooks who get bored easily |
Plan leftovers on purpose. A dinner cooked in double on Monday is Tuesday's lunch, which halves the cooking for two slots. Repeat breakfasts across the week too. Most people eat the same few anyway.
What to leave out
- Brand names, unless the client needs a specific product. Brands change their recipes and vary by country.
- Recipes with long ingredient lists on weekdays. Save them for the weekend, or drop them.
- One-off ingredients. If a recipe needs a jar of harissa that nothing else uses, swap it or plan a second meal that uses the rest.
- Exact meal times. Give an order and rough spacing, and let the client fit it to their day.
Keep templates current
Review each template every few months. Look at which meals clients swap out most and retire them. Swap in seasonal produce, so a summer template isn't built around root vegetables. A template set that gets used is one that has been trimmed a few times.
If you plan for a lot of clients, how to create a meal plan for a client covers turning a template into a finished plan.
How to do it in Foodzilla
In Foodzilla, templates live next to client plans under Meal Plans, and any template can become a dated plan for a client in a couple of clicks. The video shows building one and applying it.
- 1Go to Meal Plans, open the My Templates tab and press New Template. To start from targets instead, press Auto-Generate and set the energy, macros, meals and number of days (1 to 7).
- 2Fill the Planner's Day 1, Day 2 and later columns. From a recipe's menu, Copy repeats a meal on other days and Copy as Leftover plans leftovers (Professional plan and above).
- 3Write how to follow the plan on the Notes tab. Clients see these notes when the template is applied to them. Then open the Grocery List tab, press Generate List, and press Save.
- 4To reuse a plan you've already built for a client, open it and choose More, then Convert To Template or Convert Week To Template.
- 5To use a template, open the client's plans, choose New Plan, then Import From Template. Pick the start date, then a template from My Templates, Team Templates or the Templates Database.
Good to know
- Name it so you can find itA name like "1800 kcal, dairy free, 5 days" beats "Sarah's plan v2" when you have 40 templates.
- Send templates on a scheduleAuto Plans can send up to six of your templates to a client in order, each one opening when the last ends (Professional plan and above).