Do you "pre-plan" your daily meals?
 

Or just play it by ear?? I usually have my dinners planned as I have 4 kids, and it keeps me on track so I don't order in... ;) So if I know dinner is going to be a bit on the calorie "heavy" side i'll be more careful during the day with what I eat and perhaps plan a bit.. but that's about it really. Or if my best friend comes over for a girls night with StarBucks i'll definitely go "light" during the day so I don't go over with a sinful StarBucks drink! :D

I plan everything I'm going to put in my mouth, at least a day in advance. Dinners are usually a few days to a week in advance since I don't have time to go to the grocery daily.

Yup I plan each day and even days where I am going to eat out and so on :)

I pre-plan the day's worth of food the night before, or at worst in the morning. I usually pick the dinner item at least a day in advance (mainly to take the appropriate meat out of the freezer). With a few items I'll pick them out two days prior (one day to thaw, one day to marinate).

I definitely try to. Of course sometimes things don't work out perfectly. Like I stepped on a rusty nail Sunday, haven't been able to cook very well so I have been eating quick things, and for dinner what ever my husband can make.

Sometimes we just don't feel like eating what we planned and then we eat something else.

You can try and try to plan out things, but life doesn't always go to plan.

I plan all my meals and snacks for 5 days of the week. On the weekends I tend to go by ear (but still stay in my plan guidelines)

I plan the night before. When I grocery shop, I plan my meals in advance so I don't overbuy. Some things, I don't plan on, like making Southwest Chicken Soup in the crock last night. I had so much leftover I was able to freeze 4 additional individual servings. That was a nice surprise.

I do plan my meal. I eat the same thing every day for breakfast so that is a no brainer. Right now we are eating our biggest meal at noon time and I plan those out a week at a time. For dinner and snacks, I have a few low calorie options that I pick and choose from.

my dbf is a police officer so he works wednesday to wednesday, 8 days on 6 days off. we usually go grocery shopping the thursday he gets off so i plan our dinners for that "week" (6 days) but other than that i really don't. i have tried but i am notorious for planning out my day and writing everything down in my notebook and then at the last second changing my mind and having to re write everything lol. it drives me nuts so i just quit doing it. but as some of the earlier posters have said, if i know i am going out to eat that night i will try to eat lighter during the day and so on.

Absolutely ! If I don't plan , I eat much more than I think I did. I usually plan my days menu the evening before. This takes about 5 minutes to do the days menu. This is a minor annoyance compared to what it would be if I have to start buying clothes in extra large sizes again.

Ya know, Starbucks doesn't HAVE to be bad! I just noticed their light mocha frappachine for a VENTI is only 4 points! And it's HUGE! I get a small iced mocha latte at dunkin (with skim) for 4 pts.

My husband and I sit once every three weeks and come up with dinner plans for every single night (excluding weekends), then go grocery shopping once. I usually have to go and update things like milk, bread and veggies, but the majority of shopping and planning is done at one time.

That being said, the plans sometimes get derailed if the husband gets stuck on the road overnight, and I don't want to cook a full meal for just me...or if he comes in and just changes his mind. I don't usually change mine, but he's likely to every so often.

Yumm Starbucks skinny iced latte -- a grande iced latte made with skim milk and sugar free syrup (carmel, or hazelnut, or cinnamon dolce) is only 80 calories. And the skim milk is good for you!

I sort of plan. My breakfast and lunches are pretty standard, but I usually figure out dinner when I get there. I add up the calories as I go, though, and stop at my budget for the day.

I don't plan anything. For breakfast it depends on how much time it is and what I feel like eating. Sometimes I feel like cereal, sometimes I feel like eggs. Lunch is the same way. Like today I had some left over chili so I brought that. Sometimes I'll make a salad or a sandwich. For dinner I usually will pull some sort of meat out of the freezer and then will decide throughout the day what I'll make w/that meat.

I do. I use Sparkpeople, so I enter my breakfast and lunch the night before and then make sure that there are dinner options in the house - thawed meats, quick or precooked grains, veggies, etc.

I don't plan my meals in advance. I generally have the same few options for breakfast, decide what I'm in the mood for for lunch, and I'm always in a hurry around dinner time (that's what time I go to work and class) so I usually eat a packaged light dinner.

thanks for the replies & the Starbucks reccomendations.. The one I get is loaded with whip cream, chocolate, etc... LOL!! Yum!!

I am a planner - the day is planned always a day in advance, dinners are usually at least a few days in advance. Sometimes I even plan a week in advance. I do leave some room open for one or two Triple Tall Non Fat Lattes (I work at SBUX and these are not something I want to give up!!). What I "earn" with my exercise I also allow myself to use in case of emergency, so those things are not planned.

It would drive me bonkers to have to plan everything that goes into my mouth beforehand; I would hate to give up the option of eating what I feel like, in the moment. I just choose what I want to eat, weigh it, eat it, and then add it to my spreadsheet afterwards. It helps that I am almost always home for meals and snacks (I work from home during the school year; in the summer I am at home with my kids) and so I pretty much only have healthy things to choose from in the house, or just choose to stay away from the high calorie stuff.

I try to make a big batch of something on Sunday that can be divided into lunch for the week. Dinner I play by ear. Of course, I often forget to bring my lunch, and then I buy something and have lunch for dinner when I get home. That makes less financial sense, since if I bring lunch I will also usually cook dinner, but it often feels better to me to have a big lunch and small dinner, since I tend to have dinner late and lunch has to fuel me most of the day.