Organizing a meal plan is beneficial as it promotes healthier eating habits by ensuring a balanced intake of nutrients. Additionally, it helps in managing grocery shopping and budgeting more efficiently, reducing food waste and saving time.

Creating a personalized meal plan leveraging is easy with AI.

Here is an example that helps you achieve three things:

  1. Find New Meal Ideas

  2. Get a Grocery List

  3. Plan Meals for the Week

Preparation

Write down at least five meals that you like and fit your goals. You can use ChatGPT to help you come up with these and obviously change these at any time.

Save this list somewhere. PyroPrompts Projects allows you to save Snippets, but you can use a note on your phone or a google doc or wherever.

Now, here are three prompts that use that Meal List Snippet, insert your Meal List into where it says [Meal List]

1. Suggest New Meals

I like to use the RECT (Role - Example - Context - Task) framework for prompts, which looks something like this for suggesting new meals I might like:

You are a Meal Suggestion Expert. Your role is to suggest additional meals that a person might like, based on a list of meals they already enjoy. You should consider the flavors, ingredients, and cuisine styles of the provided meals to make your recommendations.

For example, if someone enjoys Chicken Tikka Masala, Beef Stroganoff, and Shrimp Pad Thai, you might suggest other flavorful and hearty dishes like Lamb Rogan Josh, Chicken Alfredo Pasta, or Spicy Szechuan Noodles.

Now, use the following meals provided here, between these triple-star lines:
***
[Meal List]
***

Based on these meals, suggest additional meals that might be enjoyed, keeping in mind similar flavors, ingredients, and cuisine styles. Respond with your meal suggestions.

You can take these recommendations and add ones you like to your meal list, maintaining your AI's "memory".

See this prompt on PyroPrompts

2. Create a Grocery List

An important part of a good prompt is providing examples.

You are a Grocery List Creator. Your task is to generate a comprehensive grocery list based on a provided list of meals. Your goal is to identify key ingredients required for each meal and compile them into an organized list. Ensure that your list is clear, categorizing items by type (e.g., produce, dairy, meats) for easy shopping.

For example, if the meal list includes "Spaghetti Bolognese," your grocery list should include items like spaghetti pasta, ground beef, onions, canned tomatoes, garlic, and any other relevant ingredients.

Now, create a grocery list from this list of meals, detailed here between these triple-star lines:
***
[Meal List]
***

Remember to break down the grocery list into categories for ease of use. Respond with the complete grocery list based on the provided meals.

See this prompt on PyroPrompts

3. Create a Weekly Meal Plan

From your list of meals, let's plan out the week. Doing this can be nice to make it more concrete to see if I really don't want to eat something.

You are a Weekly Meal Plan Creator. When given a list of meals, you will construct a balanced and varied weekly meal plan. The plan should distribute the meals throughout the week, ensuring that there is a good variety each day. Consider factors like not repeating the main ingredient or cuisine type consecutively.

For example, if the list includes spaghetti, chicken curry, beef stew, grilled salmon, and vegetable stir-fry, you might suggest spaghetti for Monday, chicken curry for Tuesday, beef stew for Wednesday, grilled salmon for Thursday, and vegetable stir-fry for Friday, with weekend suggestions based on the remaining options.

Now, create a meal plan for the week using the list of meals provided here, between these triple-star lines:
***
[Meal List]
***

Remember to balance the meals throughout the week and provide a variety each day. Respond with your weekly meal plan.

See this prompt on PyroPrompts

Let's Automate It

That's great, but a little tedious! Copying prompts and pasting into ChatGPT and then copying results can be annoying. I'm less likely to do it if I need to manually do it. I like to use PyroPrompts Workflows to orchestrate all of this.

The following steps will give you an automated meal plan sent directly to your email every week:

  1. Create a Project in PyroPrompts and call it "Meal Planning" (or whatever you want to name it).

  2. In that project, make a "Meal List" Snippet of the meals you like.

  3. Go to the page for each of those prompts and on the left side, click "Create Workflow", select your "Meal Planning Project" and select "Run on a Schedule", then "Create Workflow".

  4. Go back to the project you created and enable each of the Workflows you created.

Some notable alternatives you might want to consider:

  • I don't schedule the Workflow to suggest new meals. If I'm looking for new ideas, I manually run that one and update the Meal List Snippet.

  • Have the Weekly Meal Plan create a plan and save that as a Snippet. Then have the Grocery List Workflow just based on the Weekly Meal Plan. This works really well if you have more than a week's worth of food in the list of meals that you like.

I hope you found this helpful in inspiring your own AI Meal Planning or other automations. Let us know!