How do I create a meal plan on MyFitnessPal?

October 14, 2025 •

4 min read

According to a study published in the journal Obesity, food-logging and planning in advance can be highly effective for weight management. Here is your step-by-step guide on how do I create a meal plan on MyFitnessPal, using the app's features to build a roadmap for your nutritional goals.

Quick Summary

Creating a meal plan in MyFitnessPal involves setting goals, building custom meals or recipes for repeat use, and logging them in your food diary. Both the free version, which uses saved meals and recipes, and the Premium Meal Planner offer effective methods to track nutritional targets. Consistency and honest logging are key to achieving your desired health outcomes.

Key Points

Goal Setting: Begin by defining your goals (weight loss, gain, or maintenance) and customizing your calorie and macronutrient targets within the app's 'Goals' section.
Free Custom Meals: Save frequently eaten food combinations as custom meals to quickly log them in your diary without re-entering ingredients.
Recipe Creation: Use the 'Recipes' feature to manually add ingredients for homemade dishes or import from a website, simplifying nutrition tracking for your cooking.
Premium Meal Planner: Subscribe to Premium for an automated meal plan generator that suggests recipes based on your dietary preferences, allergies, and goals.
Consistency is Key: Track your meals consistently, even if they deviate from your plan, as this data is crucial for reflecting on your progress and staying accountable.
Accurate Portions: Use a food scale, especially when creating custom recipes, to ensure precise tracking of your nutritional intake.
Plan Ahead: Log your meals for the day in advance to proactively manage your nutrition and see how planned foods fit within your daily goals.

Set Your Foundation: Defining Your Goals

Before you start adding foods, a successful meal plan hinges on clearly defined nutritional goals. MyFitnessPal provides a framework to help you determine your daily calorie and macronutrient targets based on your personal information and objectives.

Enter your personal information: Log into the app and navigate to the 'More' menu. Select 'Goals' to update your height, weight, age, and activity level. MyFitnessPal will use this data to recommend a daily calorie target based on your goals (weight loss, maintenance, or weight gain).
Customize your macronutrients (macros): Under the 'Goals' section, select 'Calories, Carbs, Protein & Fat Goals'. The free version allows you to adjust your macros in 5% increments, ensuring the total equals 100%. For more precise control, Premium users can set specific gram amounts for protein, carbs, and fat.
Track micronutrients: MyFitnessPal also allows you to monitor micronutrients like sodium, fiber, and sugar, which can be valuable for overall health tracking.

Creating and Saving Meals (Free Method)

For most users, the most practical approach to meal planning in the standard MyFitnessPal app is to create and save meals and recipes that can be logged with a single tap. This saves significant time and effort compared to manually searching and adding ingredients for every meal.

Here’s how to do it:

For Custom Meals: If you eat the same combination of foods regularly, such as a consistent breakfast, you can save it as a custom meal. First, log all the individual ingredients into your diary for that meal. Then, tap the three dots or menu button next to the meal and select 'Save as Meal'. Give it a name like “Morning Yogurt Bowl.”
For Homemade Recipes: For dishes you cook from scratch, like a stir-fry or chili, the recipe feature is ideal. Go to 'More' -> 'My Meals, Recipes & Foods' -> 'Create a Recipe'. You can either manually enter ingredients and servings or import the recipe from a website URL. The app will calculate the nutritional information for you.
Log meals quickly: Once a meal or recipe is saved, you can log it with one tap. In your diary, tap 'Add Food', go to the 'My Meals' or 'My Recipes' tab, and select the item you want to log.

Harnessing the Premium Meal Planner (Paid Feature)

For those seeking a more automated and guided experience, MyFitnessPal's Premium feature offers an integrated Meal Planner. This takes the guesswork out of what to eat by generating custom plans for you.

Access the Meal Planner: If you are a Premium+ subscriber in a supported region, you will find a dedicated 'Plan' tab at the bottom of your screen.
Define your preferences: When you start, the app will ask you about your dietary approach (e.g., vegan, low-carb, Mediterranean), food allergies, dislikes, and cuisine preferences. It also considers your time to cook and budget.
Receive a personalized plan: The tool generates a weekly plan with recommended recipes and nutritional information. You can easily view the macro breakdown for each meal and for the entire week.
Customize and adjust: Don't like a particular recipe? You can swap it for another from the extensive database. You can also edit recipes to adjust portions or make ingredient substitutions.
Generate a shopping list: The Meal Planner automatically creates a grocery list based on your plan, which can be ordered directly from retailers like Instacart in some regions.

Meal Planning Comparison: Free vs. Premium


Feature	Free MyFitnessPal Meal Planning	MyFitnessPal Premium Meal Planner
Cost	Free to use.	Requires a paid Premium+ subscription.
Plan Generation	Manual. You must build and save your own custom meals and recipes.	Automated. The app generates a customized plan based on your preferences.
Recipe Search	Access to a large database and user-created recipes.	Access to an expanded database of tested recipes with nutritional information.
Customization	Save your own recipes and meals, but no automatic plan generation.	Highly customizable with dietary approaches, allergies, dislikes, and more.
Grocery List	Must create manually based on your planned meals.	Automatically generates a grocery list from your plan, with the option to order directly.
Convenience	Can be time-consuming to set up initially, but becomes fast once meals are saved.	Less time-consuming to set up and manage, with many automated features.

Best Practices for Effective Meal Planning with MyFitnessPal

Plan the day before. Take 5-10 minutes each evening to log your meals for the next day. This allows you to check if your planned meals align with your calorie and macro goals and make adjustments in advance.
Measure everything. For the most accurate tracking, use a digital food scale to weigh ingredients, especially for recipes you create yourself. After some practice, you will become better at estimating portion sizes.
Use the Copy feature. If you have leftovers or eat similar meals on different days, use the 'Copy Meal' or 'Copy to Date' feature in your diary to quickly duplicate entries.
Log reflectively. While planning ahead is useful, sometimes things change. The ability to reflect on what you ate and adjust your log promotes mindful eating habits.
Don't aim for perfection. The goal is consistency, not perfection. If you deviate from your plan, just log the actual food eaten and get back on track with your next meal.

Conclusion

MyFitnessPal offers a robust and flexible platform for creating a meal plan, whether you prefer a free, hands-on approach or a streamlined, automated Premium experience. By leveraging the app's features—from setting accurate goals to saving custom recipes and using the advanced meal planner—you can simplify your nutritional tracking and stay accountable. For further guidance on building your custom dishes, consult the MyFitnessPal blog. With consistent effort and smart use of the app, you will have a clear, effective plan to guide your healthy eating journey.

: https://blog.myfitnesspal.com/create-meals-recipes-myfitnesspal/

Frequently Asked Questions

A 'Meal' is a saved combination of foods, like your typical breakfast, that you log with one tap. A 'Recipe' is a collection of ingredients for a homemade dish, which can be scaled by serving size and is ideal for meal prepping.

Yes, you can create a meal plan for free by building and saving your own custom meals and recipes. While it doesn't offer the automated plan generation of the Premium version, it allows for effective meal planning by quickly logging your saved dishes.

To import a recipe, navigate to 'More' -> 'My Meals, Recipes & Foods' -> 'Recipes'. Tap 'Create a Recipe' and choose the 'Add from the Web' option. Paste the recipe URL, and the app will attempt to import the ingredients.

Once you have logged your food, tap 'Diary' and scroll to the bottom. Tap the 'Nutrition' button, then select the 'Macros' tab to see a breakdown of your protein, carbs, and fat intake for the day. You can set your target percentages in 'Goals'.

Yes, but this is a Premium feature. For Premium users, you can set custom goals based on the day of the week, which is useful for strategies like carb cycling,.

The database is user-contributed, so some entries may be inaccurate. For the best accuracy, look for entries with a green checkmark indicating verification, or use the barcode scanner for packaged foods.

To quickly log a meal you previously tracked, go to your 'Diary' and tap the three-dot menu next to the 'Add Food' button for that meal. Select 'Copy Meal' and choose the date you want to copy it to.