Notion Tutorial: How to Build a MEAL PLAN in Notion! [Recipe Book + Shopping List Included]

Hey there productive friends! In today's video I show you how to build a full fledged meal plan in Notion! This meal plan comes with a page for ingredients, a recipe book, and a shopping list! Anything to do with eating can now be controlled in your Notion Hub! I have been using Notion as my meal planning service for a couple months now and I'm not going back. We only dip our toes in the water in this video. But, if you'd like me to go more in-depth on how you can track macros as well, let me know in the comments below!
Enjoy the video!
Chapters:
0:00 - Introduction
1:00 - Foundation Pages for the Meal Plan
2:24 - Building Your Ingredient Page
4:20 - Creating Your Recipe Page
6:21 - Relating Ingredient and Recipe Databases
8:43 - Designing Your Meal Plan Page
9:35 - Relating Recipes to the Meal Plan
10:21 - Linking Everything Together on ONE PAGE
14:36 - How to Use These Systems Efficiently
17:02 - Outro
#Notion #MealPlan #ProductiveDude

[@baptistbranchhomeschool9268]

This is the most helpful video I have ever watched! I am a homeschool mother of three and I am using this for planning our school meals. I am also so inspired to create our entire Homeschool database/dashboard/command center using Notion!

[@ProductiveDude]

Woah that's cool!

[@dausfam4432]

Amazing! No confusion, I feel so trendy and can't wait to show off to my wifey. Thx so much

[@gabriellab1537]

I did an entire course on skillshare about notion and this video alone was more useful. Love it man

[@estellabryan4029]

Wow, this was so clear and easy to follow. Thank you, it's helped a bunch!

[@judycheng5538]

It is a wonderful tutorial. Your explanation is crystal clear and well-articulated. Thanks so much for sharing. Love your other videos on Notion too. Look forward to learning more from you.

[@ProductiveDude]

Thank you so much for watching Judy! I appreciate the kind words.

[@rosemorales3135]

Hellooooo! OMG I've spent my whole weekend with you. I have learned sooooo much on this new program my son wanted me to try, Thank you for all your hard work, Blessing and peace

[@jonathantagolgol4506]

This is so helpful. It was so easy to understand! Kudos to you! Thanks again!

[@pixel__detox]

Simple and efficient, thanks for this one, it's been a while I was searching for that!

[@MonicaGz]

Thanks so much for this video. I love the way you broke it up into sections so I could focus on what I needed to focus on. I created something I can use based on my preferences. Much appreciated!!

[@ProductiveDude]

Glad it helped! Thanks for the time you took to comment!

[@paulaingrid2220]

Thank you so much! Took me a while to figure it out but now it works perfectly

[@laurinpatton]

Love this! Thanks for sharing!

[@lyndonlane2743]

Another addition you could add to break it down even futher is within the Recipies Section, you could add your portion sizing, calories, and macros for those on a specific nutrition journey.

[@poptartravioli5874]

Thank you so much! I was trying to use the meal planner template from notion but couldn't figure out how to add categories for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This was so helpful!!!

[@stardustonmyheart]

Thank you so much! I am new to Notion and kind of overwhelmed. As a Mom of a schoolkid I always do the meal plan and shopping list for the family/week. Been following your tutorial and it was so easy and I made it! So much fun! Now I can finally create my own recipe database and meal plan and link everything! Thank you so much!

[@ProductiveDude]

Yay! Glad it’s helping you be a super mom!

[@stardustonmyheart]

@@ProductiveDude Thank you! I wanted to ask - do you have a tutorial for a weekly spread? Like for weekly task planning and time management? I took a look at your playlists - maybe I did not find it? I struggle a lot to find a good system for weekly planning and want to use Notion for it too.

[@normaelzain1486]

I've already made my recipes database but it was just for the recipes, ingredients, and a video showing how to cook it and it's useful for me. But now I think I was having the very first step of my recipe organizing system. I'm gonna add your very wonderful recipes database tutorial to my tiny one and see what will happen, thank you for your effort 😍

[@ProductiveDude]

Great! I hope this helps!

[@yemiajibola8040]

I love this video. Thank you so much. I'm a new Notion user and this was extremely helpful!

[@ProductiveDude]

Happy to hear! Glad you watched this one. It gives you a great example on how to work with databases in Notion. Definitely good practice, even if you don’t use the meal planner you’ll learn a lot building it.

[@SeekingHimDailyBlog]

I'm new to the world of Notion! I stumbled across your videos, and you are so awesome! You have helped me a lot in building my second brain! Keep videos like this coming. Thank you so much!

[@ProductiveDude]

You’re so welcome! Thanks for stopping by!

[@jaisenmahne2832]

Great video, I have set this up on my computer and phone so that I can just easily shop for what I need. Thanks for the fantastic tutorial.

[@ProductiveDude]

Sure thing! :)

[@peterzakharov3354]

Thank you, this one is of great help

[@jeyjeyxx]

Well rounded, easy to follow and begginer friendly... you've earned a like and a follow! Thank you, this video was very helpful

[@ProductiveDude]

Awesome, thank you!

[@rushelcephas5995]

Thank you so so so much for this gem!

[@mariana4097]

This is amazing!! Thank you so much! Super helpful!

[@ProductiveDude]

Awesome, I'm glad it was helpful!

[@user-tc7ld2fx5p]

I am starting to use Notion. Since you explained very details, I now understand how to use Notion database. Thank you!

[@ProductiveDude]

You’re welcome I’m glad this helped you.

[@jcgdigitalle7047]

Great video keep doing more. Thanks Carter for creating a great tutorial.

[@ProductiveDude]

Glad this helped! :)

[@tandairos]

This is a great video. Easy to follow and works beautifully. Thanks

[@ProductiveDude]

Great! Glad it helped.

[@ChristopheJacobson]

Helpful to get started, thanks man.

[@ProductiveDude]

Glad to hear it!

[@avelikebrave]

DANG this was so easy to follow. Thanks so much!!

[@TheCyclingCEO]

Well done!! U just made my life easier!

[@maddisonboomert5743]

So helpful! Thank you!

[@ruolingchen1445]

Thank you! its amazing!!

[@ibrahimgamalf]

This channel deserve a subscribe for this video only, thanks man 😁👍

[@prettyblackinvitality]

There're 29k views this video should've so many more likes because this guy just mastered this tutorial. I've created many databases with his help. Thanks so much 🤟

[@ProductiveDude]

Hey glad it helped! Thanks for the kind words.

[@thedigitalexpat]

Great video! Helped me immensely! I am a new subscriber!

[@olanrewajudamilola6759]

This is fantastic!. Thanks for sharing.

[@ProductiveDude]

Sure thing!

[@chezandressaaa]

thank you SO MUCH!

[@freyaleegwater-bright7021]

Less than 30s in this gave me such a great idea I had to go and put it into practice!

[@777truepower777]

Brilliant!

[@ProductiveDude]

Thank you

[@MakeOneselfAtHome]

Thanks for this tutorial, just built my own meal plan with recipes and ingredients both for meals and juicing.

[@ProductiveDude]

Wow that's great!

[@ProductiveDude]

That's great, if you haven't tried Coda yet, I recommend checking out my updated meal planner video in Coda: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oWiUk62hhaZpY5o

[@chechunna]

thank you soooo much!!

[@FR-fq4nw]

Thanks for the video. Helped a lot! Still got one Question. Is it possible to update the shopping list, depending on recipes that are planned in the future? So that all of the Ingredients with the property out of stock will change to shopping list, the moment I put a recipe in the calendar.

[@kshitij3628]

It's a masterpiece ❤️

[@ProductiveDude]

Wow, thanks I did put a lot of work into this. I'm glad it's helping you.

[@perlamunoz1712]

Hello!!! Thank you for this video! It is great!, I got a question, is it possible to make a formula to change servings so the ingredients quantities change automatically?

[@ancebumbule4750]

Thanks for the video! I feel like going into a database and changing every status to "in stock", while being at the store might be tedius and time consuming. I have a Home dashboard that I share with my husband and I have created it so, that if either one of us checks a box in the recipe card we intend to cook, the ingredients show up at the top where our Shopping list lives. The problem tough is, that I want for the ingredients to disappear when they've been bought - still figuring it out.

[@KhadieJolie]

GENIUS

[@Golden_silvering_diamond]

Wonderful tutorial. I am a new member in notion and I'm using my mobile phone to practice but I'm having difficulties in creating the tables (database)😢, how am I going to do that? Please I would appreciate if you can give some advice.

[@iamgiuliaguerrieri]

Really helpful! Thank you :)

[@ProductiveDude]

Sure thing! :)

[@lizsamaroo4578]

This Video is super helpful and I love how you break it down step by step. As a new notion user this is awesome ... thank you. However I am at the 6:56 min mark and in my Ingredients page and the column 'related to recipes' did not generate. It did generate in the Recipes page where I created it though with my icon and everything. I did not have to name it in the Recipes page because once I clicked on the Ingredients database to relate it automatically showed up in Recipes page. But like i said not in the Ingredients page. I am going to continue along and see what happens.

[@lizsamaroo4578]

Ok I realized that i had to make sure to select 'show on Ingredients' when setting up relation

[@anastasiajahadi4874]

I'd love to see how you include macro tracking in this. Thanks for a great video!

[@ProductiveDude]

I’ve been thinking of making a revised version of the meal planner. I’ll consider adding this. :)

[@ProductiveDude]

I just rebuilt my meal planner in Coda if you want to check it out: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oWiUk62hhaZpY5o

[@ProductiveDude]

🔴Check out my Notion Templates here: cartersurach.gumroad.com/

[@sashateed]

So helpful thank you so much!! subbed to your channel as well :)

[@ProductiveDude]

Great! Thanks.

[@Mumtozm]

Thank you

[@ThaoLe01]

Hello - would love to see how you use it to track macros too!

[@Lukas88887]

Hi Carter Surach, I've been using Notion for a week now and I'm watching your videos to learn. I'm Italian and I understand little English but you are really good and you explain very well. Regarding this video I was wondering if it is possible to do this: On the recipe page, in the ingredients part, create a relationship directly with the ingredients database in order to select the ingredients and make a column with the quantities. Then create in the planning part, for example drag the recipes directly into the calendar or into a special section and on the basis of this, filter and group the ingredients to create the shopping list. I hope I was as clear as possible and I hope to see a video on this topic. Thank you so much again for the content you create😁

[@ProductiveDude]

Hey, thanks for the kind words, and thanks for taking the time to comment. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to include the ingredient amount yet. I will make an updated tutorial if I find a way.

[@lexiskey]

Hi! I seemed to have maybe messed up at the last step and when I tried to add the Rollup property, only ingredients was listed, so I was unable to add dates and would really like that. Any help would be appreciated! Also, I appreciate this video and am going to try it out! My family has been using google keep and its just not ideal! Thank you!

[@ProductiveDude]

For the rollup you must have a relation first. The relation is it’s own property type so you could have a relation for ingredients to recipes. Then you want to add a rollup for the date column. If you don’t have a date column in the database you’re relating too you might need to add a date column.

[@ArtLukasSt]

Hey, really awesome video!! i just have one question. Is there a way to implement the amount of ingridients per meal? So i will select my meals for the week and in my shopping list is already listed how much of each ingridient i need? Thank you very much!

[@ProductiveDude]

This isn't set-up to work with 'amount' of ingredient unfortunately. I recommend you check out my Coda Meal Planner video, it's a new and improved take on this meal planner: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oWiUk62hhaZpY5o

[@julixn6993]

Quick question: is it possible to add the ingredients to my shopping list by adding the recipe to my food plan? Thank you very much for the video ❤

[@guilhermeozores2975]

There is a possibility that when i USE some meal and then the notion automatically reduces the in stock ingredients? for eg; top sirloin recipe, you have 3 top sirloin in stock. When you use that recipe, it reduces to 2 in stock ingredients. Theres anyway to do that?

[@lifeninjamisty]

Great video. What's the best way to add a quantity to the ingredients list, then have it add up on the shopping list (i.e. one recipe needs 2 cups carrots, another new 3 cups carrots & you want to see on the shopping list that you need 5 cups)?

[@ProductiveDude]

That would be quite advanced. Not sure how it would be possible unless you just wanted to list out all the variants in a select list. Let me know if you find a good solution for this… I’d be interested to see how this is possible.

[@nataliedavison5592]

@@ProductiveDude Has anyon found a solution for this?

[@miahatton6120]

thank you thank you thank you!!!!

[@ProductiveDude]

Glad you enjoyed! Thank you for watching.

[@my_headis_a_jungle522]

Come faremmo senza di te? Sei la 💡! 😊🤩

[@DonnaBreenC21]

I'm at the bottom of the calendar and trying to create the next section and for the life of me I can get my cursor to show up to hit the back slash. I've watched you do it 20 times and cant figure it out.

[@lizsamaroo4578]

Im a bit confused at the part where Ive created the Roll Up, then when I go into the 'planned for' section, no problem there, after choosing DATE within the property section, the date does not show up in the planned for section. (approx. 13:56 min mark). Not sure what I am doing incorrectly.

[@andryaswaurzenczak4042]

A tip that I’ve seen in other channels about notion and it is very catchy. Show your full template right away. And then you come up of how to build it.

[@arye_me]

thanks

[@stjani01]

2 questions, lets say im making same meal 2 times per mont can we make it so that the shoping list would say 2x beef ? secound question could i add price per all the meals and i would get total amount for the month?

[@manuelli88]

I would love to see how to add a calculator for macros . Where it would tell me a projection of the total Macros spent per day if that makes sense and even if I put sample macros numbers of what I want to hit it could suggest some recipes that may fulfill that request with a +/-10%

[@ProductiveDude]

Any thoughts on how to get started building that? I’ve thought about this as well but haven’t really delved into it.

[@tikasub2230]

I like your channel about notion and can you make calculation in notion such as monthly sales report? And you never mention about all the data you have created, does it in Notion cloud database?

[@ProductiveDude]

Yes you can make calculations, maybe I'll make a video about this...

[@bethechange9794]

Hi thanks for this, On my ingredients list i have a check box for the ones i need, is there a way to have a separate linked table showing only what i ticked?

[@ProductiveDude]

Yes, just use “/create linked database” on the page that you want to have the separate linked table on, then click the filter settings on that table and set the filter to “where checkbox property is ticked”.

[@bethechange9794]

@@ProductiveDude thank you so much!

[@StarlasAiko]

For your Shopping List view of Ingredients, it would have made sense to sort them by Shop and hide all columns except Ingredient and Shop. For the Meal Plan, I'd set the first column to relation with the Date and let it set the Meal Type automatically according to what the Meal Recipe is taged as.

[@CHRiS-ez5ui]

Hiding the RECIPE in the Shopping list view makes sense, not the status though - you want to be able to quickly change it from "shopping list" to "in store" when you bought it/ found it in the store. You're right about automatically linking the meal type via relations, I was confused why he created those twice. Though this would give you extra flexibilty by ultimately assigning a "dinner" recipe as "lunch" and vice versa... :))

[@CHRiS-ez5ui]

Ahh, and for the shopping list it would indeed be wise to show the "recipe" since you may want to be able to see the quantities you have to buy :D

[@Innermoonb]

I’ve tried to add a relation to my planned for and it’s only giving me ingredients? Where have I gone wrong here !! Thank you so much for the tutorial nice to be able to learn to create my own too.

[@ProductiveDude]

You need to use the roll up property, create a new columns in your recipe database that correspond to each of the columns that you want to pull from the ingredients database. Now, use the roll up property columns in your recipe database to pull other columns from the ingredients database. Does that make sense? If not I can send a look explaining it live.

[@JuanGonzalez-qg3oc]

Thanks

[@ProductiveDude]

You’re welcome.

[@fizaahmed3341]

Hi PD I can’t do ingredients section after dividers. When creating database. On iPads. Any clue?

[@ProductiveDude]

I usually like to build my spaces on my macbook then move to ipad and iphone for day to day updates. The experience isn't as good for building unless your in some type of laptop or desktop imo.

[@balancedbusinesscoach]

Once you assign an "Ingredient" to a "Related Recipe" are you able to add additional recipes to that same ingredient or would you need to create multiple of the same ingredient to apply to other recipes?

[@ProductiveDude]

Great question. You’re able to use a single ingredient for multiple recipes so you would NOT have to create the ingredient multiple times thankfully. :) Thanks for watching and leaving a question.

[@crm_marketing]

Thank you for the video!) Can you, please, show how to count prices of ingredients, bills of shoping lists and the cost of recepies. Thank you!)

[@Giov523]

Grazie.

[@CHRiS-ez5ui]

Great, super helpful video, many thanks! Subscribed and liked! :) btw, does anyone have a good recipe for "Szechuan Beef Ramen Noodles"? :D The video got me kinda hungry ^^

[@ProductiveDude]

Haha glad this helped! Thanks for watching.

[@kz7115]

The shopping store!

[@ProductiveDude]

I was waiting for someone to call me out on this hahahah

[@bgubs07]

How can I add a recipe to the Meal Plan then have the Shopping List tag automatically assigned to the ingredients needed?

[@processdrivenrealestate]

This was great! Exactly what I was looking for… and based on your grocery stores, we are likely within one of the same three states. Meijer is where it’s at! 😂

[@ProductiveDude]

Michigan? Haha :)

[@processdrivenrealestate]

@@ProductiveDude Yes, sir! Kalamazoo here!

[@ProductiveDude]

@@processdrivenrealestate I live in Kalamazoo too! Woah!

[@processdrivenrealestate]

@@ProductiveDude lol NO WAY! That's awesome. Maybe I'll see you checking items off your grocery list at Meijer. haha

[@ProductiveDude]

@@processdrivenrealestate Yes sir! I see you're in the real estate marketing industry, maybe we could connect on a call to see if there are any ways we could help each other. I have a marketing agency. Shoot me an email if you're interested: [e-mail]

[@estateelite9284]

Thanks man. I'm going to record my snake piss soup recipe in notion now :)

[@ProductiveDude]

?? Ew

[@mirabellaburek]

I liked your video, but you didn't include amounts :( That is a big bummer. Do you have a video taht includes that? I do not want to think of how much stuff I need to buy, as I always buy more. Any update on this Tutorial?

[@judithh.5021]

Do you have to add all the ingredients manually or can you automate this as well?

[@ProductiveDude]

Manually

[@hariprathan]

How did you list the ingredience

[@markwilkins9048]

This is exactly the solution I have been looking for. Great video, but a little fast for a new Notion user like myself. I’ve found Notion to be a bit overwhelming actually. Do you provide any one-on-one sessions?

[@ProductiveDude]

If you send me an email at [e-mail] We can schedule a 1 on 1.

[@mikako520]

What is the reasoning behind adding Meal Type under meal plan?

[@ProductiveDude]

So you can sort based on meal type if you just want to see certain types of food.

[@DonnaBreenC21]

How do you get ingredients on the list that are not necessarily related to a recipe? Like your staples, milk, Orange juice, bread etc?

[@ProductiveDude]

You can just manually add them to your ingredients list.

[@DonnaBreenC21]

I created a shopping list and pretty much did an inventory of everything. If I don’t have them linked to a recipe I still have the ability to add them to the list by creating the select field of in stock, out of stock, etc right? I have a lot in notion and just want to stick with that but thanks for the info on coda.

[@DonnaBreenC21]

I’ve been working on setting this up and have another question. When you have an ingredient that is common to several recipes, how will that look?

[@mairienlao8303]

How do you just have it show the ingredients needed for the meals plan that week? This is what I'm struggling with now

[@ProductiveDude]

I’d make a page that’s just a dashboard and “/create a linked database” the linked database should be set up with your meal plan. View it as a calendar and create a relation property / roll up that links to the ingredients needed for the recipe. If you just view that week of the month you should be able to see the ingredients you need on the calendar. Make sense?

[@victoranjos9426]

yes but how do you figure the quantities??

[@ProductiveDude]

Good point… hmmm

[@CrucialStuff]

Having to create the daily entry for each meal of the day for every day is a huge waste of time, there needs to be a better way to just have to choose what dish for each day. Notion is too good for there not to be a better way 👀

[@ProductiveDude]

I’m thinking about updating the meal planner. If you are in dire need of something better immediately though, try out my video on how to build a meal planner in coda. It’s much better.

[@CrucialStuff]

@@ProductiveDude Thank you for both the video and the tip, i'll look into it :)