Meal planning

Plan the week. Shop once.

Build 1, 3, 5 or 7 days of meals around your calorie and macro targets, the foods you avoid and what is already in your kitchen, then turn the whole plan into one combined shopping list.

Requires Loopa Premium My Pantry and saved meals are free.

Start on Loopa Basic. This feature unlocks with Premium, at $12.99 a month or $69.99 a year.

Get Loopa free See how planning works

The Loopa meal plan screen on iPhone, showing a week of planned meals with their macros
Why it matters

The decision costs more than the cooking

Most weeks do not fall apart at the stove. They fall apart at six o’clock with nothing defrosted and no idea, and again in the shop buying a third jar of something already in the cupboard. Planning is the part that removes both.

Your targetsThe calories and macros already in your setup
What you avoidYour never-eat list, and your diet style
Your pantryWhat the kitchen already holds
A plan1, 3, 5 or 7 days of meals
Swap what you wantOne meal changes; the rest stays
One shopping listCombined, and minus what you have
How it works

Four inputs, one week, one list

Nothing here asks you to describe your ideal diet in an essay. It uses what Loopa already knows.

Targets

Built against the numbers already in your setup

The planner reads the calorie and macro targets your setup interview calculated, and plans to them. It will not generate until you have a target, because a plan built against a placeholder is worse than no plan.

Those targets are estimates from a population formula using your height, weight, age, sex, activity level and goal pace. They are a starting point to adjust, not a prescription.

Premium
  • Your own calorie and macro targets
  • Refuses to generate without one, rather than guessing
  • Diet style, if you have set one
  • Adjustable any time in your setup
The Loopa summary screen on iPhone showing calorie and macro targets for the day
My Pantry

Start with what you already own

Keep a list of what is in the kitchen and the planner works from it. Items you already have are left off the shopping list, which is the difference between a list you shop from and a list you edit first.

My Pantry itself is free. Listing, adding, renaming and clearing it are part of Loopa Basic on every surface, whether or not you ever generate a plan. It can help cut duplicate buying; it is a list, not a measurement of waste.

Free
  • Free on the phone and in a browser
  • Read by the planner and by the shopping list
  • Name matching is generous, so glance before you shop
  • A shared household pantry comes with Premium Family
The Loopa food screen on iPhone, where the pantry sits beside search and recent foods
Swapping

Change one meal without rebuilding the week

Do not fancy Thursday? Swap it. Loopa regenerates that meal and leaves everything else where it is, and it will not offer you something already on another day of the plan.

The replacement is checked against your never-eat list, your diet style and your macro band before it is written. If nothing acceptable comes back, your original meal stays rather than being replaced by a worse one.

Premium
  • One meal regenerates; the rest holds
  • Checked before it is saved, not after
  • Your original stays if nothing better passes
  • The shopping list updates with the swap
A meal in the Loopa plan with its macros and a swap option
The shopping list

One plan. One list.

Every ingredient across the week, combined where it can be combined and grouped by aisle, with what your pantry already holds left off.

Things measured in different ways stay on different lines. 200 g of spinach and one bunch of spinach are two entries, because adding them would mean inventing a conversion. There is no package rounding either: the list says what the food needs, not what a shop sells it in.

Premium
  • Combined per ingredient, per unit
  • Grouped by aisle
  • Pantry items left off
  • Tick things off as you shop
The Loopa shopping list generated from a meal plan, grouped by aisle

Filtered is not the same as allergy-safe

Loopa filters your never-eat list out of everything it suggests, and it matches common derivatives: milk also catches whey, casein, butter and cheese, and peanut also catches groundnut and arachis. It is built to over-flag rather than under-flag.

That is a filter, not a clearance. Ingredient information is not always complete or current, recipes get substituted, and Loopa cannot inspect what is actually in the jar in your hand. Loopa also treats every entry on your list the same way, whether you added it because of an allergy or because you do not like it.

If you have a food allergy, check the ingredients yourself. An app suggesting a recipe is not a substitute for reading a label.

Where the numbers come from

What the planner is working from

You entered itYour targets, your diet style, your never-eat list and your pantry. Everything the plan is built from is something you told Loopa.
EstimatedThe plan itself, and the macros beside each meal. Generated food, with generated figures, which is why the plan shows them rather than hiding them.
From a product recordWhat you actually log afterwards. A planned meal is a suggestion until you log it, and then it is an ordinary food entry like any other.
What it costs

Planning: free versus Premium

Only the planning half. There is a full comparison for everything else.

Start here

Loopa Basic

The pantry and the saved meals, at no cost.

  • My Pantry, on every surface
  • Saved meals: build once, log in one tap
  • Your never-eat list and food preferences
  • Reading a plan you already have
  • Unlimited food logging
  • No ads, and no card
Start free

Loopa Premium

$12.99 a month, or $69.99 a year.

  • Everything in Loopa Basic
  • The meal planner, 1, 3, 5 or 7 days
  • Swapping a meal without rebuilding the week
  • The combined shopping list
  • “What should I eat?” and recipes
  • Eating Out, for the meals somebody else cooks
  • A shared household pantry with Premium Family
See every Premium feature
FAQ

Questions about meal planning

The ones that come up before a first plan.

How many days can a plan cover?

1, 3, 5 or 7 days. Those are the lengths the planner builds; it will not take a number in between rather than quietly rounding you down to one it likes.

Is My Pantry free?

Yes. Listing, adding, renaming, deleting and clearing your pantry are part of Loopa Basic, on every surface. Your own kitchen list is your own data. What needs Premium is the planner that reads it.

Are saved meals free?

Yes. Building a saved meal, editing it, deleting it and logging it in one tap are all free. Two related things are not: building a new saved meal out of foods picked from your past days works from the meal-history calendar, which is Premium, and recipe suggestions are a separate Premium feature.

What happens when I swap a meal?

Loopa regenerates that one meal and holds the rest of the plan where it is. The replacement is checked against your never-eat list, your diet style and your macro band before anything is written, and if no acceptable replacement comes back your original meal stays put rather than being replaced with something worse.

Where do the targets come from?

The calorie and macro targets already in your Loopa setup, calculated from your height, weight, age, sex, activity level and goal pace using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation. They are estimates from a population formula, not a prescription for you. The planner will not generate at all until a target is set, so it never plans against a placeholder. How the target is calculated.

How does the shopping list combine things?

Per ingredient and per unit family. Grams and kilos combine, millilitres and litres combine, and things measured differently stay on separate lines: 200 g of spinach and one bunch of spinach are two entries, because pretending to add them would be inventing a number. There is no package rounding, so it tells you what the recipes need rather than what a shop sells.

Does it know what I already have?

If you keep My Pantry up to date, items you already have are left off the list. The match is on the name, so it is generous rather than exact: “oil” in your pantry will take olive oil off the list too. Worth a glance before you shop.

Can I edit the shopping list?

You can tick items off as you go, and that is saved. Adding and removing lines is not supported yet; the list is generated from the plan, so changing the plan changes the list.

Can a family share one plan?

Not one plan, and that is deliberate. Everyone in a Loopa Premium Family has their own calorie targets and their own diary, so each person gets their own plan. What the household shares is the input: with the shared pantry switched on, all 6 of you plan against the same kitchen. Nobody can see anybody else’s food diary, weight or targets. Loopa Premium Family.

Can Loopa plan around a food allergy?

It filters your never-eat list out of everything it suggests, and it matches common derivatives, so milk also catches whey, casein and butter. Treat that as a filter rather than a clearance: ingredient information is not always complete, recipes get substituted, and Loopa cannot inspect what is actually in a jar. If you have a food allergy, check the ingredients yourself.

Put a week on the calendar

Meal planning is part of Loopa Premium. My Pantry and saved meals are free, so you can start filling in the kitchen list tonight either way.

Get Loopa free Free versus Premium

Start on Loopa Basic. This feature unlocks with Premium, at $12.99 a month or $69.99 a year.

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