I've never really meal planned and I don't know many people who do. At least not in the sense of having an exact menu worked out for the week. I couldn't stand the boredom of working it all out and the boredom of eating it.
All I do is pick 7 main ingredients, say chicken for two nights, mince for 1 night, pork chops for one night, tuna for one night, eggs for one night and stewing steak for another.
Then I make sure my store cupboard has plenty of tins of tomatoes, pulses, rice, pasta, flour, and I've got a decent range flavourings like tabasco sauce, dried chillis, dried herbs.
Add 'enough' veg for 7 days. Onions, garlic, potatoes, peppers, frozen peas and sweetcorn are basics we always keep a good stock of. Then I'd add in extra veg I fancy, enough for another one or two per day (not all different ones each day!), so a cauliflower, a big bag of carrots, runner beans, punnet of mushrooms, and salad.
The meat goes in the freezer. Each morning I decide what to make out of what's there, get the meat out, and that's it. It depends on what we fancy. I never waste any food, it all gets eaten, although sometimes we end up with a slightly random selection of ingredients and have to think of something weird and wonderful like Ready Steady Cook, but it's more interesting that way. But as long as you've got your basics like tinned toms, potatoes, pasta, rice, you can make a meal with anything. Even basic meat and two veg is fine a lot of the time, you don't always have to be cooking 'things' like lasagne or pies or Morrocan tagines etc.
This time of year probably twice a week we have salad and picky stuff like ham, eggs, anchovies, olives, cheese, hummous and pitta, nachos with melted cheese on, tinned fish, smoked mackerel, cold meats left over from previous meals. Not all in one meal of course.