Meal Prep for Real People
As you’re planning your own #kickyourasssunday, I want to share with you one of my favorite things to get done on the weekend that’s really helped me stick with my health goals while also taking stress out of my week: meal prep!
It can be really easy and tempting to get thrown off your healthy eating goals by daily life. Things come up, and let’s face it, it can be exhausting to come home, cook dinner, and prepare a lunch for the next day. It’s wayyy more fun to get a burger with coworkers at lunch, and later order UberEATS from the couch while you catch up on Netflix.
However, at the end of the week, your wallet is thinner and your waistline might not be.
That is where meal prepping comes in! Typically on Sundays, I plan and prepare all my meals for the week. Sometimes I’ll meal prep twice a week, on Wednesday and Sunday, if I want the meals to be a bit fresher throughout the week.
If you’re not sold on the idea of meal prepping, take a moment to consider the time you spend looking for or thinking about your next meal. Even deciding where you want and what you want to eat can take up a lot of time. These small increments of time can easily add up.
Not to mention, the process of ordering food, waiting, and/or going to pick it up can be extra time-consuming. Throughout the week, this can really add up and prevent you from getting other, more important tasks done. Meal prepping can help you prevent decision fatigue and other interruptions in your productivity.
The mindset of meal prep
If you aren’t exactly used to cooking or preparing any sort of meals ahead of time, don’t worry — I understand it can seem pretty difficult. Cooking can be pretty time-consuming, especially if you’re not accustomed to it.
But I want you to think of meal prepping in a different way. Even if you spend just 45 minutes a day making a trip to the grocery store, waiting in fast food lines, or even thinking about what to eat, you’re already spending more than 5 hours of your time.
If you spend about 3 hours on Sunday meal prepping, that is much less than the unhealthy habit of eating out. Meal prepping truly is a time saver.
In order to get into the meal prepping habit, you will most likely have to restructure your time. When you realize that your next few meals have already been thought out and cooked, it will be a huge relief!
If you are not currently much of a cook, I encourage you to start small. Start by grocery shopping for items that you can easily throw together, like sandwiches or pasta (this is my favorite pasta, btw). When you feel confident with that, you can grocery shop for the whole week or prep for just one meal of your day.
There are MANY different meal prep resources and programs out there that can help you out, but there are also tons of websites with recipes and different types of meal prep plans.
I would suggest looking at Pinterest, Instagram, or reddit to start.
Personally, I have been using Meal Mentor for years. It’s especially easy because none of the recipes take more than 20 minutes to make, and they’re all pretty healthy.
How to plan a week of meal prep:
First, I consider my schedule for the week or things that might affect a meal like dinner plans with friends, lunch meetings, or an evening networking event. I really am trying to figure out which times I will not need to prep a meal for.
Then, I count how many meals I will need for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
For example:
- 4 breakfasts (Monday — Thursday)
- 3 lunches (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday)
- 4 dinners (Monday — Wednesday, Friday)
Typically, for breakfast I like to make a large batch of something like baked oatmeal or breakfast tacos and eat it all week. Sometimes, I’ll do both, freeze half of each recipe, and alternate over the next two weeks which is extra time saving and gives more variety.
Lunch and dinner can be more difficult. In the example above, I would need 7 total lunches and dinners. I will usually keep the weekends open for social events, leftovers, or cooking on the fly because I have more time.
7 meals can seem pretty intimidating. This is where doubling up is really helpful and can add variety versus making one large recipe.
Let’s say I find 3 recipes that sound yummy, I now have 6 meals or servings. I then alternate meals so I’m not eating the same recipe 3 times in a row.
Sometimes for an extra meal, I’ll keep it simple and make a sandwich or eat a frozen meal. With this scenario, I am only making 3 recipes. If each recipe takes about 45 minutes plus making breakfast, I am only spending 3 hours to cook for the entire week! Not to mention, I only have to clean up once rather than cleaning up every evening after cooking.
Protip: I’ve found that glass containers and jars (I use these for salads) tend to keep things fresher for longer versus plastic.
Sample Meal Prep Schedule
Once I have my meals planned out and my recipes picked, I can write out all of the ingredients I need and head to the grocery store. You can also outsource grocery shopping by using services like Instacart and have your groceries delivered.
Now you can just spend a few hours on Sunday prepping meals while watching your favorite guilty pleasure TV show or listening to a podcast. This can help make meal prepping fun. So enjoy your #kickyourasssunday and the less stressful, and more healthy, week ahead!
Originally published at Lasting Momentum.
