Eating healthy remains at the top of so many peoples’ lists, especially in the New Year or when there’s also a goal to lose weight or look and feel your best. One of the best ways to make sure you are eating healthy is to prepare your meals in advance. However, we all know how getting started with meal prepping in and of itself can feel so daunting and overwhelming compared to reaching for unhealthy meals and snacks, which seem easier to come by.
That’s why I’m sharing a guide for how to start prepping effectively so you can have a successful meal. These painless ways can help you take the load off of a busy week and remain consistent with your healthy eating goals while feeling proud and peace of mind.
How To Start Meal Prepping
Today I’m going to talk about what meal prepping is and how understanding what it is can empower you on your weight loss journey (if you are on one). I will also help you find the right strategies to get started effectively so you can find success using this true method and see long term results.
What Is Meal Prepping
Meal prepping as the name suggests is the act of preparing your meals or recipes in advance. For some, this could look like batch cooking your breakfast, lunch, dinner, or even snacks and pre-porting them out to create easy serving rated to heat and heat or grab and go. Others might also include Batch preparing the recipes ahead of time as a form of milk prepping, where they may gather and pre-cut the protein, garnishes, and sauce for example and back them altogether for an easy dump and go or freezer meal for later in the week.
Meal prepping serves as a time saver to help you go back on the amount of time you spend each day preparing food in the morning, during lunch, or dinner. It also empowers you to be able to take control of the ingredients you’re putting into your body in order to promote healthy eating.
What makes it effective is the fact that when most people make poor choices when it comes to the meals and snacks to consume, it’s usually only done for convenience. A lot of the time, it is easier to reach for a bag of chips or stop by a fast food restaurant on your way home because you don’t feel like cooking after a long day. This is the primary reason why meal prepping works and is effective for a healthy lifestyle.
What Are The Benefits Of Meal Prepping
There are other benefits to meal prepping. Here are just a few.
Save time
As I mentioned earlier, if you pick a day or two out of the week to cook all of your meals for the next few days or even for that week, then you can save yourself a lot of time. I’ve seen people batch burritos for the month, frozen waffles, or pancakes for breakfast. I’ve also seen people meal prep freezer meals like lasagna, soups, and chicken dinners.
Cut back on costs
It’s actually way cheaper to cook your meals at home and eat them than it is to pay for the convenience of eating out or even buying unhealthy snacks and junk food. I’m not saying you should never eat fast food again. Just not everyday or every week. You can significantly save time and money when you meal prep. The minute you learn how to meal prep on a budget, your weight, health, and wallet will be so glad that you did.
Eat healthier
When you plan meals out in advance, you’re more likely to choose whole foods you can cook and eat healthier foods overall.
Lose weight
Eating healthier more consistently by prepping your meals in advance could help make your weight loss journey a whole lot easier.
Eliminate food waste
Oftentimes fresh produce goes to waste in the refrigerator because it wasn’t pre-cooked in advance. The more we reach for junk food or choose takeout over the fresh ingredients we don’t feel like cooking that are already in our refrigerator, the more likely we are to be left with ingredients that spoil or go bad for lack of use.
Meal prepping can help eliminate food waste because we are choosing to cook our meals more at home and use the fresh ingredients that we purchased for that week.
How To Get Started With Meal Prepping
Step 1: Research meal ideas
The first step to meal prepping is meal planning. Getting started with meal prepping starts with researching the types of food you plan to eat. Are you wanting to stick to a keto diet? Paleo? Or just wanting to eat more whole and healthy foods in general? Also think about what you are going to eat for breakfast, lunch for work, and even snack ideas. Before doing anything, scroll back through those recipe ideas you saved on social media or in your phone to figure out where ideals or inspiration you want to incorporate into your diet this week.
Step 2: Hit the grocery store
Now that we know what ingredients we will be using this week or month, we can begin to build our grocery shopping lists for a trip to the grocery store. Some other nonfood items you might want to include on your grocery list include making sure you have relevant tupperware, freezer bags, mason jars, or other miscellaneous food storage supplies to keep your pre cooked meals and produce fresh.
Step 3: Begin batch cooking
A simplified approach to meal prepping is to simply begin batch cooking your favorite or go to meals, and then pre-portioning it out in single serving sized containers, making it easy to bring cooked meals to work with you or have available to heat and eat at home for days when you are busy. You can also try cooking 1 or 2 proteins at once, 1 or 2 vegetables, and 1 or 2 sides. Some great meal ideas to start meal prepping are chicken breasts, rice, and roasted vegetables. You might also try a stew or soup or even a large batch of a salad or pasta dish.
I also have these ground beef meal prep ideas and this list of ground turkey meal prep ideas you can try.
Step 4: Don’t forget your snacks
You will find that you will reach for fresh fruit and vegetables a lot more often when you have prepared ingredients already ready for you to eat in the fridge for example, when you buy your fruits and snackable vegetables like carrots and cucumbers or even broccoli, go ahead and rinse them, pre-cut them, and store them front and center in the fridge. you might even take a step further and pre-bag your prepared ingredients to easily toss in your lunch bag for busy days or to help make the pre-cooking process go a lot smoother. Some snack ideas you can pre-cook or prepare ahead of time at home include boiling eggs, washing berries, cutting up celery, cutting up broccoli, pineapples, watermelon, etc.
