Meal Prepping and 10 Tips to Help You Succeed Pt. 1
Meal Prepping? Isn’t that what body builders do to make sure they have their broccoli, boiled chicken, and brown rice?
Do you really think I have time to spend 8 hours in the kitchen on my day off to make my meals for the week?
I get it. Meal prepping can be overwhelming and with a busy schedule, it can be difficult to find a big chunk of time to prepare meals for you and your family for the week. And yes, many body builders implement meal prepping in order to stay on track with their aspirations. But we all have aspirations don’t we? Meal prepping can be a great tool to help you reach your goals whether they are aimed towards making healthier food choices, spending less on eating out, or utilizing your time in the kitchen better. Meal prepping can also be a great way to get the family involved and in the end, saves you time during the week so you aren’t struggling to get something on the table last minute.
So what is meal prepping?
Meal prepping is a style of cooking where you plan and prepare meals or portions of meals ahead of time. It gives you the support of knowing you are consuming appropriate portions, with ingredients you love, in a more thoughtful way than just reaching for whatever is close out of convenience.
The beautiful thing about this tool? It can absolutely be as intensive as you want it.
Some people find it works best for them to set aside anywhere from 2-8 hours, one day a week, to prepare their meals. For others, it’s just not possible to spend that much condensed time all at once so an hour or two a couple times a week makes more sense. For me personally, I have found that cooking during the week, while taking Sundays to plan out meals and do the grocery shopping works well.
So I have compiled 10 tips and tricks to help you navigate the world of meal prepping in hopes you’ll find what works best for you! Be sure to check out Meal Prepping Pt. 2!
Tip #1 Shortcuts
Your time is money. If you have the financial flexibility to buy pre-cut, pre-spiralized, pre-washed items at the grocery, do it. Yes ideally we would all be buying from local farmers markets every weekend, soaking our own beans and collecting our eggs for the week, but if that just isn’t a possibility for you,
take the pressure off yourself,
and let the grocery store help you out. By cutting out some of the prep time all together, you save yourself sanity and may end up choosing to cook at home where you would have thrown up your hands and gone out to eat.
Tip #2 Utilize your time and equipment
Is your oven on? Do you have space for another sheet pan? If you are in the kitchen already cooking, and you have the oven up to temp and ready to go, put on your efficiency mind set and get as much stuff in there as you can. This is where planning comes in well. If you know you need roasted carrots for another meal, throw them in with your chicken breast for dinner tonight, or put the oven at a temperature where you can bake your casserole and salmon on a separate tray at the same time. The same goes with washing and chopping.
If you are getting out the cutting board, go ahead and pull out all your vegetables for the week.
Wash and trim all your produce all at once and save 20 minutes on your next meal. This is also a great way to have some healthy snacks prepared when you want to reach for something quick.
Tip #3 Batch Cooking
This semi goes with Tip #2. Batch cooking is a restaurant term meaning you prepare large portions of certain items, and then mix and match them with different items through out the week to make different meals. An example could be roasted vegetables. Say you roast 3 sheet pans of mixed vegetables.
One night those vegetables go along side a protein, another night they get mixed into a casserole, and another night they get thrown in with some pasta creating 3 different meals, with 1 staple ingredient.
This can be very helpful as it can lower food waste, keep portion sizes appropriate, and saves a ton of time and energy. Batch cooking your proteins can all go the same way!
Tip #4 Delegate
It’s amazing what can get done with an extra set of hands. Even those not “cooking inclined” can be a big help, because it’s one less thing you have to do. Kids can be a great help washing produce, loading the dish washer, or breaking and tearing produce into smaller pieces.
By delegating out jobs, you are able to shorten the amount of time in the kitchen and create a great learning experience.
Maybe you enjoy cooking but hate grocery shopping, delegate! Make this process enjoyable and ask for help. In my house, I grocery shop while my husband cleans, this way they both get done in 1/2 the time of one person doing it.
Tip #5 Recipe File
Most people now a days don’t have a little wooden box with their worn down recipes cards stacked neatly ready to go. We DO however have wonderful resources for recipe ideas and inspiration. So here is what has helped me; throughout the week if I see a recipe that looks good, or an idea that sparks my interest, I’ll save the post on Instagram, or add it to my meal prep folder on Pinterest.
This gives you an arsenal of recipes to choose from when you don’t know what to make and to go back to when you want to make something again.
Pinterest is great for when all you can think of is..chicken. So type in chicken into the search box, lower your search down, and voila! Meal ideas! You can also type in “meal prep recipes” into Pinterest for a ton of different recipe ideas, along with more tips and tricks.