What is Meal Prepping?
Meal prepping is preparing your meals ahead of time so that you save time and avoid making unhealthy choices when you’re so hungry you don’t have time to cook a nutritious meal.
Meal prepping was something that I wanted to do for a long time but I just felt too overwhelmed to get started.
It’s not as hard as you might think it is.
And there are so many benefits to meal prepping:
- Save time
- Save money
- Reduce waste
- Healthier meals
- Less stress
How To Get Started
Come Up With A Plan
Ideally meal prepping won’t just be for dinners.
You can prep your breakfasts and lunches too.
So get out a spreadsheet or a piece of paper and create a meal plan for the week.
What types of food do you want for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
How can you combine meals?
If you roast a chicken, how many other ways can you use it? Chicken salad for lunch? Or a chicken wrap?
Choose A Day
Which day makes sense for you to prep your meals?
Friday evening because you have a busy weekend and work during the week?
Saturday or Sunday so you’re all set for the week?
Find Recipes
So now that you know what day you’re cooking and prepping and what types of meals you’d like to eat, go out and search for some recipes to try.
I like using Pinterest for this. It’s so easy to create boards for types of chicken recipes or lunch recipes.
Get Started
Start Simple
If you want to get into a routine with meal prepping, it’s better to start out simple and make this process as easy as possible.
Don’t try and cook something that you’d never made before.
Try some recipes that you’ve done before or you’re just making a small change to.
Meal Prepping Tools
CrockPot
A crockpot can make your life so much easier in general but especially with meal prepping.
You can have one meal cooking all day in the slow cooker and be preparing two other dinners on the stove and in the oven.
Having a crockpot can make multitasking and getting the full week’s worth of food prepared so much easier.
Durable Containers
If you’re getting started with meal prepping, it’s important to buy good containers.
What to look out for:
- Freezer safe
- Dishwasher safe
- Reusable
