Meal Prep 101: 5 Easy Steps to Prepping Your Meals
One thing that I’ve found has helped me to maintain a healthy and balanced diet (and sanity) while navigating work, the gym, socializing, and the endless tasty temptations of the city, has been meal prepping. It has saved me a lot of money and headaches when dealing with work week lunches and snacks. And while healthy options on the go are certainly available, abundantly so in NYC, I find that I still tend to feel better when eating home prepared food for a majority of my meals.
I know when you’re first starting out meal prepping can seem like a daunting and overwhelming task, so here are a few tips that I hope will help outline the process and make things easier!
Make your Menu
Grocery Shop
Set Aside Some Time To Batch Cook
Divide and Store
Don’t Forget to Pack It!
Make Your Menu
The first key step in carrying out meal prep is planning for it. Each week I’ll spend a few minutes sitting down and choosing what recipes or meals I’ll have for the week ahead. This makes it easy for me to see and anticipate exactly what I’ll need and generate a grocery list from my menu. To make it easy and keep myself organize, I’ve just created a simple Google Spreadsheet that I enter my meals/snacks for the week. Feel free to use my template as a start!
Grocery Shop
This step is pretty self explanatory, but just make sure to create a list of the items you need -- and don’t forget it at home when you go! I use Google Keep to make my list, but written out works just as well. This helps me to not only remember everything I need, but also keeps me from making a bunch of unnecessary extra purchases (often of the packaged snack variety).
Set Aside Some Time to Batch Cook
The hardest part of meal prepping is just making the effort to clear a few hours in your schedule every week to spend some time cooking and preparing your food. I typically do Sunday’s since I work a standard Monday - Friday week. If you are just starting out cooking, I would be generous and set aside 3-4 hours to dedicate to spend in the kitchen. The more you practice, the more efficient you’ll become. Think of it as an investment of your time; it will be well worth it when you don’t have to think about your lunches and snacks for the next five days! Tip: Don’t be afraid to take short cuts! Frozen veggies can be a life/time saver, and they’re just as nutritious as fresh produce — sometimes more so.
Divide and Store
Now that you have your meals all cooked - divvy it up into individual portions. The ubiquitous identical tupperware containers have become the standard face of meal prepping for a reason. If you get some that stack nicely, seal tightly, and are microwavable, your life will never be the same. I prefer glass or metal (just please don’t microwave the metal ones!).
Don’t Forget to Pack It!
Also self explanatory, but a surprisingly big part of the process. You’ve prepared your food for the week, now don’t forget to grab it as you’re heading out the door!
I hope you find some of these tips helpful! Leave a comment if you have any questions, thoughts, or give meal prepping a try!
X
Slim
