Let’s be honest, you’re busy and you’re not always going to feel like cooking when you get home from your job or maybe you’re just beat after crushing that workout. There is a solution to sticking to your goals: meal prep! I know what you’re thinking I don’t even know where to begin, or how am I going to do that? Take a deep breath, we’re going to get through this.
You may have an image of meal prepping being something where you carry all of your food with you 24/7, truth is it’s what you make it! The driving thought behind meal prep is to make sure you have a healthy snack or meal waiting for you when you get home or have a craving. This helps you to cut down on the take-out food and pre-packaged foods which will reduce the amount of salt and extra calories you are consuming to help prevent hypertension and heart disease.
Here’s some simple tips on how to get started!
- Organize yourself: Figure what nights you will be out late, what days you are going to be super busy. This will help you get an idea of how much food you would have to prep. From here you can meal plan of what you would like to eat.
- It’s time to round up your supplies! To store your food you can use Tupperware or glass containers to store and carry your food. When shopping for your ingredients, try to stick to going to the store once per week. Not only will this save you time for other activities but it’ll help to reduce impulse purchases and it’ll save you money!
- Since you may just be starting out, keep it simple and start small; practice by meal prepping a couple meals a week Meal prep can be overwhelming, you to build your skills up gradually and eventually you will be a natural!
- The final step is cooking your meals in advance. This will require you to set aside some time to cook the food. This can be done all on one day or you can break it up to two days (personally, I like to do it all on one day to get it out of the way). Now that you have cooked your food just remember that you don’t have to prepare every meal!
