Certified Fitness Trainer Explains | What The Prep Is Meal Prepping?
If I have heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. One of the biggest excuses clients give me for eating poorly is “I just don’t have the time.” So I finally decided to write an article on a great solution to this time-diet conundrum.
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What is it you ask? The answer to this 10,000 dollar question is… (dun dun dun) meal prepping! So what exactly is meal prepping? The short version is planning and preparing your meals for the week – though this can be tough on any scale big or small… there’s no right way to meal prep! For beginners, it’s best to try to prep 1-2 meals you can eat on throughout the week until you get more comfortable prepping larger amounts of food. Every little bit of prepping helps! Here are the top 3 tips that I have found helpful in my own meal prepping.
Grocery Shopping
Grocery shopping every week is so important. I personally will buy all my meats/proteins in bulk at Costco/Sams but as far as veggies and day-to-day needs go, I need to hit up the regular grocery store on a weekly basis. It ensures that your veggies are always fresh and also helps to give you a great idea on what you’re going to eat throughout the week. This is also where I put into effect a trick I learned in college when I was beyond busy (taking 21 units, working 20 hours a week, and doing a 30 hour a week internship)… Portion everything out for the week! The groceries are already out when you get home so why don’t you do something productive with them? As I’m putting my groceries away and organizing my fridge I create my “snack packs” for the week –bagging snack foods for easy grab-and-go portioned snacks, chopping my vegetables for easy to prepare meals, and creating shelf organization in my fridge so I have easy access to everything.
Breakfast
I’m not a morning person so when it comes down to sleeping an extra 30 minutes or preparing a delicious well-balanced meal, sleep is always going to win. A trick I’ve found for that is making my breakfast in advance so I get my beauty rest along with that delicious and easy meal. Overnight oats are usually my go-to because it’s so yummy and so convenient. These are my favorite 3 recipes because I get bored eating the same flavors over and over again and these are so different from one another.
Peanut Butter Banana Oats – http://www.organizeyourselfskinny.com/2014/06/19/peanut-butter-and-banana-overnight-oats/
Blueberry Oats – http://www.organizeyourselfskinny.com/2014/06/04/blueberry-almond-and-coconut-overnight-oats-oatmeal-in-a-jar/
Coconut Steal Cut Oats – http://www.organizeyourselfskinny.com/2013/02/14/clean-eating-coconut-steel-cut-oats/
Recipes
As far as choosing your meal prep recipes, stick to what you know. One of the worst things with meal prepping is spending all this time and energy planning and preparing a massive amount of this really amazing recipe you found on pinterest only to find out that it’s disgusting. My go-to’s are always the recipes that I know that I not only will eat, but will enjoy. I also try to choose my recipes based upon how many things I can do with the recipe. If I make a large batch of ground turkey taco meat, for example, I know that I can make salads, tacos, burritos, or even mix the taco meat in with eggs. This is a great way to still meal prep but not have to eat the same meal every night of the week, especially since the word “leftover” is a dirty word in some households.
I hope these 3 handy-dandy tips have helped you in your future meal prepping endeavors. Remember – meal prepping is whatever you make of it and every little bit will help you out with your week! Get Lifted!