Nobody wants to live in the kitchen when trying to eat healthily, so developing a quick, efficient self-health meal system to your meals can be a game-changer to your health and wallet. So how do you meal prep properly, avoid the common mistakes of meal prepping and make it quick, easy and most importantly tasty?
What is Meal Prepping?
Meal prepping is simply making or ‘prepping’ your meals ahead of time. That can mean creating a weekly list of recipes or meals you plan to eat, or preparing one part of your meals ahead of time like cutting up veggies or cooking protein, or full meals packed and ready to be consumed.
Type of meal prepping can include:
- Full meals made ahead of time: Where you cook the meal and store it in a container in your fridge or freezer.
- Batch cooking or freezing: When you make a few portions of the same meal ahead of time. This is efficient for soups, chilli con-carne, or one-pot wonders.
- Ingredient prep: When you pre-prepare parts of a recipe. This could be cutting up all your veggies, or washing and having all your salads ready, or cooking all your proteins in advance to save time, and just assembling it when you’re ready.
So, Why Would You Bother Meal Prepping?
If you feel like you’re always chasing your tail, have a really busy schedule, want to save money or reduce your waste footprint, meal prepping is for you.
I like to food prep because as a Type A, it gives me total control over what goes in my meals—and is perfect for anyone who wants to stay on track with their health goals. It can also take out the mental energy that goes into thinking about every meal you are going to eat that day, especially if you haven’t done a shop and are scrambling to put something together at 8pm at night (after a bottle of wine…..). Yep, we’ve all been there!
Meal prep can help women who are timing their macros properly or trying to cut down on how much time they spend in the kitchen.
Prepping meals is also a great way to avoiding those end of the week slumps where you get home and order UberEats because you just CBF. I also find prepping out meals gives you better portion control in what you do eat, especially if you’re eating it outside of the house.
I recommend:
Figuring out your unique self-health meal prep system will save you time, money and be a positive step in your health.
What Foods Should I Prep With?
You can meal prep anything that doesn’t wilt and tastes okay after a few days in the fridge.
This includes:
- Cooked protein such as chicken, beef, eggs, pork, tofu.
- Roast vegetables such as pumpkin, sweet potato, parsnip, cauliflower.
- Soups such as pumpkin, cauliflower, minestrone etc
- Casseroles, stews or baked dishes.
- Any raw vegetables providing they don’t wilt or go funky. Good options are cut up carrots, capsicum, steamed cauliflower, brussel sprouts and broccoli.
- Avoid any soft vegetables like squash, eggplant and spinach.
- Anything crunchy will also lose it’s crispness and go soggy.
The best meals are usually simple, so try a few that you know and love and you can add to your repertoire of go-to meals as you go along. So how do you get started?
To get the benefits of meal prep, you just need a plan, a few containers to store your meals in and some allocated time to cook your meals. I find that the women I coach that set aside even 30 minutes a week to do this, are much more successful in achieving their health goals, whilst feeling a lot more calm and in control.
Here are the most common mistakes when it comes to meal prepping:
1. Thinking Your Meals Have To Be Fancy
The key to meal prep is the KISS approach. Keeping it simple, stupid!
Making one-pot wonders, casseroles or a big match meal allows you to focus on one dish that can be batch made, frozen into portions and feed you multiple times over.
What I see often is analysis paralysis, when you want to make your meals fancy and don’t know what to make and end up doing nothing because it seems to intricate and difficult.
I recommend:
Avoid the temptation to get sucked into making fancy meals, that require you to be slaved to the stove all day. You’ll do it once and never meal prep again.
Choose 1-2 meals to focus on. Too many recipes can complicate things unnecessarily, and again – you’ll be tempted to never do it again!
2. Meal Prepping The Wrong Macros
Depending on your health goals and where your hormones and metabolism are at, you’ll need meals that have different macronutrients in them to give you energy in the afternoon, get rid of cravings, keep you satisfied and fire up your metabolism.
It’s easy to make a big bowl of salad for lunch, or can of tuna but it won’t hit your essential nutritional needs and will make you snack more, get brain fog or low energy, you’ll have trouble concentrating and you’ll set yourself up to cravings.
I recommend:
Make sure you get enough of the right macronutrients at the right time for your unique metabolic needs. If you’re not sure how to do that, my 14 Day Metabolic Connection Challenge gives you a step-by-step process to do exactly that, to identify your unique metabolic needs when it comes to losing weight, getting rid of bloating and increasing your energy.
3. Cooking meals you hate
Make recipes you know you enjoy—simple, yet so overlooked! If you love the recipe, then you’ll be more likely to eat it, rather than ordering UberEats.
I recommend:
Sticking to meals you think are tasty AF that you look forward to eating. That way you are likely to eat them and ward off the temptation to just order in instead and waste food in the process.
4. Not making enough / Making too much
One of the most common errors, but it happens all the time! Make sure you prep enough food for the week, keeping in mind the amount of people (if you’re cooking for kids or a family also).
I like to count out the meals I’ll be eating at home and outside of the home for the coming week. If I have an event on, am travelling or will be at dinner with friends, I make sure I have an appropriate meal for those times, or not make double if I cant freeze it.
Note: A big consideration for me is also which meals I’ll reheat. Will I only have access to a microwave at mealtime, or can I use a stovetop or oven? Consider recipes that you can eat cold so you don’t have to nuke your food to enjoy them.
Here Are My Top 3 Steps to Meal Prep:
1. Get the goods
Having the goods in the house is the first step to successful meal planning.
That means both the ingredients for your meals, but also good quality food storage containers to keep prepared food hot or cold. I use thermal, stainless steel or glass containers for cold meals as they are durable, non-toxic and convenient.
If you’re struggling with your weight, one underlying factor can be oestrogen-mimicking chemicals leaching into food through reusable plastic containers because of the carcinogenic BPA in them, (even BPA-free plastics can contain these chemicals and mess with your metabolism!).
I recommend:
Creating a staples list that you can revert to in making your staple meals each week
Investing in a few glass or stainless steel containers, soup canisters and travel mugs. These are reusable and last for ages!
2. Plan your ingredients and recipes
With a few simple staple recipes, you can then plan out the rest of what you’ll cook for the week based on your schedule and commitments that particular week.
By creating a list of ingredients in what you need for those recipes, you can make a grocery list to have on hand, making your trip or online order less impulsive, quicker and more streamlined.
I recommend:
Allocating one day each week you do a meal and ingredient list prep. This should not take you longer than 15-20 minutes.
Choose a collection of meals you’re happy to eat as your staple go-to’s as the base of your weekly meal prep. Then build out your additional meals, identifying any additional ingredients you might need.
3. Schedule Time To Meal Prep
Failing to plan is planning to fail. Yes, with the risk of sounding cliché, this is by far the most important step in meal prepping like a pro.
Schedule the same day each week to prep your meals, which is easier to create a habit out of.
I meal prep for the week on Sundays, as that way the ingredients are in the house and there a little bit more time to batch a few meals, but the best time is the one that works for you.
I recommend:
Putting a time in your diary as any other appointment to meal prep.
Identifying any other moving parts, whether that’s additional help (isn’t that what children are for?), ingredients or kitchen appliances you need.
I would now love to hear from you, have you got a meal prepping system you use and love? The best conversations happen in my Empowered Women’s Self-Health Revolution on Facebook or comment below and if you want to work out your unique metabolic needs, to fire your metabolism, optimise your energy and get rid of cravings then my upcoming 14 Day Metabolic Connection Challenge gives you a step-by-step process to begin to build your own self-health system using evidence based protocols with the support and accountability you need to finally see results.
With all my love,
Anna xo