The list is endless of why we don’t cook or feel like cooking when we get home from work – most of which is time! This is where meal prepping comes in handy! Here is your beginner’s guide to meal prepping!
Mondays are the worst day of the week for everyone. The last thing you feel like doing is packing your lunch that morning when you’re juggling getting ready for work and getting your kids ready for school or yourself if you are in college. And when you get home, you don’t feel like cooking, don’t have time because you have homework for your kids,your kids have sporting events, or you’re simply just tired. The list is endless of why we don’t cook or feel like cooking when we get home – most of which is time!
This is where meal prepping comes in handy! I’m sure you’ve heard this term before and it sounds intimidating, especially if you follow Instagram bloggers that post these elaborate meals. It seems like way too much time to even try it.
But, I’m about to give you an example of what your week could look like if you spend an hour and a half of your time to prepare your lunch for the week. If you take the time on Sunday to make your lunch, you’ll be able to make healthy meals and won’t have to worry about leaving work to go grab something to eat. This can also save you a lot of money! Typically, Sundays are a good day to do this if your schedule is Monday – Friday for work or school. If you have a different schedule, such as Friday-Tuesday then you’d choose Wednesday or Thursday to do this!
Pick 2 different meals that you want to eat for lunch. So say for example you want grilled/baked fish with green beans over rice. That’s a perfect meal that you can cook in less than 30 minutes between all three things and have plenty of food for the week. Let’s use this menu for 3 days of the week for lunch. So if it’s just you that means you season and cook 3 pieces of fish, steam a frozen bag of green beans (season them how you like once they are done), and cook a pot of rice. That pot of rice can also be used during the week for your dinner meals! This is saving you lots of time.
Now if you have a significant other that also needs meals for the week, you’d simply just double the amount you are preparing. Same prep time, just more to cook.
Put these in tub-aware and store in the fridge until you need them for work/school that week.
So now you have 3 days covered in 30 minutes. If you are like me and don’t like eating the same thing everyday, then you fix a second meal. So lets say that you want spaghetti for lunch some days. This is completely doable and your family can eat it for dinner Sunday night too! Take that spaghetti that you’ve cooked and measure it out to one cup portions in a tub-aware and if you have the kind that has a separation in the middle, put a salad on the other side or those green beans that you just cooked! If you don’t, put the salad or green beans in a separate container. You still have the three essential ingredients to make a good meal – vegetables, protein (meat in the spaghetti), and carbs (noodles in the spaghetti).
This now makes it 100 times easier for you to eat the right kind of food and portion it out for the week. I’ll be posting more soon about how to meal prep other items soon! Hope this helps you with at least one week worth of meal prepping!