Beginner's Guide to Meal Prep
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How to Do Proper Meal Prep: A handy guide for beginners |
 Ready to learn effective meal prep techniques and save time spent in the kitchen? This is a newbie's guide to preparing healthy meals or dishes ahead of schedule - a technique that will save you time, money, and help minimize stress. More importantly, Meal Prepping will help you be consistent with your health goals.Why meal prep?Meal prepping is ideal for people who are always on the go! Having pre-prepared meals not only saves you a significant amount of time, but it can also help in reducing portion sizes to get you closer to achieving your nutrition goals. When you already have prepped meals, you’ll get to dodge unhealthy options, like microwave dinners and takeout.Meal prepping is for everyone!Contrary to popular belief, meal prepping can be done in a variety of ways, and shouldn't require devoting your entire weekend to the process. That's not the point of prep! Prepping allows us freedom for our week. You can get as creative as you'd like, but simple is always better at the start.Batch Cooking AKA, your new best friend!Batch cooking is essentially preparing large batches of specific foods, to pull out and use throughout the week. This is typically used for dividing it into smaller portions to be frozen and/or eaten over the next few days, weeks, and in some cases, months.For example, try grilling 4 pounds of chicken breasts to be used in salads, bowls, or as a main course at dinner. Whole grains are great to bulk prep too, such as brown rice or quinoa, and are great options to have healthy grains ready to go throughout the week. You can add these to make healthy bowls for lunch, or add to breakfast as a great source of carbohydrates. Pre-chopping veggies will help you put together salads or snack boxes in a jiffy! Batch cooking can help save you money, too. Since you'll never have to worry about what to eat, you'll feel less compelled to buy food from restaurants, or order out with the rest of the oce sta.
Individually-Portioned Meals |
Using this technique, you would prepare whole recipes, then divide it into individual portions. This lets you have easy grab-and-go meals, perfect for quick lunches. With this method, you would only have to get the meal from your fridge and heat as you wish. Some examples of this would include slow cooker chili, Teriyaki Turkey Bowl, and Fajita bowls.
Prep and Cook
Block out time on your calendar to prepare your ingredients. With all the washing, peeling, and slicing you need to do, make this an enjoyable part of the process. Put on some upbeat music, get in your comfy yoga pants, and get chopping! Check your supermarket too, as many markets now have produce ingredients that have been cleaned, peeled, sliced, and are ready to be cooked. Precut ingredients are typically a little more expensive, but if it saves you time, it may be worth it. You get to choose!Once you get the hang of this process, it get's easier each week. You may find that there are super easy + fast combos you love to have on hand, or you may want to try new things each week. Regardless of what you choose, meal prepping will be a game changer when it comes to staying on track with your goals each week.
Happy Prepping!
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