Meal Prep 101 - Tips and Tricks
As cliche as it sounds, if you fail to plan you’re planning to fail, this is very much the truth when it comes to nutrition.
I find that nutrition becomes much easier when you have food readily available to you. It doesn’t even have to be fancy meal prep like what you see on your favorite influencer’s page. It can be as simple as baking a couple pounds of chicken to have for the week, having frozen broccoli in the freezer, and having precooked rice in a plastic container. An hour or two on a Sunday afternoon can go a long way to keep your adherence high on any diet.
We all know what happens when its 9:00 pm and you’re just getting off work, you’re starving, and you realize you don’t have anything cooked at home. You wind up taking a quick detour to the nearest fast food establishment and there goes your adherence out the wind all because you didn’t prioritize prepping food ahead of time. Don’t let this happen anymore, take ownership for your actions and set yourself up for success.
Tips and Tricks
Get yourself an air fryer - I recently have found the air fryer to be useful when prepping carb sources. One of my favorite ways to use the air fryer is to make fries. I will cut up a potato into strips, spray with pam spray, season to taste, and cook at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. These can easily be cooked in bulk and saved in the fridge for a couple days if need be.
Frozen over fresh veggies - Some might argue that fresh is always better. Well I’m going to argue saving time is better and not having veggies rot in the fridge after a couple days is even better. The nutritional content of fresh vs. frozen veggies is pretty much the same, so I most of the time go with frozen as they’re a lot more convenient when meal prepping.
Label your meals with the macros - Back in high school, I prepped my lunches for the week almost every Sunday. I was strictly weighing and tracking everything, so it was important for me to know the exact macros of each meal. A simple trick I would do is take a sticky note and write the weights of all the foods in the plastic container, so all I had to do was input the information into MyFitnessPal for that day.
Canned meat and pre packaged rice - This combination is quite possibly one of the quickest meals you can put together if you’re out and about. I like to always keep a couple cans of tuna and Uncle Ben’s rice in the pantry just in case I need to grab something and run out the door. As weird as you might look, you can stop by a gas station and use their microwave to heat up the rice and tuna in 5 mins or less.
Individual serving peanut butter and nuts - Peanut butter and nuts can make a great snack or an easy way to add flavor to a meal. One thing to keep in mind with these foods is they’re higher in calories for the amount of food you get thus make sure you’re measuring out portions before hand. I’ve seen it time and time again where clients will snack on nuts all throughout the day because they’re “healthy”. Yes, nuts are healthy, but that doesn’t negate the fact they still contain calories. An easy way to keep this from happening is by weighing out portions before hand and putting them into baggies/cups. (write the weight/macros on the bag/cup for easy tracking) There are also 100 calorie packs of nuts or the serving size pouches of peanut butter that you can purchase as well.
Links to Items I Like For Meal prep
All in all taking a couple hours on Sunday will make a world of a difference for your adherence with any diet. If you found this post helpful share it with a friend, so we can all get the results we want with the least amount of headache.
I will be opening up a couple spots for new online clients to start August 1st. If you’re tired of spinning your wheels and want to take your training and nutrition to the next level. If this sounds of interest to you let’s jump on a call to answer a few questions and see if we’d be a good fit to work together.
