Most moms don’t want to fuss around with spices and sauces after a long day working and taking the kids to various activities. Instead of ordering takeout or prepared supermarket foods, meal prepping is convenient, creates healthy habits, and saves you time.
Quit wasting hours making meals every night of the week. Use your Sunday evenings to prepare breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the whole week. Your family will have an easy time grabbing their meal without a hassle. It’s hard for busy families to sit down together for meals with everyone’s different schedules. With meal prepping, a healthy and filling meal is ready for a family sit down.
Meal Prepping is simply preparing all of your meals ahead of time. It helps save you time while also ensuring you eat healthier foods more often with the appropriate portion sizes. This also prevents you from grabbing a quick, easy processed or prepackaged meal after a stressful day. The main goal of meal prepping is to have healthier foods ready to eat when you want to eat them.
How to get started with Meal Prepping:
If you are a beginner, do not get too overwhelmed. Sticking to the basics does you more good than getting stuck on every detail. Start small and work yourself up to becoming a pro at prepping your weekly meals. It can be easy to add too many new things at once, but it’s just as easy to lose your gusto once you get started.
The first thing you should do when it comes to meal prepping is pick a day to prepare all of your meals. Most people find Sunday the most ideal day because you may be off work. Your kids are also home from school, so the whole family can help out if you need the extra hands.
Next, you need to decide which meal you want to prepare first. For those with a family, prepping dinner first might be the place to start and put most of your efforts. If you are single or only prepping for two people, making breakfast or lunch meals right away may be easier.
When planning exactly which meals you want to cook or prepare, think about how you want to create a balance in each of the meals. For example, if you are trying to reach macronutrient goals (protein, fats, and carbs), then the recipes you choose should reflect those numbers. To provide even more accurate information, keep track of calories each meal has. Using a kitchen scale can help you measure and distribute parts of your meal evenly.
Once you have finished preparing your meals, the last step is to divide everything up and put it in containers. Using proper meal prep containers is a very important step that many overlook. You did all that work to prepare vegetables, fruit, sauces, chicken, and so on for you or your family to enjoy. Do not just toss it into a container and make it look like a pile of goop.
Just like you may have certain characteristics you look for in that special someone, there are specific things you want to look for in your meal prep containers. Having containers that are airtight with divided sections makes your food stay fresher for longer. In addition, it’s essential your containers are BPA free, which means it is safe and microwaveable. Purchasing containers that are clear and all the same size will allow you to see what is in each container. It also makes stacking containers in the fridge or freezer a breeze. In summary, you want containers that are: BPA free, microwavable, freezer safe, dishwasher safe, stackable, and reusable.
A few extra tips:
- When starting to meal prep for the first time, focus on simple meals. For example, chicken is a favorite among a lot of meal preppers because it can be cooked in different ways and is easy to store and freeze.
- Multitasking is key to being efficient with your time. If you can learn to cook a lot of different things at once, you can get done with meal prepping for the week in just a few hours.
- Have fun with it! Cooking can be a great task to complete with your family, try new foods, or learn new skills in the kitchen.
By meal prepping, you can cook once and enjoy satisfying and healthy meals and snacks for the whole week!
