Life    Meals

Meal Prep For Beginners: One Week At a Time

katie

Who here struggles to eat well unless the food is already prepared for you?

This was me a few years back. I would never be able to open the fridge and throw together a healthy meal. Cause let’s be serious… It’s a heck of a lot easier to grab something preprocessed, then it is to cook up a healthy meal. I started meal prepping when I started my fitness journey and although this did not last(the meal prepping, I mean!) , it definitely helped me get into the proper mindset about feeding my body healthy foods. Let’s learn a little bit on how to meal prep for the week!

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What Is Meal Prepping?

No question is a silly question! Meal prepping is just what it sounds like though: it is preparing some or all of your meals ahead of time. Pretty much it’s like a lunchable, except your ingredients are healthier and non processed. Usually when meal prepping, advanced preppers will cook for 5-7 days. When it comes to meal prepping, the sky is the limit! There are so many options for what you can make. Let’s simplify the process as much as we can with these simple steps.


meal prep for beginners

1. Pick Your Meal Prep Day

Meal prepping isn’t something that is just done in a matter of a half hour. Being that you are cooking for several days at one time, it can take a little time. When I was meal prepping, I personally took Sunday’s to be my cooking day, This way, my food was fresh for my Monday to Friday work week (yuck, people work those days?!)

2. Go Grocery Shopping

Like I said earlier, the sky is the limit when it comes to meal prepping. Before you begin meal prepping, make a grocery list. Whenever I go shop for groceries without a list, I always wind up bringing home either food that I didn’t go in for or I forget what I was even shopping for. When I meal prep, I always go for a meat or two, multiple vegetables, and a carb.


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3.Prepare Your Food

Meal Prepping can be as simple or as complicated as you want. It all comes down to how you want to season and cook your food. I am all about simplicity so here is how I go about meal prepping! I season my meat with either lemon pepper or Lowry’s. I season my vegetables with salt and pepper. And the carbs, I usually just leave alone.

Don’t get me wrong, I love cooking fancy foods but when it comes to meal prep, I like to get the job done and over with. Here is a great source for delicious meal prep recipes if you would like to try something different!

4. Cook Your Food

Remember how I said I like to keep my meal prep simple? Here’s another time that I enforce that rule. A trick that I learned that made all of my meal prep easy, is to cook all your food together. I bought industrial sized cookie sheets and even if I’m not meal prepping, I get so much use out of these!

Cover the cookie sheet with tinfoil (let’s stick with simple when it comes to dishes too, eh?). Put your vegetables of choice on one side of the sheet and your meat on the other side. I always meal prep at 400 degrees and adjust the time according to whatever I am making at the time. Use your own cooking habits at this point and you can’t mess up!

5. Divide and Put in Meal Prep Containers

I would not suggest using just any tupperware for meal prep. Meal Prep containers are nothing fancy. They just have divided sections so your food isn’t touching while being refrigerated for days at a time . I personally think when food touches long enough, it not only changes the taste of the food but, it also makes it soggy! Here is my recommendation for a great container!

Realistically, any divided container would do the trick to keep your food tasting fresh!

Let’s recap now.

Pick a great day to meal prep. Go grocery shopping and DO NOT FORGET YOUR LIST! Prepare your food with delicious seasoning. Cook your food (make sure to thoroughly cook the meat). Divide your food and seal it up tight! Easy as that!

Did I miss anything? Leave a comment with what you do the same or different! xoxo

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katie

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Comments

  1. Tanya says

    Great post! I meal prep on Sundays for the week, as I can spend time on other things and not worry about cooking.

    Thanks for sharing!

    Reply

  7. Naia says

    I love this! I would love to start meal planning! Just so I can have a mental break of figuring what I’m going to make for the next meal! Haha! Thanks so much for sharing!

    Reply