Meal Prep Strategies: How to Make Healthy Eating Easier

Balancing a busy life and work schedule while also working toward your health and fitness goals can prove to be a challenging endeavour.

Fuelling your body with nutrient-dense foods that support your fitness goals is one of the most important aspects, good nutrition will not only fuel your workouts but also promote recovery and help build muscle. Finding time to cook healthy meals each day can often feel overwhelming and time-consuming, however, this is where meal prep comes into play. Organising and preparing your food in advance can help you maintain a healthy and balanced diet that supports your fitness goals while managing a busy schedule.

Mastering your meal prep can be a game-changer when you are already juggling family, work and social commitments with the gym. Meal prepping can save you time in the long run and ensures you have nutritious meals on hand. Helping eliminate the temptation to buy takeaway or reach for unhealthy snacks.

Meal prep needs to fit within your lifestyle and feel seamless to get the highest benefit out of it. Let's talk through some ways to streamline your meal prep routine to make it feel like a breeze:

Plan Ahead: Planning is the key to success when it comes to meal prep. Try to set aside 10-15 minutes each week to create a meal plan for the week ahead. This will help you know what you need to buy from the grocery shop which helps ensure you have all the necessary ingredients on hand and limits unnecessary purchases.

What to Consider: When planning your meals, ensure you consider your breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, as well as your nutritional needs, fitness goals, likes and dislikes. Try to ensure you have adequate protein, some simple carbohydrates for quick energy (ideal for pre-workout nutrition), complex carbohydrates for sustained energy and fibre, healthy fats, and don't forget your fruit and veg. You want to follow a meal plan that you actually like and one that consists of balance, so don't be afraid to add in a few treats during the week. We

Prepare: Once you have planned out your meals for the week, it's then time to actually meal prep. Put aside a couple of hours each week to prepare and cook your meals. Having a designated prep day can help set you up for a successful week. If you don't want to cook all your meals for the week on just one day a week, you could consider meal prepping half the week on one day and then the other half on another day. Make meal prep suit your schedule, your needs, and your preferences.

Batch Cooking: Consider the foods that you can batch cook. Meals like soups, stews, and casseroles are perfect to batch cook, portion out and store for quick and easy meals throughout the week. However, you don't need to cook every single meal in full for the entire week, some ingredients are best prepared fresh, so you could consider preparing the staples. Staple foods like grains (e.g. rice, pasta, quinoa) and protein (e.g. chicken, beef, tofu) can be ideal to cook in large batches. You can store them in the fridge or freezer for quick meals throughout the week.

Pre-Chop Your Veggies: Pre-chopping your veggies at the beginning of the week is a great time-saving hack. Store your vegetables in an airtight container.

Utilise Multi-Tasking Appliances: Consider investing in an appliance such as a slow cooker to help you cook meals and ingredients with minimal effort. This allows you to go about your day with other tasks while your meals are being prepared.

Invest In Proper Storage: Proper storage is essential to extending the shelf-life of your prepped ingredients and meals. If possible, opt for glass containers over plastic for storing your meals. Plastic containers can retain odour and can stain easily from certain foods, glass containers do not and are also eco-friendly and microwave-safe.

Label and Date Your Meals: Label your meal containers with the date you prepared them on and what is inside, this helps to avoid confusion and ultimately waste of prepped foods. This also helps you stay organised and know how long a meal or ingredient has been stored which ensures you are not consuming spoiled food.

Incorporate Meal Rotation: Try to keep things interesting by rotating your meals and trying out new recipes regularly, this helps prevent you from getting bored. Even experimenting with different herbs, spices, and marinades can make the same ingredients feel new and exciting again.

Reflect Each Week and Adjust If Needed: At the end of each week, take a few moments to reflect on what aspects of your meal prep worked and which didn't. This allows you to adjust your plan for the following week based on any challenges you faced or any preference adjustments you would like to make.

Family Meal Prep: If you have a family, you may like to consider making meal prep a family affair. Cook meals that the whole family can enjoy and actually cook the meals together. Make it fun and feel like less of a chore. It can also be a great way to encourage healthy eating habits for your kids.

In summary, meal prep can be a time-saving tool that helps you stay on track with your nutrition. Try incorporating the above tips and tricks and see how well they can integrate into your routine. You want meal prep to be as hassle-free as possible. With a bit of preparation, you will have nutritious meals and ingredients prepared and ready to go when needed.

If you are only just beginning your meal prep journey, start small and build on the above elements. Experiment with different strategies and find what works best for you and what works within your routine. You may start with preparing only a few ingredients, and before you know it, you'll be a meal prep pro!