How to Start Meal Prepping (Without It Taking Over Your Life)

When you get serious about your fitness goals, the first step is usually getting your diet in order. You want to get enough protein to support your muscles, fruits and vegetables for health, carbohydrates for fuel, and a total amount of calories that supports your activity and goals without overeating or overeating. Preparing your meals in advance (“meal prep”) really helps with this.

But meal prepping has its pitfalls. Maybe you’ll get bored with your meals. Or maybe you won’t even make it that far and will burn out just from the mental and physical effort it takes to prepare an entire week’s meals at once. With that in mind, here are some beginner tips to get you started in the process with your sanity intact.

Why Meal Prepping Helps (And Why It Fails)

Meal prepping helps achieve many health and fitness goals because it separates the task of deciding what to eat from the action of putting food in your mouth. If you want to consume 30 grams of fiber each day, you can prepare meals that total that much, and as long as you eat those meals, you know you’re meeting your goal. If you doesn’t Meal prep, it would be much easier to grab takeout or snack on whatever is in front of you rather than considering how each meal fits into that overall goal.

When you meal prep, you don’t really have to decide what to eat for lunch. Just grab a container from the fridge and heat up what’s in it. There’s nothing better than this convenience, and preparation ensures you stay on track with your plan. A bodybuilder who eats the stereotypical chicken and broccoli for lunch daily may be bored with his meals, but he also knows how much protein he’s consuming without even thinking about it. (Of course, you’ll make something tastier.)

There are two main reasons why meal prep can go wrong. The first is that you prepare meals very well, but you don’t actually eat them. This can happen if your food doesn’t taste good, doesn’t store well, or if you’ve made more than one and are tired of it. The other is that you just don’t have the courage to prepare all those meals. If it takes you all day to cook a week’s worth of cooking, you might decide after a few weeks that you’d rather spend your Sundays making something, anything, else. The steps below will help you avoid both of these pitfalls. Read this and you will prepare meals that you to want eat without exhausting yourself.

Start meal prepping with a must-have breakfast

Before you start preparing anything, let’s get started planning. Most of us are okay with eating the same breakfast every day, and chances are you already have a few favorite breakfasts that you can whip up quickly before you fully wake up.

The first step is therefore to offer a breakfast adapted to your macros and easy to prepare. We’re taking baby steps here, so don’t worry too much preparation this in advance. Just make sure it will ready when breakfast time arrives.

For example, your breakfast might consist of yogurt and fruit. It’s pretty simple: buy yogurt and fruit. In the morning, you can combine the two. Or you can prepare something the night before and have it on the way out. A smoothie in a jar is perfect: just shake it in the morning and it’s ready to drink. (Don’t use ice, as ice melts, but frozen fruit is fine.) Or for another option, I like to make Bircher muesli two servings at a time, as each requires half an apple. So Sunday evening, I will prepare the jars for Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday evening I will make another pair.

Register your take-out containers

When you start preparing your dinners and lunches, you’ll need something to put them in. While cute little bento-style Tupperware may look nice, you may decide that you don’t really want all those divided containers. Or the boxes you buy may turn out to be the wrong size once you start filling them. Save time and money by selecting one or two types of takeout containers that you have in abundance and save them each time you receive them. I like rectangular dishes and round quart soup containers.

Once you’ve figured out what you like, I admit it’s convenient to buy containers. Here’s a new pack of 50 of these rectangular containers, to save you the hassle of having to eat 50 takeout meals first. And if, unlike me, you like to prepare your lunches bento style, you can get divided containers. (I like eat bento lunches, but it’s work finding something to fill each compartment. It’s much easier to make an all-in-one dish that fills the container all by itself.) I’m too clumsy to be trusted with glass containers, but maybe you’re not. These are more expensive than the options above—around $5 each, while the semi-disposable ones were more like 50 cents—but they’ll last forever if you take care of them.

As you gather your supplies, be sure to grab a Sharpie and some masking tape. Label each meal, even if it’s a simple reminder like “PASTA” or “CHICKEN,” so you can distinguish your lunches. If you’re cooking for multiple people, you can also add names.

Only commit to one meal at a time

Once you get into the habit of eating your scheduled breakfast every day, the next step is to choose a second meal. For most of us, this will be lunch. This way you take care of your first two meals and are still free to plan the dinners you want. (It’s okay if you never get past this point.)

I also recommend, at least initially, not plan seven days at a time. Since I work Monday through Friday, I like to prep my meals during the week and then prep them on the weekend. (For me, a weekend menu usually includes my usual breakfast, some sort of salvaged meal from leftovers, and maybe a takeout meal or two.)

For your first foray into cooking this week, I recommend finding a recipe that makes three servings. Two of these recipes will get you through the work week with one to spare. You can even alternate the two meals.

An important food safety tip: Meals prepared on Sunday will not be in their best shape on Saturday. I recommend choosing one of the following strategies:

1. On Sunday, prepare a dish and share it for meals on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday; then on Wednesday evening, prepare another three-serving dish for the second half of the week. You’ll eat the same lunch “every day,” but only for three days before switching to something different.

2. On Sunday, prepare your two dishes so you can alternate. Choose three of the meals to put in the freezer (one or two from each recipe). Then, on Tuesday or Wednesday, take them out of the freezer to start defrosting. If a dish is still slightly frosty at meal time, simply microwave it a little longer.

Meal prep with recipes you already love

Ready to start preparing that first meal? Wait: have you chosen a recipe that you actually, I like? I’m not asking if it looks good in the photos. The ideal meal prep recipe is something you’ve not only eaten in the past, but also one that you have an idea of ​​how it reheats.

This means you can stay off recipe sites for now. Choose an old favorite; you can experiment later. And if you’re ever tempted to prepare, say, a month’s worth of food on your meal prep day, certainly try this exact recipe in a one-week batch first.

Be lazy when preparing your meals

Honestly, this is my most important tip. When I first started meal prepping, I would spend an entire Sunday afternoon shopping and cooking. My feet hurt and my other household chores remained unfinished. No time or effort was saved; it has just been moved.

Since then, I have been better. Everyday meal prep is not the time to create complex recipes from scratch! My most successful meal preps are those that use simple recipes (two or three ingredients and just a few minutes of practice) or that incorporate foods that are already somewhat prepared.

For example, for a while, one of my favorite meal preps was to buy two bags of Trader Joe’s chimichurri rice (sadly discontinued) and a pound of ground beef, reheat each one appropriately, and combine them. The job was done in just 15 minutes, and I then had four lunches a week, each of which fit perfectly into one of those round soup containers. Did I care that Mr. Joe got half the credit for my culinary skills? I didn’t do it.

A roast chicken is another handy time saver. One brisket can top each of two salads, then I chop the dark meat along with any remaining white meat scraps and use them in 2-3 other dishes.

Even when cooking from scratch, finding ways to be more efficient isn’t cheating. Buy frozen vegetables, as they are already chopped. Get a rice cooker if you use rice for a large portion of your meals. If you would like to use a special homemade sauce or condiment, please allow yourself A labor-intensive item and make sure your other tasks are simple.

For example, most foods from the animal and plant kingdoms can be thrown on a griddle and roasted. I’ll buy frozen fish and fresh or frozen vegetables (both very healthy options, sometimes more so than fresh), then roast a tray of each with the appropriate seasonings. (Olive oil and garlic salt are great for broccoli or, to be honest, with any vegetable.) Chicken tenders marinated in mayonnaise are another protein option that goes with anything and can be made in bulk. Thanks to the extra humidity, they heat up superbly well.

You get the idea: Make a lazy meal, don’t make more than you’re actually going to eat, and pack it in the containers you already have on hand. Don’t expect everything to be perfect at first; you will refine your workflow over time.