Meal Prepping Tips for Beginners

Meal prepping is basically preparing your meals for the week or ahead of time. This is actually a good practice for those who always have a busy schedule and have no time to prepare their food between household duties and work. What’s great about meal prepping is that you have more control on what to serve yourself or your family. This means that you are in a much better position to choose what goes in your belly wisely, plus, it will prevent you from consuming foods that are not really good for your health.

So how do you go on about meal prepping anyhow? Here are a few tips to help you get started.

Choose a day 

You don’t really have to feel overwhelmed with the idea of preparing your meals ahead of time and you don’t need to panic when you can’t start immediately. The best approach would be to choose a day where you don’t have much work to do so that you will be able to focus more on what kinds of food to cook or prepare for the week. You can always set aside 2 days for prepping meals such as Sunday and Wednesday. You can start by preparing meals for a few days only so as not to feel overwhelmed. 

Wash and prepare fruits immediately 

A good rule of thumb when preparing or handling fruits is to wash them immediately after buying them. Once the water has drained, you should pack them in air tight containers as you would a salad to maintain their freshness. This way, you can always bring them with you to your office or eat them in between meals so you won’t be tempted to munch on chips and other calorie laden foods. 

Pick your meals 

This is going to be the tricky part when prepping meals. If you are preparing for your family, then dinner will most likely a good place to start. Of course, if you are single, you can consider breakfast and lunch as the best starting point for your meal preparations. Once you have decided which meal to prepare, the next step would be to consider how you are going to balance your meal. 

Roast veggies at the same time 

Roasting vegetables is one way to prepare these nutritious foods so why not kill two or more birds with one stone? You can roast some beets and sweet potatoes for 40 to 60 minutes in the oven then throw in some cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and other vegetables on the last 30 minutes of baking time. 

Use the right containers 

Here is another tip that you should really follow. Using the right containers is quite important when it comes to prepping meals because you don’t want one meal contaminating the other. This is why you will need to look for airtight containers or containers that have compartments that will prevent spillage. 

Cook grains ahead of time 

Who wants to stand in front of the stove for 30 minutes after a very long day? This is why you should prepare your grains ahead of time. Simply cook them beforehand and freeze them until they are needed. You just need to cook the grain first then set aside to cool. Get one to two scoops of the rice and place in a sealable plastic or container, label it, and place in the freezer. You just need to reheat the rice when it is time to eat it. 

As you can see, prepping meals doesn’t have to be that difficult to pull off especially when you can start with these tips. Try them out the next time you want to get your meals done ahead of time.

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