Regularly preparing your meals can be one of the biggest helping factors to help you hit your diet goals and save you money and time in the process. However, many people see meal prep as a bigger burden than convenience. I want to share a couple tips with you that I’ve used myself and have seen others have success with too.

Have a meal prep “template” in mind

This essentially means having a few components in mind that each meal must have. There are of course different ways to go about this. Here are two examples you might find helpful:

1.     For fat loss: have one lean protein source (ground turkey, lean ground beef, chicken breast, pork loin, etc.), have one vegetable (can be any vegetable such as broccoli, asparagus, Brussel sprouts, carrots, etc.), and either a carb source or a fat source (the carb source can be a multitude of things such as rice, potatoes, banana, etc. and the fat source also has multiple options such as a handful of nuts, avocado, cheese sticks, etc.)

2.     For muscle gain: have one fattier protein source (chicken thighs, fattier ground beef, salmon, meatballs, etc.), have one vegetable source, and both a carb and a fat source.

This works especially well if you choose foods and cooking methods that can easily be made in bulk. For instance, you can put 3-4 servings of ground meat in one pan, bake a large amount of meat at one time, bake a large amount of vegetables at one time, use an air fryer, use a rice cooker, etc. Really, the biggest key to making meal prep easy is choosing cooking methods that require the least work and least clean up. I mean after all, the cooking and clean up itself is what makes meal prep a burden in the first place. If you are wanting to prep one meal a day for the next four days, you can easily do that using this method all at one time.

Make sure to not ignore flavor

The goal here is also not to eat plain, boiled chicken and broccoli and rice all the time. That would make anyone miserable. We want to make sure we keep our meals interesting so we don’t dread eating them. One easy way we can do this is to not make the same meal prep every single time. If we eat the same food over and over, we inevitably end up no longer enjoying that food. You might love chipotle, but if you ate it twice a day every day for three weeks, you’d probably end up hating it. Not only should you mix up the foods you eat but the way you make them. Perhaps one week you bake your vegetables and the next you sauté them.   In addition to this, you have to make sure you utilize different marinades and seasonings. Grocery stores have tons of premade marinades with some being calorie free and some being higher calorie, you can choose which one to use based on if you are in a muscle gain or fat lass phase. Or, you can look up different homemade marinades online, there are multiple blogs out there that put good ones out. The night before you plan to meal prep, put your meat in a marinade and let it set overnight. The result will be much better. Lastly, make sure you always season all your food and vary your seasoning combinations week to week to keep things tasting good.

Use the leftovers method

This can be done on its own or in addition to the strategy that was just described. It’s a method that may sound like a no brainer, but pointing it out and making it a habit can make life much easier. Essentially, if you normally cook your dinner, start making an extra serving of your meal and pack that up in a Tupperware for the next day. This meal can either be eaten for breakfast to save you time or for lunch to save you from buying out. The biggest benefit of this is that it takes a normal habit you have and alters it to save you time the next day, without any real work load.

Check to see if there is a local meal prep company you can use

Meal prep companies are becoming more and more popular, and they could be a way to bring you a lot of value. Most reputable companies are able to make very good tasting food for prices cheaper than eating out. I’ll describe this more by using the company I currently use as an example. The meal prep company I buy from is Ideal Nutrition which is located in Palm Beach Gardens. All of their meals are high protein, they have high and low-calorie options, and best two characteristics of all: I have yet to have one meal that wasn’t absolutely delicious and they are all only $7. Now, the point of me writing that is not to be an advertisement for Ideal Nutrition (I have no affiliation with them), although if you live in Palm Beach Gardens you can take it that way- I highly recommend them. The point of writing that is to illustrate how convenient these services can be. They are becoming more and more popular, so odds are there is a good one local to you. Personally, in a given day I normally eat one of Ideal Nutrition’s meals, a meal that I prepped myself, and then I cook for my final meal. Doing this, I am able to save a boat load of time and money on food; which, after all, is the point of all this, isn’t it?

Conclusion

The take-home I hope you get from this is that meal prep doesn’t have to suck. Although most see it as a chore just to make bad-tasting food, this does not have to be reality. When you approach your meal prep in a smart way, it can be the most helpful habit you create.