It's Time to Meal Prep.

October 28, 2019

7 am

So what’s the big deal about meal planning anyways? Well let’s start with a scenario…

You wake up, running late to work and rush out the door. You may grab a cup of coffee, but hey, someone conveniently brought donuts to the office so bring on breakfast. Then you’re so busy at work that you forget to eat lunch. You get home after a long and stressful day, and you’re exhausted. Rightly so. And instead of cooking a healthy quality meal, you throw a frozen pizza in the oven. 20 minutes later, dinner is served.

"Someone conveniently brought donuts to the office so bring on breakfast."

This scenario may be a little extreme (who knows, maybe you stopped at Chipotle for dinner #chipotleismylife), but you get the idea. Lack of planning can poor diet which results in falling short of your fitness goals.

This is where meal prepping is CRUCIAL. If you’re working, trying to raise a family, trying to make it to the gym, etc, you have to plan accordingly. With that being said, there are a few complaints against meal prepping that do still arise.

Common Excuses

“I don’t have time to cook my meals.”

OK LET’S STOP RIGHT THERE. This is probably the number one comment I hear about meal prepping. Ok hang on, we’re going to do a leeeettle bit of math…

Say you take the time on a Sunday to prep your food for lunch and dinner the next four days (we’ll say you eat out on Friday and you skip breakfast). It takes you about an hour total (unless you’re a gourmet chef, it really should not take much longer than that) to cook. Whenever you’re ready to eat, you throw each meal in the microwave for a minute each. That’s two minutes a day for those four days. Eight minutes total. We’ll add the eight minutes to the total prep time and you have:

1 hour and 8 minutes

"...unless you’re a gourmet chef, it really should not take much longer than [an hour] to cook."

Now, taking our previous scenario, say you ate the pizza for dinner everyday. That’s 20 minutes to cook for four days, which totals to be:

1 hour and 20 minutes.

Oh wait, you have to wait for the oven to heat up…

Let’s make that 2 hours even. And doesn't even include lunch.

So in this simple scenario, you are saving yourself 52 minutes a week. HELLO that's like three episodes of Friends! Or even better; more time to read my blog (tehe)...

Quinoa and Avocado Nourish Bowl

“I don’t like to re-heat food.”

Yeah, me neither. No one does. It would be so, so wonderful to have freshly cooked meals everyday, but it just isn’t going to happen. The best advice I can give is to find foods that a), don’t have to be reheated (i.e. tuna fish) or b), make food that actually doesn’t taste bad reheated. I have a way to make chicken that I actually prefer cold rather than warm.

“I get bored eating the same thing everyday.”

I have the answer!...that’s going to be specifically addressed in my next post on HOW to meal prep so keep an eye out for it, loves!

Note: If any other thoughts arose against meal prepping that I didn’t address, feel free to write them in the comments below, and I’d be happy to discuss!

Less Dollah Bills

Besides saving time, meal prepping also saves a ton of money.

If you go into the grocery story knowing exactly what you need, you won’t accidentally spend money on random, impulsive buys. Prepped meals will also prevent you from having to spontaneously eat out for every meal, especially if you buy items in bulk (i.e broccoli from Costco).

You can also think of it this way…

If you meal prep, you will eat healthier, therefore, you will BE healthier. Which potentially means less time being sick, less time at the doctors office, and less medical bills. BAM! There ya go, saving money.

So raise your cooking spatula’s, my little chefs…

...Here’s to Health. Cheers.