How to Meal Prep: a guide to healthy eating for your goals

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If you are trying to eat a healthy diet, always on the go, or have a hard time making the time to find meals to make for dinner, meal prep is for you.

Not everyone is an expert chef nor do you have the time to make food all the time. This is where a problem can arise.

If we don’t take the time to MAKE healthy meals or feel too tired or lazy to make meals, then we fall off track and just eat a lot of calorie-dense snacks, or just opt for going out to eat. This is the easy way…

Or is it? It’s easy but it might not be the smartest resort all the time.

Finding a balance between a healthy lifestyle and eating your treats is a fun way to make it sustainable. However, meal prepping is so easy, fun, and takes the work out of making meals.

healthy meal planning

I’m not talking about Tupperware, perfectly portioned meals for every day.

Not only does this make it very tedious, but it can be overwhelming and a bit boring. However, if this is what works for you, then you should do it.

The benefits of meal prepping:

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Saves you money
Can help you lose weight and stay on track
You don’t have to cook every night (yay)
You always have food ready to go whenever you are hungry
Saves a lot of time
You can always know what you are going to eat
Eating the same thing day after day can be boring, but it can be beneficial too. You can lose weight or maintain weight.
It is easier to track these calories (if you track or keep a food diary)
Flexible, fun, easy, you don’t have to be an expert to do it.

RELATED: How to Create a 1500 Calorie Meal Plan

How to meal prep (a few ways):

Pick a recipe that is good for batch cooking.

I recommend doing this for either lunch, breakfast, or dinner. If you don’t mind eating the sameish thing for a few days in a row and it tastes good to you, this is a great and easy way to meal prep. Try to do this at the beginning of the week. If you want, making food for 4 days is usually the best or 5 days is good too.

Here are some recipes that work well for what I am talking about here:

butternut squash soup

This recipe is by Downshiftology, I made this one! I didn’t add the oil or butter to my own version of the soup.

But soups with some bread or tortilla are a great meal prep for lunch ideas and an example of batch cooking. Since this is a 6 serving soup, it will be good for 6 days! Its great. Without the oils and butter, it’s only about 100 calories per serving and very filling which is great for weight loss.

Meal Plan for The Week Pinterest Board: It has different sections for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

RELATED: 12 Vegan Dinner Recipes for Your Instant Pot

2. Cook staple pieces you love.

Meal prep for weight loss

This could be:

rice
potatoes
pre-cut vegetables
cleaning fruit
cleaning other vegetables
soup, casseroles, or other things that you can make in bulk that would still taste great after a few days
Noodles, beans, sauces, meats, breakfast burritos, and oatmeal

These are all ready to go for whenever you want to make meals. This is great for those who can’t stand to eat the same exact thing every day but like to have some things ready to go.

This can allow you to get creative with your meals and have foods ready for you to prepare. For example, by having beans, cut veggies, and sauces ready to go, you can make a quick burrito with some of the prepared fruit on the side. Super easy and delicious!

3.Specific meal Picking/ prepping

meal prepping for weight management

This means that you will focus on one area of the day to meal prep for the week. This can help you with decision fatigue and have less work to do. For example, pre-cooking oatmeal for breakfast and putting it in one rectangle Tupperware container can help with an easy breakfast. You can do this with lunch, or dinner too.

Determine your calories

Now, I love talking about calories because it is the only true way to lose weight, maintain, or gain weight. It is the law of thermodynamics.

Calories in vs calories out is an important concept to keep in mind.

This is why meal prepping makes it easy because you can have food ready to go so you know what is in it and the nutrition it has in store for you vs fast junk food.

To determine your calories, links are provided below!

However, as I have learned tracking myself, some days you are just more hungry or less hungry than others. When you are making food each day, keep in mind that our bodies fluctuate and sometimes need more food than others, and that’s okay too!

Just be mindful and listen to your body.

get to your goals with fitness pal, blender

Here is a great calculator that can give you a good estimate of your caloric needs. Keep in mind this is a good estimate! But you have to put in the right activity level or it will be very inaccurate 😊

Make 1 main goal for yourself:

lose weight?
gain weight?
do you want to maintain or just eat better overall?

both are free!

Calculate your Calorie Needs here!

Determine your Total Energy Expenditure (How many calories you burn daily)

Download My Fitness Pal here!

Some tips & tools that make meal prepping a bit easier

Instant pot– this can save a lot of time, and room for those who are in a small place. This can cook rice, pasta, meats, potatoes- basically everything. You get one of these, and you don’t really need an oven, slow cooker, or a rice cooker. The instant pot is on sale at the time of this post for only $59
Rice maker
Slow cooker
Oven
Glass meal prep containers. Glass is 10x better than plastic and there are a variety of them on Amazon. I got my set, however, from Costco.
A chopper or a food processor (depending on your level of expertise, budget etc)
A good quality sheet pan
Silpat– this is more cost-effective and environmentally friendlier than foil or parchment paper and you don’t need oil!
Baking dishes– Get yours from Amazon OR Home Goods. I think Costco sells some too- usually in a good deal.
Utensil set- They sell nice attractive sets at amazon and have miscellaneous yet useful ones at HomeGoods/ Tj Maxx.
Pots and pans set– if you can find some at HomeGoods, I recommend this if you just need a couple of basic pots. They sell great quality ones from Homegoods or Amazon if you want an ultimate set.
A food scale- if you read my other posts, you know how important a food scale is!
A staple grocery list. Make note of the staples you buy every single time you go to the store. It might be apples, grapes, cucumber, spinach, avocados, lemon, garlic, onion almond milk, yogurt or whatever you eat the most of.
Little gismos like good knives, garlic press, food storage for the fridge.

Lastly, this is all about YOU. Make what you like and you want to eat. If you don’t like chicken and rice, please, do not make that!

If you love butternut squash soup because it is winter, and you need comforting foods, make this! It’s all about experimentation.

There are no rules for meal prepping. It is all up to you.

Using meal prep can help you with creating your very own meal plan!

I have a post on how to create a 1500 meal plan but this is basically what you do! You just meal prep and have some snacks ready to go and you are set.

I have 2 posts on Snacks too that you might find helpful where you can make a couple of those ahead of time as well.