Fitness Nutrition Forums

6 Tips That'll Help You Prep Your Meals Well in Advance

Fitday Editor

You want to ensure that you are eating a well-balanced meal, but you don’t always have the time to cook every day? This is a problem that many of us face because of our busy schedules and demanding work commitments, the good news is that if you prepare your meals in advance, you can still eat nutritious food and control your portion sizes. Below are a few pro tips to help you do that.

One of the most simple ways to do this is freezer cooking. What this means is that you spend one day a week cooking, usually a Sunday afternoon, and then freeze your meals for the week ahead. The amount of time this saves during the week is incredible, and it also saves money because you’ve planned ahead of time. Cooking in bulk is also cost-effective, plus it means fewer trips to the store, where you may be tempted to purchase unnecessary things.

But how do you go about the whole freezer cooking method? It’s all about planning.

Think about your recipes and meals ahead of time. Make a list of your favorite foods, and the ingredients that go into making them, and then start planning your week and what meals you intend to have on certain days. It’s beneficial to spend time looking for recipes, as this will ensure that you are constantly eating something different and will make you look forward to your meals—rather than being bored because it’s the same old thing over and over again.

Try to cook meals that have overlapping ingredients as this will make the entire process cheaper and easier.

Once you have your list, you can go shopping (but stick to your grocery list). Choose a particular day to go shopping and prep the food as soon as you get back from the store. Start chopping, washing, and sorting various foods into different containers as this will help you with your next step of cooking.

Start cooking components of your meal like the meat, roasted vegetables and sauce, and cook it all at once. Also, the great part about meal prep is there is still flexibility and room for improvisation, for example, if you’ve cooked your chicken and placed it in the freezer you can have a chicken salad one night, and a chicken soup the other.

Don’t feel guilty about sometimes taking shortcuts. While the meal prepping process saves significant amounts of time during the week, you do have to do a bit of groundwork beforehand, and if you want to make the initial cooking process easier try to choose already chopped vegetables or use meats that require no cooking time like smoked chicken or tuna—and which obviously do not need to be frozen beforehand.


[Image via Shutterstock]

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