Notes on Meal Preparation
Notes on Meal Preparation
Part of what makes getting lean and fit so difficult is eating the right types and amount of food on a daily basis, especially considering our busy lifestyles.
Nutrition is the key to losing that weight, but aside from understanding and learning what to eat, you then, most often, need to cook it up day after day. When you've had a full day of stress at work, you need to pick up the kids from training and you want to have you're own time to unwind, the temptation to go to the quick and easy is high. This temptation can often lead to fast food or what might be considered less than healthy is relation to achieving your goals.
So how do you eat healthy while maintaining a hectic schedule and not add any more stress to your life than you've already got?
There are a two commons ways to do this: either through preparing your own meals, or choosing a meal delivery option.
Meal Preparation
Meal preparation is the idea of preparing 2 or more meals at one time, to ensure you have something to eat at a future meal. Hopefully you'll save time in the process.
You can choose to do a big cook up like preparing meals for 3 or more days, or you can keep it simple by just preparing food for the next day. Let's dive into each and I'll explain a few techniques to make it easier.
Large Batch Meal Preparation
The idea of the weekly cook up is to create a large batch of meals you can consume during the week with little to no preparation at the time of eating. Not everyone, of course, cooks for the entire week.
I personally like to do my weekly cook up on Sunday afternoon. It's something I've been doing for 10 years now. Others like to do a Sunday and Wednesday (or whatever days work best for them), meaning they don't need to freeze meals. The idea for each is the same though, of cooking a number of meals at once for the next 2 to 7 days.
This may seem time consuming at the time, but consider you chop, cook, and clean all at once. There no need to start and stop the exact same process each and every day like you would if you cooked daily. This is called batching, and is a process you can use for other areas of your life as well (for example, doing all your online banking at once, instead of having to log on every few days, or responding to emails all at once, and not looking at your emails again until the next day.)
Cook the Same Meals for a Few Days
The weekly cook up can seem overwhelming if you consider each meal needs to be different for variety. But it is much simpler to think of making each meal the same. So breakfast for the next 7 days would be the same meal. Lunches would be the same meal, and dinners would be the same. If you did the twice a week cook up, it would mean meals are the same for those following days. This may seem like it will get boring, but again, at most it's for 7 days, and the variety across those 3 daily meals can be huge. By doing this you can become very consistent, without needing to put a huge amount of thought into what you're cooking
Develop Your Go-To Meals
Okay, so you can get your head around having 7 days of the same breakfast, but then each Sunday is still overwhelming trying to come up with a completely new recipe. To combat this, develop some go-to meals; recipes which you cycle between across a 4 to 8 week period. For example, you might have 8 dinner recipes which you rely on, and each week you go through the list a choose another recipe which you know how to cook and prepare for. In this way, the variety each day for one week may not be huge, but from week to week it is.
Planning
This concept is pretty simple. Plan what you're going to cook for the week, make sure you have what you need in the pantry and buy the rest from the grocery store. This might seem simple enough, but the amount of time you'll waste, and stress you'll add, trying to plan meals on the go, isn't worth it. Have a clear plan of what you'll cook before you go shopping.
Develop a Process
Cooking up to 21 meals at once (yes this is what I do) can take some time, but it will take even longer if you follow a haphazard process. For example, if you're using the oven, then the first thing you should do is preheat the oven and prepare the things to go in the oven. Why? Because this is likely the longest process, and while it is happening you can do other things. Whereas if you do other things first, then preheat the oven to get it ready, you can easily add hours to your weekly cook up. Another example is chopping all your vegetables at once (again with this batching idea).
Daily Meal Preparation
Similar to the Large Batch Meal Preparation, the Daily Meal Preparation is all about batching, but on a smaller scale. In this case you're cooking/preparing each evening for the next day.
Keep It Simple
When it comes to the daily preparation, the simpler the better. Like the Weekly Cook Up, you want to have a good plan of what you want to make during the week; it's unlikely you'll want to leave the house for a late run to the supermarket to buy some food for the next day, so make sure you've already planned and bought it. If you can make simple salads or sandwiches, anything which feels easy to you, you'll be more likely to set aside that bit of time each night to prepare for the next day.
Make Enough for Tomorrow
It's a great idea to make lunch the following day, by making a larger dinner, and storing some. This is the classic leftovers meal, and will take away having to think about at least one meal each day. If you have a fairly standard breakfast as well, dinner will be the only meal you'll make some real effort for each day.
Meal Delivery
Meal delivery is becoming a great way to have quick and healthy meals, without the need to do all the cooking yourself. This helps you to firstly, not think about what is healthy and what isn't, and secondly, saves you time. Of course, this might mean added cost compared to cooking it yourself, but if you're limited by time and space, it can be a great option.
Have a Pantry of Go-To Foods
It's good to have some food in your pantry, just in case you choose to have a different meal. Even if you rely mostly on a food delivery. Keep in mind your environment has a big part to play on how successful you'll be in regards to your nutrition, meaning if you keep unhealthy food in the pantry, you'll eat it, despite your best efforts to resist.
Choose Between Done for You or to-Prepare Meals
There are two common options you can choose from. Done for you meals are things like Lite n Easy, Jenny Craig, Muscle Meals etc. These meals have already been prepared and are usually delivered frozen (or require you to freeze them), and you simply have to heat them up for consumption. Otherwise you can order meal boxes which require you to prepare the meals yourself, but you're given the ingredients to do so. Time once again may be a factor in your decision for this.
There are a few factors to consider when it comes to choosing between these two types of meals. From what I've found, it will come down to time, cost, pleasure and control. Time and cost is obvious enough; meal delivery services tend to end up more expensive, but save you time. Meal preparation costs times, but will likely save money. But it's important to consider if you enjoy cooking as well. If it's a pleasurable experience for you, this should be taken into account also. Also, plenty of people who train for competitions, including any type of team sport or bodybuilding, may want control over what is in each meal, meaning meal preparation will align better with their priorities.
Ultimately, when it comes to your nutrition, it's always good to experiment to see what you prefer the most, as this will go a long way to you being able to maintain that diet or style of eating, leading to great results.
Until next time,
Marco
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