How To Meal Prep

July 05, 2022

For many of us we simply aren’t able to find the time to cook. Life gets busy and in place of preparing healthy meals we instead resort to buying takeaways or foods that aren’t designed with our goals in mind.

Healthy living begins with healthy eating, and ensuring we are consuming the right foods in the right quantities plays a key role in achieving a healthy lifestyle.

With a sprinkle of understanding and a handy tip or two, we’ll get you meal prepping for the week ahead with time to spare.

What Is Meal Prepping?

Meal prepping is basically preparing your breakfast, lunch, dinner or snacks in advance. This could be cooking an entire meal and portioning it for later use, or perhaps a few individual components ahead of time to that you later combine in to a full meal.

It is a powerful method of saving time, money and keeping you on track with your nutrition. It also helps you to resist the urge to buy junk food and snacks because you’re hungry and out of options.

Find Your Inner Meal Prepper

There are a few ways to go about meal prep, and a good place to start is by identifying what your style is. Are you the type of person who cooks a massive stir-fry and eats it over the next few days? Or do you prefer to prepare a few different ingredients in advance and use them each day to create variations on a theme?

Beyond this you can start to think about which meals you want to prep for. The types of foods you might eat for lunch are probably not the same as the foods you’d make for breakfast.

Having an idea of what you like to eat at each mealtime will help streamline you for the next step.

It also pays to think about the number of people you are feeding! Two mouths need twice the amount of food as one, but needn’t take twice the amount of time if you’ve got a plan.

 

Now that you’ve discovered your style, here are 5 top tips to help you prep like a pro

Create Your Menu

Now that you know which mealtime to prep for and how many servings to make, it’s time to look at the meals themselves.

Most of us struggle to find the time to cook, so picking one dish and preparing enough to last you the week is a good way to get started.

Try having a look around your pantry and building your recipes based on what’s already there, or take a look around our new recipe section which features healthy recipes that you can prepare in minutes (we’ve also worked out the nutritional info for you!).

Keep It Simple

Now is not the time to be thinking about preparing Michelin starred soufflés or consommés – it is best practise to keep things simple and within your repertoire of culinary skills. Otherwise you could end up biting off more than you can chew....

Think of the recipes that you know how to make that require little time or effort. The key to nutrition is consistency, so choosing recipes that you will want to eat consistently will make it easier to stay on course throughout the week and stick to meal prepping in the long run.

Meal prep is great in that it gives you greater control over your diet. There’s always the temptation to tighten the screws straight away and start forcing yourself to believe you’re somehow going to start loving kale salad for lunch 5 days a week.

A more balanced approach is recommended to help ensure this is something that you can sustain.

Try taking your everyday favourites and make them as healthy and filling as you can whilst still flavoured to your liking. Choose lean proteins, quality complex carbs and healthy fats, focussing on both nutrients and taste.

Purchase Your Ingredients

With your meal plan sorted, fill in the gaps with the missing ingredients that you need to buy. Write a shopping list and make sure that you’ve got the proteins, carbs and healthy fats that you need to create your masterpiece.

If meat is your preferred protein source, it tends to be the trickiest component to cook, as it requires a bit more time, ingredients and skill to execute to a high standard. Meat also doesn’t come cheap!

This is where our prep packs come in - delicious pre cooked meats that you can slot seamlessly in to your meal prep, without the hassle of dealing with raw meat and trying to cook it perfectly. Simply add to Tupperware and enjoy!

 Browse our full range of prep packs here.

Store Your Meals

Speaking of, once you’ve prepped your meals you need to store them in a way that makes them last the week.

Start off by making sure you have enough space in your fridge or freezer to hold all your meals.

Once space is secured, go on the hunt for some decent Tupperware. Good quality containers that are airtight will help keep your food fresher for longer, and reduce any chances of them leaking all throughout your bag or fridge.

Getting Tupperware of the same size and shape will make it easier to stack them nicely in the freezer.

If you’re really dialling in your macros, be sure to keep a scale handy so that you can weigh each component of your meals to meet your exact requirements.

Set Aside Time Each Week

You must to make time for meal prep. Every week, you need the time to plan your meals, shop for ingredients, prepare, cook and store your food. Setting aside a dedicated section of your week is a good way to go about it – you might find that you can schedule in 4 hours every Sunday to get the job done.

If giving up your weekend isn’t something you want to sign up for, why not give our prep packs a try. We’ll deliver them to your door, so all you need to do is pop them in your containers, add some rice and veges and enjoy!

Eating for your goals has never been easier with SwoleFoods.