You’ve heard it before, Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail…but what does it mean?

Today, we’re talking about meal prep. Meal prep doesn’t have to be a horrible experience. It’s not daunting – it can be as easy or as complicated as you wish to make it!

If you prepare your meals ahead of time, you can eliminate the stress of having to cook every meal and remove the temptation of grabbing convenient, unhealthy foods/ snacks. Meal prepping saves time and helps to keep you on track with healthy eating! Do you need any other reason to start?! There’s nothing better than having a freezer full of healthy meals that are ready to go!

 

Meal prepping can seem daunting, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll question why you never started doing it earlier.

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Some tips that we find help us at Hello Fit:

1. Plan your meal prep day

You may already have seen the hashtag #mealprepsunday – most people in the fitness industry like to use a Sunday as their meal prep day as it’s the last day of the weekend, and prepares you for the week ahead, prep on a Sunday also helps to mentally prepare you for the week ahead.

Only do what’s manageable for you and your space – if you have a chest freezer, great – you can cook and freeze 20 meals if you like (providing you have the tupperware!), if you have a smaller freezer, you need to consider what you can store in there. Of course, 3 days worth of meals can be stored in the fridge.

You may need more than one day do meal prep. Figure out what works for you.

For us, we like to prep on a Wednesday and a Sunday. Sometimes, we have so many meals that we don’t need to prep on both days.

 

2. How many meals?

We touched upon this above, make sure you know exactly how many meals you want to make.

You don’t need to prep every meal, you don’t need to prepare the same number of meals as everyone else. Just do what works for YOU.

 

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3. K.I.S.S

It’s the old marketing adage – K.I.S.S – Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Variety is the spice of life as they say, however when preparing meals in bulk, you want to keep the ingredients simple, don’t over-complicate it. Make sure you have your macros covered, make it tasty and you’re good to go!

Simple ideas:

  • Protein: Chicken breast, lean minced beef, pork, lean steak, turkey
  • Carbohydrates: Oats, quinoa, couscous, brown rice, wild rice, whole-grain tortillas/ wraps
  • Healthy fats: Almonds, walnuts, pecans, pistachios, pumpkin seeds, peanut butter, almond butter, olive oil and coconut oil

You can use fish, we tend not to prep fish as one of us hates the smell!

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4. Get your items ahead of time

Duhh. You need to get the ingredients!

Consider the cost – do you need everything fresh? You can buy a lot of freshly frozen items in bulk and store them in the freezer for each meal prep session.

 

Easy, easy, easy. Right?

 

We love to meal prep, we feel lost without a freezer full of healthy meals!

 

Keep an eye out for some ideas for your future meal prepping success. Want to know more now? Get in touch! info@hellofit.co.uk

 

Lise and Rich

 

www.hellofit.co.uk