A Beginners Guide to Healthy Meal Prep

Knowing where to start with healthy meal prep is your first essential step. Save yourself a lot of time and indecision by planning all meals before you get to the supermarket, you’ll minimise waste and reduce costs this way too.

Start out slow with healthy meal prep…

Meal prep is a way of life for some, but if you are a beginner, it can be daunting, so begin with one meal per day (lunch is an easy one) and work your way up.

It’s not all about cooking

Meal prep is anything that you can do in advance to save you time later and help you stick to your goals. This could be chopping up raw veggies or meat to use in a recipe later or washing all your fruit and veg ready to be taken as snacks throughout the week.

Hit your macros

You don’t need to be counting macros to benefit from meal prepping. Instead, an easy guide is to use ¼ protein, ¼ carb and ½ vegetables. This will make well balanced meals, supporting optimum health and wellness. You can even incorporate ‘healthy junk food’ meals and prep them in advance to stick you your calorie goals.

Perfect portion control

Choose the right sized containers for your meals and snacks. This is such an easy way to make sure your portions sizes are correct for your needs without the chore of weighing everything.

Stack your salads

To avoid limp leaves, try preparing salads in a jar, you can put the dressing in the bottom and layer the ingredients, putting sturdier things like peppers and cucumber near the bottom, and the leaves like watercress at the top to keep everything fresh all day.

Keep your snacks simple

It’s important to have something handy for when hunger hits between meals, but simplify it by choosing things that don’t require a lot of preparation- pre-portioned nuts, hummus with vegetables sticks, or boiled eggs. Try some of these quick and easy superfood snacks.

Pass on the store-bought protein bars/cookies

Almost all of which are highly processed and full of additives your body doesn’t need. If you do have a bit of a sweet tooth, try making protein balls at home as a high protein treat, this way you have full control over what goes into your body. Invest in some quality baking trays, I recommend these Mermaid Baking Tray’s as they’re great for smaller recipes and really easy to clean!

Always add veg to your smoothies

The perfect way to sneak in a few of your (recently increased) recommended 10+ a day before you’ve even left the house.

Cut corners

Buy pre-cut or frozen veg and fruit, tins of tuna/salmon, microwave rice or quinoa pouches etc. While this may be a little more expensive, it could save you a whole lot of time, getting you out of the kitchen and enjoying your weekend, so it’s up to you to balance the cost vs time and work out what is most important to you.

Make it a habit

They say it takes approx. 3 weeks to form a habit so don’t give it up if it doesn’t work in the first few weeks. It may be slow and laborious at first, but stick with it and you will see the benefits.

Enjoy the new-found control you have over your own health and wellness

Whether eating only organic is important to you, or ensuring there is no hidden sugars in your food, you know exactly what your food contains and can be sure you are not leaving your health up to chance, especially important for people with allergies or intolerances.