How Do I Prep Meals?

The most common questions I get are about meal prep.  How do you meal prep for the week?  How long does it take?  How expensive is it?  How do you store the food?  How long do you reheat it for?  Etc.

Chicken, brown rice and green beans

First, let's start with the fact that in today's society, most of us are always on the go.  Work, family, friends, church, school, gym, etc.  It all somehow gets crammed into little 24-hour days.  When you are constantly moving from one place to the next, oftentimes we need to eat on the go.  And usually, this means making a pit stop at the closest fast food joint.  You may spend $7-9 for that one meal, and your body is tired and exhausted after eating it.  Why?  Because you've just consumed a ton of grease, bad fats, sugars and other carbs, with usually a very little protein to carbs and fats ratio.  You feel full, but your body literally slows down as it tries to break down all that crud.

Meal Prep Basics

The cost, if you do it yourself, is much less than that combo mentioned previously.  I currently spend about $75/week for my groceries at HEB, and that usually gives me about 40-45 meals (6 meals a day).  Do the math and that comes out to roughly $2/meal (your cost may be different, depending on your food choices and amounts).  In order to cut costs, I purchase the big bags of frozen tilapia, frozen boneless, skinless chicken tenders, the bigger packages of extra lean ground beef, regular frozen veggies (I'm not into the organic thing), and either the Success brand of boil in bag rice or the HEB brand of steamable frozen rice (depending on time).

The time it takes is the big kicker.  As you begin to experience weekly meal prep, you eventually find your groove on what foods and what methods work best for you.  I've got it down to taking about 3-4 hours to cook and measure and store one week's worth of meals.  But when I first began, it would take me all day.  The steamable frozen veggies and rice help to cut time down a lot, because they can be prepping in the microwave while the chicken and fish are being cooked in the oven or on the stove top.

Food storage is fairly simple.  You will need to clear out a significant space in your freezer.  Cooked meals usually last 2 (maybe 3) days in a refrigerator, and up to 6 weeks in a freezer.  I usually put all but one day's worth of meals in the freezer, and as I'm packing the meals in the morning for that day in my bag, I pull out the next day's meals from the freezer and put them in the refrigerator.

The Groove

It takes some time to find that groove that works best for you on meal prep.  And if you tend to make everything more difficult than it originally is, like me, then it might even give you a few gray hairs along the way.

I usually start microwaving my green steamable veggies while I have the rice going on the stove.  Then on another burner, I'll take the largest nonstick pan that I have and start cooking tilapia, while the chicken tenders are baking in the over.  I don't measure things out first, I just start cooking and making piles (or bowls) of all the food.  Once it gets to be a lot, I pull out the Versatainers that I purchased here, and I measure out all the veggies for each container, all the carbs, and then weigh the meat.  Then I store them and keep cooking until all of the food is cooked.

I Don't Have the Time

While prepping your own meals for the week is smart, affordable and healthy, it's also not realistic for every lifestyle.  So what if you don't have the time to prepare your meals for the week?  What then?  There are options.  You can go to MyFitFoods (if you're lucky enough to have one nearby) and spend about $8-12/meal.  Or in you're in the Houston area, you can contact Food From Above at 832-657-4345 and they will do everything for you (you can either choose from their menu or inquire about your own, if you have strict dietary goals or requirements).

Regardless, meal prep is the least expensive and most healthy way to stay with your diet.  When eating out, it's difficult to know ahead of time what all is going into your meal (grease, extra cheese, unnecessary fats, etc).  While you don't need to be a hermit and only eat prepped meals 24/7 (you should allow yourself occasional cheat meals as a reward), meal prepping is the best way to stay on diet and avoid bad last-minute food choices made out of hunger.