Ultimate Time-Saving Meal Prep Tips
A couple of weeks ago I talked about the
Fab 5 Eating habits that are a great start to beginning to having a complete and healthy diet. One of the issues that many of my clients face is the time that it takes to prepare their daily meals and they explain that they often miss meals or will dine out for convenience. Here are some time-saving tips that I use for my weekly meal prep:
- Precooking Protein: Cooking your protein typically is the longest part of my food preparation for the week. In order to help with this, I will cook a massive amount of protein for a meal and then store the leftovers in the fridge. For your next meal, the protein is already cooked and you only need to heat it up. Once you are finished cooking, make sure to only take the amount that you intend to eat and immediately store the rest to help prevent overeating.
- Pre-cutting Vegetables: Veggies can also take a long time to prep; washing, cutting, and cooking. I will often prepare all of my day's worth of veggies in the morning. I will wash and cut my veggies as I cook breakfast and then store them in the fridge. This is also known as the "Breakfast Ritual". You will always have some downtime cooking breakfast, use that time to prepare your meals for the rest of the day.
Other ways to help reduce the time for your daily meal preparation are:
- Sunday Ritual: Set 3 hours aside on Sundays, make your food list, go to grocery store, and then prepare all of your meals for the entire week and store them in the fridge.
- Liquid Meals: This is a common way for my wife to eat her breakfast, since she is often on the go in the morning. She will load up our blender with veggies, kale, walnuts or almonds, some Greek yogurt, fruit for flavor, and then adds water. She then throws this in a cup and is able to drink it on the way to work. Not ideal for every meal, but works well for when you are in a hurry and don't have time to cook.
Ryan Lockard, CSCS, CFNS, is the head trainer and founder of Specialty Athletic Training. He is accredited by the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) as a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, as well as by the International Sports Science Association (ISSA) as a Certified Fitness Nutrition Specialist. Ryan has worked with individuals with special needs since 2007 and has over 10,000 hours of 1:1 instruction working with individuals that have various special needs.