4 Easy Meal Prep Ideas for Weight Loss
Food is the one thing we all need and is the best way to be healthy. It is also how you gain unhealthy weight. Eating healthy is the easiest and the hardest thing to do because we all know what’s good for us. It’s just that we crave the bad stuff too much. Most people fail because they don’t plan their meals. If you don’t know what you will eat and don’t have a good stock of groceries, you will turn to junk food and take it out.
Why not be proactive by setting yourself up for weight loss success? It will stop you from cheating and save you money while saving you time and giving you variety.
Meal prepping for the whole family for every meal seven days a week is daunting. If you are making this positive change for weight loss, start slow and master 1 or 2 days. When you get comfortable with that schedule, add a day each week. Before you know it, every meal is pre-planned and pre-made.
Here are four easy meal prep ideas for weight loss.
Idea #1: Go easy on the meal prep
Most of us do certain meals well. Maybe it’s your breakfast. You have lots of time in the morning to cook porridge or an omelette, but you grab fast food for lunch. It could be you are fine with the early meals but cave in for take-out at dinner time because you are too burned out to cook.
Start with your problem meals. If you can have that prepped, you are ready to go to the next level, so it’s a simple grab and eat.
Idea #2: Use a meal delivery service
Prepping your healthy meals doesn’t mean it all has to be made by you. Great companies prepare delicious, healthy meals for busy families. These prepared meal delivery services are perfect for your weight loss goals.
They have trained chefs working with nutritionists who use locally sourced organic ingredients to prepare a wide variety of nutritious meals. These are hand-crafted and affordable, so why not let someone else do the prepping for you? You can start with one or two meals a week and see where it takes you. They are delivered to your door, and all you need to do is heat and eat.
You want your weight loss journey to succeed, so set yourself up with prepared meals. Follow these meal prep ideas and take the worry out of what you will eat!
Idea #3: Plan the menu in advance
Every successful venture starts with a plan. You need to have a roadmap to create healthy meals for your weight loss journey. It’s time to put pencil to paper. Pick a day when you have time for it, like a Sunday.
Make a chart with seven days worth of meals, three a day or two a day, whatever your schedule is. Then start to fill it in. A 7-day rotation gives you good variety, and it also spreads out the favourite meals from the others. This isn’t written in pen, so you can change things as needed. Swap out meals you are sick of for something new to spice things up.
Break down the meals into ingredients and create a shopping list to post on the fridge. Then put it on your phone, so you have it with you at all times.
There is almost an endless array of food choices to pick from, and you need to choose the tastiest options that fit your diet. To lose weight, you shouldn’t have severe restrictions but rather eat many healthy options. These include:
Protein
- Chicken
- Beef
- Pork
- Fish
- Beans
- Tofu
- Lentils
Fats
- Coconut oil
- Olive oil
- Butter
- Nuts
- Avocado
Carbs
- Veggies
- Rice
- Oats
- Sweet potatoes
- Whole grains
- Popcorn
Try to stay away from simple sugars and refined carbs as much as possible to get to your weight loss goal. Incorporate these foods into your dishes and prep everything for a quick grab and heat meal.
Idea #4: Shop for easy ingredients
Now that you have your menu, it’s time for shopping. Take a helper with you and divide and conquer because that way, it’s not too overwhelming, and it speeds things up. Spread everything out on the counter and group meal ingredients together when you get home.
Now it’s time to do the real prep. This is gonna take washing, chopping, cooking and cooling. Batch cooking saves time and lets you portion out meals faster. After that is all done, you need to store the food for quick grabs during the week.
Some stuff can be frozen like portioned meat, while others are inside containers and baggies. Here’s a quick guide when shopping meal prep ideas for weight loss:
- Plastic bags for snacks like nuts, chopped-up veg. And healthy baking.
- Sealed containers for cooked rice, sauces, casseroles and cooked meat (cubed chicken, meatballs etc.)
- Freezer bags for tortilla wraps, meat, berries.
- Freezer containers for soup, chilli, lasagna, stew and curry.
