via flickr/nathanborror
Meal prepping makes eating healthy a little easier.
“I want to eat healthy, but I don't have time!”
Have you ever said that? Healthy eating is often associated with time-consuming recipes or endless salads. But the real key to eating healthy is one simple habit: meal prepping.
See also: 3 Questions To Ask Before Adopting Celebrity Diet Fads For Your Family
We have all heard of meal planning, where you decide in advance what meals you will have on which days. Meal prep takes planning one step further. Prepping is the often overlooked act of getting everything ready for the week all at once. It sounds overwhelming, but it's really not. Here's an example of how meal prepping works in my own busy life:
Three dinners for this week’s meal plan are meatloaf, grilled chicken fajitas, and a loaded salad. When I return home from the grocery store, rather than throw everything into the refrigerator and forgetting about it until the assigned day, I take a few minutes to get ahead. In 10 minutes, I can throw my chicken into a marinade (enough for fajitas and my salad), mix and form my meatloaf, and chop the peppers for my fajitas. Now a significant amount of my meals is ready to go.
Sundays are the ideal day to prepare for me. I will usually bake pumpkin or banana muffins for a quick and easy breakfast, as well as something simple and filling for my lunches, such as a batch of soup or individual salads in jars.
Of course, these habits take discipline to develop, and I can assure you there are Sundays where prep cooking for the week is the last thing I would like to be doing. But I know that my future self will thank me early in the morning when breakfast for my family is already made or when I come home from work and don't want to make a complete dinner.
One good tip: My favorite cookbook, Well Fed: Paleo Recipes for People Who Love to Eat, has a step-by-step guide on how to meal prep like a pro while eating super healthy and delicious meals.
Meal prepping is always made more fun if you add in friends and wine, so invite some friends over and have a massive cooking session to make more meals with fewer dirty dishes together. Sounds like a win-win!
If your kitchen is a bit tight but wine and friends sounds like a good time, make a date at Time For Dinner in Brentwood. You can reserve the kitchen to batch prepare pre-ordered meals. They will purchase everything and get it all chopped and ready at your station so you can assemble the meals. At the end, you leave the dishes to them and go home with several ready-to-go meals.
Remember, healthy eating is possible, even with a busy schedule. It just takes a little bit of planning to make it happen.
Bon Appetit!
Amanda Kintz is a registered nurse, a veggie-loving wife and mom, and author of the blog Crunchy Hippie Life. She can usually be found eating delicious food or drinking yet another cup of coffee.
