Meal Prep: 5 Tips for Beginners

That’s where meal prepping comes in handy. It saves you time and money while helping you develop a healthy relationship with food. By meal prepping, you’ll be less likely to swing through the drive-thru or reach for unhealthy foods because you’ll have perfectly portioned meals ready to grab and eat. Not only does meal prepping remove temptations, but it also puts you squarely in the driver's seat. You get to control everything about your meals, including calorie count, macros, and ingredients.

Meal prep gives you the tools you need to keep up with your nutrition goals, no matter how busy your week gets. Now that you know more about the benefits, here are five tips to help get you started.

Start Slow, Start Small

Think of your meal prep journey like a marathon. You don’t want to set out at a sprint or you risk using up all your energy far before you get to the finish line. So start slowly. Instead of preparing a week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, begin with just one meal. For example, you could start by prepping lunches for the week.

Keep in mind that there are several ways to approach meal prep. Finding what works for you makes it easier to master your meal prep. Popular techniques include:

1. Preparing individual meals: Cook and portion fresh meals into individual containers that you can keep in the refrigerator and grab to take with you or to heat and eat.

2. Creating make-ahead meals: Cook full meals ahead of time, refrigerate them, and reheat them for meals. This works well for casseroles, soups, and stews.

3. Cooking in batches: Prepare large batches of a recipe and break it into individual servings that you can fridge and freeze to eat over the course of not just the week, but for a few months to come.

4. Prepping ingredients: Get all the ingredients you need to make your meals ready. For example, clean and chop fruits and veggies so they’re ready to grab and eat or quickly cook for recipes. You can also pre-cook large batches of ingredients like rice, proteins, and pasta to keep separate but reheat together at mealtime.

Plan Ahead

You know that saying, “When you fail to plan, you’re really planning to fail?” It’s true with meal prep too. For starters, you need to think about your storage options. It helps to have high-quality, airtight containers that are safe to use in the microwave and dishwasher for easy heating and easy cleanup. Get a variety of sizes to accommodate sides, sauces, and different types of meals.

Second, choose your recipes carefully. Keep your favorite flavors and the amount of time you’ll have to spend prepping them in mind. If you want to spend an entire Sunday in the kitchen, that’s fine. But you don’t have to. Slow cookers and Instant Pots are great tools to prep meals with minimal hands-on time. Your oven and grill make it easy to prepare proteins and vegetables. Ideally, you want to choose recipes that require different cooking methods. That way, you can efficiently prepare multiple meals at the same time.

Small Changes Make a Big Difference

You can cook a big batch of your favorite ingredients and use them in different ways to tweak the flavors and end up with meals that don’t leave you bored. For example, prepare salmon to eat in a grain bowl with your favorite vegetables, whole grains, and sauce. You can also use it in a salad or sandwich. Switching up the ingredients you pair together, using different seasonings, and swapping out the sauce or dressings you top it off with can all trick your tastebuds into thinking that you’re eating something entirely different, even if it’s the same ingredients you’ve eaten all week.

Make a Grocery List, Stick to It

A trip to the grocery store can take up a lot of your time. If you’re not careful, you could also end up spending way more than you intend and buying things that don’t line up with your nutrition goals. Once you’ve figured out the recipes that you’re using, you can make a detailed list to get everything you need. Also, make sure you're keeping your pantry well-stocked with staples like:

1. Whole grains, including quinoa, brown rice, and whole wheat pasta

2. Canned goods, including tomatoes, tuna, low-sodium broths, and olives

3. Legumes, including chickpeas, lentils, and black beans

4. Oils, including avocado, coconut, and olive

5. Herbs and spices, including fresh and dried options to help pack your meals with tons of craveable flavor

Meal Prep Safety

Food safety isn't always talked about with meal prep, but it’s critical for avoiding food poisoning, which affects more than nine million people in the U.S. annually. Cook foods to the proper temperatures, cool them quickly, and store them at the right temperatures in your fridge and freezer. Additional food safety tips include the following: 1. Thaw frozen foods in your refrigerator or in a sink filled with cold tap water, not the countertop.

2. Only reheat food once. Cooling and reheating food more than that increases the risk of food poisoning.

3. Reheat meals to 165 degrees Fahrenheit before eating them.