Meal prepping! Chances are you’ve heard of these words and might think it only pertains to specific diets. While it can help with particular diets, meal prepping in general can be very beneficial for those who have a very tight schedule, are on a budget, or both! I know it can be difficult navigating through life with a busy schedule and trying to find time to eat a healthy meal. My schedule was pretty hectic for quite some time. Between going to college, working full time, going to the gym, and dealing with big city traffic, it all left very little time for anything else.
In efforts to avoid heavier traffic in the mornings I would leave my house at 5am everyday. My job didn’t start until 8:30. However, I’ll make my way closer to my job and kill time by going to the gym. By the time 8:30am came around, I was closer to my job and have had a good work out. Great way to start the day!
After work, I’d also make efforts to avoid rush hour. Instead, I would try to make better use of my time. I would go to a nearby park and do some cardio, yoga, or homework assignments. After a couple of hours, traffic would subside and I would make my way home.
By this time, it was often late in the day and I didn’t have much time for anything other than get ready for the next day. Leave my house at 5am and do it all over again. Sounds exhausting, right? When would I find time to cook and eat?
I refused to give in and buy food on the go everyday. For starters, it can be costly when you’re on a budget. Secondly, often times the options aren’t always good for you anyway. For this reason I started meal prepping.
I would take a couple of hours on Sundays, every week. Yes, every single week. This went on for many months, maybe years. If I happen to not do this on a Sunday, it would pretty much mess up my whole week in terms of my food intake and my pocket. So I learned quickly that a couple of Sunday hours is worth the scarifies if it means I’ll have a whole week of meals ready for me to grab and go.
I took into consideration breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks in between. Making sure I was stocked on all my necessary groceries on Saturdays so when I woke up on Sundays I was ready to cook!
I would try to keep my meals simple. Baking a big batch of chicken breast. I also enjoy leafy greens with diced apple along with other salad toppers. Easy way to put together a healthy dinner or lunch salad. For breakfast I would use a muffin tin to bake eggs with any toppings I may have added. In the mornings I would grab a couple of mini omelettes to go.
Every meal was portioned and I made sure to cook everything and stored it in the fridge/freezer. Every weeknight when I would get home I had dinner ready to go. I would prep my breakfast so when I woke up all I had to do was eat. No need to prep/cook anything in the mornings. Before bed I would pack my lunch and snacks in my lunch bag so in the morning all I had to do was grab and go.
Same with my gym bag. Since I would go to the gym in the mornings, the night before I would prep my work clothes in my gym bag and often times packed an extra set of clothes to change into after work. I was waking up before 5am everyday, I didn’t have time to spend prepping anything in the mornings.
Prepping everything ahead of time really helped me maximize the use of my time so I can be able to accomplish all of my daily tasks. If you haven’t started meal prepping, I highly recommend that you do. And I can’t stress this enough, a major perk in meal prepping is all the money you save!