Meal prepping made easy
What you eat will be a determining factor when working on your fitness goals. Whether you be working on losing weight, gaining strength and muscle, or simply wanting to live healthier. You work in the gym will only be reinforced with a good diet. Without it, your hard work can go to waste. Meal prepping can be the answer to being sure your nutrition is in check.
Why is preparing your meals ahead of time that important?
Having your food prepared ahead of time can help you from eating the wrong foods or wrong amount of foods. We tend to choose our foods based on convenience, taste preference, emotion, etc. So to be sure that you are making the best choices, it’s easiest to have food already prepared so you don’t have to make decisions that could lead to eating the wrong foods.
How do I go about meal prepping?
First know what you like and find a recipe how to make it. It’s easy to look for recipes by searching the type of food and adding “healthy” in the search. This will bring up a lot of good healthier options. In addition to this, if you aren’t the best chef, add “easy” to the search to find a healthy and easy recipe. Crock pot and one pan recipes are great for easy cooking and clean up.
From here find the best recipe and get your necessary ingredients. I would suggest making a smaller batch just for the first time to make sure you like it and it turns out.
Finally, divide into portions and enjoy! You can log this recipe into MyFitnessPal as a full recipe with all your ingredients (if you have a link to the recipe, you can even add it directly and sometimes it fills in all the ingredients for you) and say how many servings the recipe is. From there you will be able to add 1 serving directly into your daily log.
Meal prepping will make eating healthier easier because you will have the food you need to suit you diet and it you can take the guessing of if it will fit into your daily calories well. This goes for snacks and meals. You don’t want to get to the end of the day and realize you have to eat 22 grams of protein, have no carbs, and 3 grams of fat left. This doesn’t leave you too many options.
What if I don’t have time to meal prep?
If you don’t have the time, planning out your meals and have to eat on the go, simply plan out what you will be eating. For example, if you have to eat out for lunch due to your work schedule, simply look ahead at what will be the best option to fit into your daily calories. Pretty much every restaurant has healthy options, even McDonalds, so making it work is always an option. However, meal prepping can take only an hour and give you food for a week so it is definitely worth your while to make the time for.
Planning ahead means that you can work your favorite foods into your daily calories without going under or over. Making conscious choices and eating in moderation is key to a healthy diet that will lead to healthy choices and a healthy lifestyle.
Recipe of the week:
These mini BLT bites are an easy, pop-able, tasty snack that are low in carbs and high in protein.
Simply cut off the top of the tomato, stuff with a little cream cheese (whipped cream cheese is a bit better option), lettuce, and either bits of normal or turkey bacon. You can also substitute the bacon with tuna or chicken, etc. and enjoy!
As always, let me know if you have any questions, I would be happy to go over meal prepping with you more in depth to find the best options for you.
Finally, I am now on Yelp. Any review on the page is greatly appreciated. If you have written one for me previously, feel free to copy and paste onto the yelp page!
https://www.yelp.com/biz/abf-athletics-chicago
Thank you as always!
-Angela
