How to Meal Prep for Beginners

Meal prepping and planning can be intimidating, especially if you’re new to it. That’s why I created this how-to meal prep for beginners guide. I used to take forever to meal prep but now I have it down to a science. Meal prepping isn’t for everyone. Especially if you hate repeating snacks or meals but it’s an easy way to make sure you have healthy options to quickly grab during the week.

Saturdays or Sundays are the days I sit down and do my weekly meal plan and prep.  I make a meal plan, go grocery shopping and prep my food for the week.  I like to meal plan and go grocery shopping Saturday to break it up and the food stores always seem to be packed on Sundays. Though, it doesn’t always work out that way.  Sundays, I meal prep for the week.  I usually set aside an hour depending on what I am making for the week. In order to prep, you need to know what you’re making, so make a meal plan! I go into detail on meal planning here but you don’t have to make a fancy plan. Simply writing a note in your phone will do! Let’s get into the tips.

Don’t Prep Every Meal

So you have your meal plan. One tip I have is not to prep every single meal. I usually prep my lunches and snacks for the week. I’ll tend to do the same dinners two days in a row or at least the same sides so that I’m not cooking every night but still have fresh food. If you prep every single meal, it’ll get old and as I’ve found, will leave you more prone to wasting food. Lunch and snacks with quick breakfasts make it easy during the work week.

Of course, before I meal-prepped, I laid out a plan.  I like drinking my shakeology (meal replacement w/ protein) for breakfast to refuel the body post-workout and also it’s easy to make and drink while getting ready for work.  Saturday and Sunday I like the good old eggs, veggies, and toast for breakfast and I’m always craving sweets as the day goes on.  I love ice cream so I often make shakeology ‘nice cream’ for lunch on the weekends.

Meal Plan

Here’s one of my recent meal plans. I didn’t type this week’s out (just wrote it in chicken scratch) but that works too!

The week throws us curveballs, so I don’t always stick to the plan exactly.  Especially not the weekends, I usually eat dinner out either Friday or Saturday.  I like having a plan to fall back onto though and having my food already prepped helps me make healthier choices.

For tips on how to meal plan and prep go here!

Meal planning and prepping doesn’t have to be hard.