Episode 15: 5 Quick & Easy Meal Prep Ideas
Meal Prep is a great way to save time, money, and brainpower while reaching your daily nutrition goals.
As a busy coach and athlete with ADHD, I’m a BIG fan of meal prep. This involves preparing my food ahead of when I plan to eat it, which allows me to go about my day-to-day life without the hassle of deciding what to eat.
This way of organizing your eating can help you to:
stay consistent in reaching your daily nutrition goals
avoid overeating while practicing portion control
spend less time in the kitchen at meal times
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Jayd (00:00):
So by meal prepping and having my food ready, I'm able to continue to hyperfocus on whatever it is that I'm working on. I don't have to break my concentration, I can just grab and go.
(00:18)
Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I am Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've created this podcast that I can share some of my most commonly asked questions among my personal training clients and my Twitch followers about fitness. My hope is that the topics in this podcast will help you to get on track in your fitness journey and build a body that you love. In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about some meal prep strategies that you can use to save time and energy to reach your nutrition goals every single day. Now, as a busy coach and person with ADHD, it's really important for me to plan ahead and prep ahead what I'm going to eat every day. Otherwise, I really struggle to meet my nutrition goals. So when I meal prep and when I plan ahead, I just notice that everything feels so much better, I have more energy and recovering better and I make more gains. So meal prep and meal planning are a big part of how I reach my goals, and it's a big part of how many of my clients are also able to reach their nutrition goals. We're going to take a look at a couple of different strategies that you can use to plan and prep ahead for your nutrition, and these tips will help you regardless of whether you have ADHD or not and regardless of how busy you are. So without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(01:44)
Let's talk about meal prep. Now, meal prep is probably a term that you've heard if you hang out anywhere on the internet in the fitness and health social media landscape. So let's talk about what meal prep is. Meal prep is the practice of preparing your food ahead of time ahead of when you're going to actually eat it. Now, there's lots of different strategies for how you can do this, but the most typical way that I tend to see meal prep practiced is that you prepare your food ahead of time and actually split the servings up into separate entree containers that you store in your refrigerator or in your freezer. That way when you're ready to eat, you just grab and go, and this helps in a number of ways. One is that it takes the guesswork out of when you are hungry. I don't know about you, but when I'm already hungry, I don't tend to make the best choices, right?
(02:41)
If I'm already hungry, especially if I'm already hungry and I've been hungry for a while, I'm usually going to grab whatever sounds tastiest or I'm going to grab whatever is most convenient and it may not be the most nutritious. When you practice meal prep, basically your food is already prepared for you. You've already planned ahead, so you've made sure that the food that you have available is going to reach your nutrition goals, like how many calories you should be eating, what your macros need to be, right? You've got the right food groups in there, your veggies, your protein, your whole grains. It saves you from that. What am I going to eat? And then just grabbing something that's convenient but not actually nutritious. Now, another thing that it really helps with as a person with A DHD, I tend to get really hyper-focused on whatever it is that I'm working on.
(03:32)
I love my work. I'm very passionate about it, and sometimes I get a little bit sucked into whatever I'm doing, and it can be really disorienting to have to stop and interrupt what I'm doing to decide what am I going to eat, and then cook whatever it is that I'm going to eat. If I have meal prepped, I don't really have to break my concentration. All I have to do is walk over to my refrigerator, pop, whatever it is into the microwave, and then I can come right back to whatever it is that I was doing with very little interruption to my focus. And this is really big for me and my A DHD because the way that my brain will work is like if I have to stop what I'm doing to decide what to eat and then prepare what I'm going to eat, like spend 20 minutes cooking or whatever, I'm going to just opt to not eat.
(04:24)
And this is a problem. It's a big problem because it tends to leave me underfed, malnourished, and then I later on have to pay for it in my workouts, and I have a really hard time recovering from my workouts, and I sacrifice my gains, which is not what I want. I'm trying to build muscle. I'm trying to get strong. So by meal prepping and having my food ready, I'm able to continue to hyperfocus on whatever it is that I'm working on. I don't have to break my concentration. I can just grab and go. Another thing that a lot of people find meal prep helpful for is portion control. When you go ahead and you prepare your food ahead of time, you don't have to worry as much about overeating if you miss your body's fullness cues because what you have to eat is what you have meal prepped in that single container entree that you have prepared for your lunch or for your dinner.
(05:20)
That is what you have to eat. And so it helps to cut down on if you have the habit of continuing to eat past when you're actually full or if you tend to overshoot your calories at mealtimes because you continue to eat, you have a select portion of what is available and you eat just that. So if you are especially on a fat loss phase of your journey and you struggle with portion control, meal prep can really help with that. So these are just a few of the benefits that I've found to be really powerful for myself and for my personal clients in helping us all to stay on track with our nutrition. So I really think that meal prep is just like God gamer when it comes to reaching your nutrition goals every day. So now let's talk about a couple of different strategies that you can use for meal prep because it's not really a one size fits all strategy.
(06:14)
There's lots of different ways that you can prepare your food ahead of time. Today we're going to look at five different strategies that I have found really helpful for myself and for my clients, but I would love to hear what strategies you are using. If you practice meal prep, you can leave them in the comments of the YouTube video that is associated with this podcast episode. You can also talk about it in my Coaching corner Discord server. The link for that is in the show notes to this episode. So here's five of my favorite meal prep strategies. The first strategy, which is my personal favorite is batch cooking. Batch cooking is when you prepare one dish with lots of servings and then you just divide out those servings so that you can grab and go throughout the week. So a good example of this would be like a crockpot or slow cooker recipe like making a soup or a stew.
(07:09)
This works really well with casserole, but there's lots of different dishes that work well with batch cooking. But essentially you just pick a recipe that makes enough for six to eight servings, so you have a family of six to eight, but you're preparing it for yourself and you're dividing up those servings for yourself. Now, I really like this strategy because many years ago when I first started trying to meal prep, I did not know about batch cooking, and so I was preparing a bunch of separate dishes at once, and I would spend hours in the kitchen over the weekend. I remember one Sunday, many years ago, I was in the kitchen for four hours just preparing my dinners, just preparing my dinners for that week because I was making a bunch of separate dishes. I had my vegetable dish, and that was like 45 minutes of cooking, and then I had my protein dish, which was another 45 minutes of cooking and prep with all the together.
(08:07)
It ended up being about four hours with all the stuff together and all the components. I do not recommend this unless you really like cooking. If you love being in the kitchen, go for it. Go crazy, create separate dishes and then put them all together. Wonderful. I love that for you, not for me. I need to spend as little time as possible in the kitchen. I hate being in the kitchen. My kitchen is really small, so it feels really claustrophobic and I just feel it under stimulating as a person with a DHD. Cooking is one of those activities that I just find incredibly boring and tedious, so I want to make sure that a little bit goes a long way. And so for myself, I'm going to be cooking dishes that make a lot of servings and it's the full dish. So a couple of examples of types of dishes that work really well for this, a lot of slow cooker recipes, slow cooker or crockpot recipes.
(09:01)
These are awesome because you basically can just dump all of your ingredients into the crockpot and press cook and the recipe will just cook itself over the course of four to eight or 10 hours. Another thing that I really like about this is you don't have to babysit the food. You literally can just put it in the crockpot and then walk away. You can go to bed, you can go to work, and you don't have to worry about actually doing anything to the dish, and it just cooks itself. And by the end of the time that it's cooking, it's ready to eat and you can divide it up among your meal prep containers and then stick it in the refrigerator and you're good to go. That's my top tier. Favorite way to meal prep. I love the slow cooker stuff, but one pan recipes also work really well for this because that'll save you a lot of time and a lot of mess.
(09:51)
And that's basically where you bake everything on one pan in the oven. So you dump your vegetables, your protein, whatever your starchy vegetable is, or if you're doing grains, you dump all of that into one pan, put it in the oven, roast it or bake it, and it's good to go. This works really well with casseroles as well. You put everything into a casserole dish, but you can also batch cook cold dishes like salads, and you'll probably hear meal prep bowls or sea meal prep bowls on social media. These are basically cold dishes that are salads where all of the ingredients are put together into a container, and you don't have to cook anything. You can eat it cold right out of the refrigerator. Salads are super, super easy to batch cook because you just get all of the ingredients together. You lay out your entree containers and you can just dump in all of your lettuce and then your carrots and then whatever toppings.
(10:50)
I would suggest, however, getting some separate little containers for your dressing or your sauce because if you're storing a week's worth of salads in the refrigerator by the end of the week, that salad's going to be pretty soggy if you go ahead and put your dressing or if you go ahead and put your sauce on it. So you may want to have some separate containers for your sauces and your dressing, but that's a real quick way. You don't have to cook, you don't have to fire up the oven, you don't have to use a crock pot. Just drop everything together in those containers, salads and meal prep bowls. Awesome. I love them. And then wraps and sandwiches are also really good for batch cooking because just like with the salads, you can lay out your breads or your wraps and then just dump all your salad greens and then your proteins and then whatever other toppings, and then wrap them up, pop 'em in the fridge, they're good to go.
(11:47)
Easy peasy lemon squeezy. So batch cooking is probably the most popular way to meal prep. It's probably the way that if you've seen anything about meal prep on social media, this is probably the style that you've seen and it works really well. I would say that the drawback though, especially for those hot dishes, is if you don't like reheated food, if you don't like the taste and the consistency of leftovers, because for the hot dishes, you are going to probably have to pop them in the microwave before you eat them. They're already cooked, right? And you're not going to necessarily be eating them right after they've been cooked. And for some people that is a no-go, right? I have a couple of clients who just absolutely hate the taste of meat when it has been reheated in the microwave and some stuff just doesn't have a good consistency.
(12:41)
When you reheat it in the microwave, a lot of times you'll lose the crispiness that maybe had the topping before you popped it in the refrigerator. So for people who really don't like the taste or consistency of leftovers, I think one of the best options is to do a partial prep strategy. So the next two strategies will help with that if that's your issue with meal prep. So we're going to do a partial prep, which means we're going to get all of the ingredients together, but we're not going to actually cook them until right before you eat them. So one of my favorite ways to do this is to marinade and then cook right before you're going to eat something. So you can get a bunch of glass containers and put your chicken or whatever protein you're going to be doing, your vegetables, everything, all of the components of the meal into that container, and then 20 to 30 minutes before you're going to actually eat it, that's when you pop it in the oven or that's when you dump it into a frying pan or a wok or something.
(13:46)
So basically you're going to assemble all of the ingredients together, but you're not going to actually cook them until you're ready to eat. So this does a couple of different things. One, you're already getting the portion control that you would get for the regular meal prep, right? You already have in that container. That is your entree, that is what you're going to be eating, and you also don't have to decide right before you're going to eat, what am I going to eat? It's already there. It's already prepared, but you don't have to worry about that leftover microwaved consistency or flavor of the food because you're going to actually cook it right before you eat it. This works really well for stir fry recipes or just marinated meat and vegetables. You can just leave them marinating in the refrigerator. In fact, the longer that you leave it marinating in the refrigerator, it's going to have way more flavor by the time you actually cook it and eat it.
(14:44)
So this is a great strategy that can make sure that you're getting the consistency and the flavor that you like without having to do all of the cooking or all of the deciding of what you're going to eat at mealtimes. And third, a similar strategy to this, which is freezer meal prep. Now, this is kind of a new strategy for me. I've been reading a lot about it and I'm intrigued. I haven't quite practiced it as much myself, but this is similar to that like marinade and prep. But basically, you're going to take all of the ingredients of your meal. You're going to go ahead and chop up your vegetables, add your seasonings, and dump everything together into a freezer safe bag, like a Ziploc bag or one of those endurable silicone bags. And you're going to put all of that in the freezer before you cook it, and then at mealtime, you just take out that bag, thaw the ingredients, and then you cook it.
(15:44)
So this is a really interesting strategy that I think would work really, really well if you're super busy. And the thing that I also really like about it is that this will keep for a lot longer than if you do the marinade and cook strategy or even the cook before you eat it, the traditional batch cooking. Because a lot of times there's weeks where I don't have time to meal prep. I don't have time to plan what I'm going to eat, and that can be really stressful because either it might be birthday parties or maybe a project over the weekend, and I just don't have as much time as I would like to go ahead and just put everything together for the week. Having something in the freezer that's ready to go, all I have to do is thaw it and I maybe prepared it a month ago.
(16:35)
What a great strategy for saving more time and more energy and more saving on stress about your meals. So I really love this idea. There's a creator that I really like who makes great content around freezer prep. It's Olga's Flavor Factory. The link for that website is in the show notes to this episode. So Olga makes a lot of freezer prep meals, and she talks a lot about how it can be helpful for if you're entering into a busy season, if you know that you're going to have time where you're just not going to have as much time to meal prep or you're not going to have as much time to think about what am I going to eat? For example, Olga used this strategy right before she was going to have her baby because she knew after having her baby that she wasn't going to have a whole lot of time for cooking and planning her meals.
(17:27)
So she went ahead and stocked her freezer with a bunch of ready to cook meals, which is so smart. But if you have a really busy job where you have seasons that are just super, super busy, if you're an accountant or something going into a couple of weeks that you're not going to have as much time to meal prep and meal plan freezer, meal prep is the way to go. I love the strategy. And the other thing that I like about it is, again, if you are the type of person where you don't really like the taste of leftovers in general, you're going to be cooking these meals right before you're going to eat them. You just have to thaw them and then pop them in the oven or however it is that you're going to be cooking them. What a great strategy. So you don't have to worry about that reheated meat taste.
(18:14)
This is a really great option that I'm going to be exploring a lot more of in the coming months. Now, another really cool strategy that can help save time and energy is the partial prep or ingredient prep. So with ingredient prep, you're not actually preparing the whole meal. You're just going ahead and preparing and cooking different components of the meals, like cooking the vegetables, cooking the rice, and you assemble your meals right before you eat them. Or you may have certain components that you cook right before you eat them, but you have other components that are already ready to go. They're cooked, and all you have to do is add them. Nikki gets Fit is a YouTube channel that gives a lot of information and a lot of strategies for how to do this well. So the link for Nikki gets fit is going to be in the show notes to this episode as well.
(19:07)
She does a really great job of explaining how to do ingredient prep or partial prep. So the way that this strategy can be super helpful is if you tend to not like to eat the same thing every day. So if you're batch cooking, for example, you're going to be eating the same thing at lunchtime every day for a couple of days, if not the entire week. I don't mind this for me and my brain type that works just fine. I love the consistency, but for some people that will drive them crazy, they will get so sick of eating the same thing every day. If you ingredient prep, it adds a variety to your meals because you have all of these ingredients that are ready to go, but you can combine them in different ways at mealtime, so you can make some sandwiches by using the prepped onions, the cheese, and whatever meat.
(20:05)
This works really well because at meal times, you can combine all of the different ingredients that you have ready to go in your refrigerator or in your kitchen, and you can put them into different combinations to give yourself some variety so you're not eating the same thing every day. But you also know that what you are eating is going to be nutritious, it's homemade, and you're in total control of what goes on your plate. I do actually do ingredient prep from time to time. One of my favorite ways to do this is like I will cook a bunch of chicken breast at the beginning of the week, so I'll either put it in the slow cooker or I'll bake it or roast it in the oven, and then throughout the week, I will put that chicken into different dishes. I'll make a chicken salad, which I can have on crackers or in a wrap or on a sandwich, and then I'll also add it to a salad or a sandwich or a wrap, or I'll top it into another thing that I've prepped like soup or a pasta dish.
(21:12)
So ingredient prep can save some time for you and also ensure that you're reaching your nutrition goals, especially if you're doing it with your proteins or your veggies. Having them prepped and ready to go is a great way to make sure that you're getting them in at meal times, but you're also not eating the same thing all the time. So I like this strategy, especially for my clients who really hate to eat the same thing every day. So check out Nikki gets fit. She's got so many videos and so many resources on how to do ingredient prep. Now, for the last strategy, I want to remind you that you do not have to cook everything that you eat. I think that sometimes we get this idea in our minds that there's this moral imperative that you have to prepare from scratch everything that you eat to do it well to be healthy.
(22:02)
And that's just not realistic for many of us. And I know some of my clients tend to feel really guilty because they're just like, I don't want to be cooking all the time, and I don't like to cook all the time. How can I meal prep? Can I still meal prep and can I still eat healthy? And the answer is absolutely yes. You can use already pre-prepared or pre-cooked stuff. You do not have to cook everything from scratch. There are some people who love cooking and they're good at it, and they want to cook everything from scratch. Awesome. I love that for them. But for myself and for many of my clients, we do not have the patience or the time, and you're not a bad person if you want to use already prepared or pre-cooked food in your meal prep. In fact, you'll probably save some time and some energy for yourself.
(22:53)
So I really like to use pre-prepared stuff from the grocery store. For example, I really hate cooking chicken. I will do it. I will cook meat, but I hate to do it. And so sometimes I'll just straight up buy already cooked rotisserie chickens from my grocery store, and then I will use that in my chicken salad or on my sandwiches or topping salads and pasta dishes. There's nothing wrong with using something that's already pre-prepared, especially if it means that it's the difference between you actually meal prepping and reaching your nutrition goals versus just yolo dieting and just eating whatever or not eating at all. So rotisserie chicken, that's one of my favorite things, but a lot of times will peruse the deli section of my grocery store because there's a lot of pre-prepared stuff that you can add to your meal prep to just save time.
(23:57)
There's also already cooked protein and vegetables in the freezer aisle of your grocery store. All of these things are totally fine to use in your meal prep. You do not have to cook everything from scratch. Now, if you cook everything from scratch, the benefit is that you are going to have less sodium, less preservatives. You have more control over what actually goes on your plate. But for most of us, especially if you're in a really busy season or you have a really busy day or busy week, just go ahead and use what's already prepared. There's a lot of really healthy options in the deli section or in the freezer section of your grocery store. Also, there's nothing wrong with stocking up your freezer with actually frozen meals. There are a lot of great options. Now, we've come a long way in the food industry over the last 20 years in preparing frozen food that's nutritious.
(24:54)
It has a minimum amount of sodium and preservatives, lean cuisine, healthy choice meals. These are all really great options. If you haven't meal prepped or you don't have time to meal prep, just grab one of those from your freezer. There's nothing wrong with that. Just know that these tend to have a little bit higher sodium though when you're going with these pre-prepared and frozen foods. And so if you eat a lot of them, and if you go through a week and that's what most of what you're eating is, you may notice that the scale goes up because your body is going to be retaining more water. And you also just want to be careful about your sodium intake in general because high sodium can lead to high blood pressure. But there's nothing wrong with incorporating these things into your meal prep strategy. You can combine them with batch cooking.
(25:46)
You do a little bit of batch cooking, and then you have a few meals that you just eat frozen, like Lean cuisine. You can use any of these strategies in combination. You don't have to just pick one. Now, when we're talking about meal prep, it's really important to also consider storage solutions. I have for many, many years used little plastic entree containers. I've liked these because they allow me to divvy out all of the servings and stack them in my refrigerator so I can grab and go throughout the week. However, one of my goals in this year is to reduce my use of plastics. And so I recently invested in a bunch of glass meal prep containers, and I really like these for a number of reasons. One, I know that I'm reducing my exposure to microplastics because when you store food in plastic, there's always a little bit of microplastic leakage that can happen.
(26:38)
And so I'm trying to reduce that in my own diet. Also, meal prep containers that are plastic over time tend to take on the flavors and odors of the food that you store in them, which can carry over into whatever food that you store in them later, which is really gross. So I am using glass containers. Another thing that I like about the glass containers is you can actually cook the food right in them. So glass containers work really well for those partial prep strategies. If you're marinating and then you're going to cook right before you eat, you can just marinate and store your food in the glass containers, and then you can pop that glass container right into the oven. So there's a number of reasons why I love these. They do tend to be heavier, and they are more fragile, of course, than your plastic containers.
(27:27)
But for me, I've been using them for half a year at this point, and I really love them. I don't have that carryover flavor from past meals. And also plastic containers sometimes can just, even if it doesn't pass on food flavors from previous dishes, there's still that plasticy type of flavor or smell, and I absolutely hate that. So I love that my glass containers kind of just allow the food to keep its own flavor. However, if you're going to be practicing the freezer prep or if you're concerned with the glass containers, breaking plastic is okay. But personally, I would recommend getting something that's like a non-plastic lightweight type of container like made of silicone or get some BPA free plastic containers. I have links to suggested containers in the show notes of this episode. For some food, especially for that freezer prep, you may want to use Ziploc bags, but if you want to reduce your use of plastics, Ziploc actually makes silicone-based bags of all sizes that work well in the freezer.
(28:36)
They're re washable and reusable links for that are in the show notes. Another of my absolute favorite meal prep containers is insulated containers or thermos. Now, I love these because you can take whatever the food is that you're going to be eating, and if it's hot or if it's cold, these containers will keep the food the same temperature without you having to reheat it or put it in the refrigerator. So if you're on the go, you don't have access to a refrigerator or a microwave to reheat your food. These are awesome. And if you are on the go a lot, I do recommend investing in a lunchbox that's insulated. I love my lunchbox. It has two compartments. So I have the bottom compartment that I'll put sometimes my cold dishes in, and then I'll put my hot components in the top compartment. I've got links for some suggested lunchboxes there.
(29:32)
So this will allow you to carry your food with you and keep your meal prep with you, and you can stock up on all of your snacks, keep all of your snacks, all of your dishes for the day with you. So check out the show notes for suggested links for those different types of storage solutions because that is going to help you to stay consistent on your meal prep and make sure that you're actually eating what you prepare for yourself. So that is the episode for today. I hope that you found it helpful. I'm really curious to see what strategies you actually like for practicing meal prep and reaching your daily nutrition goals. Again, you can leave your comments in the comment section on the YouTube channel for this episode of the podcast, or you can join my Coaching Corner Discord server and keep the conversation going there in the nutrition section.
(30:21)
I would really like to know what your favorite meal prep strategies are. Don't forget also to sign up for my email list where I send notifications about new podcast episodes every week, as well as lots of free trainer tips for moving forward and staying motivated in your fitness journey. I've also created some meal planning worksheets that can help you to plan out your meal prep every week. The link for that is in the show notes to this episode. It's a free download, so check that out. And also, if you are not really sure what your nutrition goals should be, check out my Healthy Diet Makeover program. I break down everything you need to know in terms of how to build a healthy plate and how many calories you should be eating, how to split up your calories among macronutrients, and more tips on meal prep. All of the information for that is linked in the show notes.
(31:18)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, aka Jaydigains. And if you'd like to hang out with me while I'm live on Twitch, check on my Twitch channel, which is twitch.tv/jaydigains. You can also find a lot more information on the services that I provide and more coaching tips on my website, which is jaydigains.com. If you are interested in diving a little bit deeper into planning your nutrition and figuring out what your nutrition goals should be, make sure to check out my Healthy Diet Makeover program. This is a short course that will teach you everything you need to know from how to put the right types of food on your plate to how many calories you should be eating every day, and where those calories should be coming from in terms of your macronutrients.
(32:04)
We also cover a lot more in detail about how to meal plan and meal prep in that course. So you can check that out in the links that are in the show notes to this episode. That's the Healthy Diet Makeover program. And also make sure to check out my free downloadable meal planning worksheets, which are linked in the show notes to this episode. Thank you once again for watching. I will see you next time. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Don't forget to eat your protein, eat your veggies, drink water, and prioritize your self-care.
Meal Prep Strategies
There are many different variations of meal prep strategies to choose from. In this episode, we’ll take a look at 5 of my favorite strategies to prep ahead and stay on track in my nutrition.
1 Batch Cooking
Batch cooking is perhaps the most popular style of meal prep. This involves cooking a large batch of a meal ahead of time. Most people do this over the weekend and then store the separate servings in entree containers to take with them to work throughout the week.
When I first started meal prepping, I made the mistake of making super complicated meals that had too many different parts. I’d be stuck in my kitchen for 4 hours or more on a Sunday. I don’t recommend doing this! Since then, I’ve figured out much faster and easier ways to meal prep with much less cleanup afterwards.
Slow Cooker recipes are one of my favorite minimal-cleanup options for batch cooking. You just dump a bunch of ingredients into a slow cooker or crock pot, set it and forget it. The food will cook over the course of between 4 and 10 hours without you having to do anything to it. You can literally leave the food to cook while you sleep or work. When the food is done, separate the servings into separate containers, or you can literally throw the entire pot and lid into your refrigerator in a pinch and just divy out new servings for youself throughout the week.
One Pan Recipes are great if you especially want to cook something with a crispier or more charred texture and flavor. My favorite one pan recipes include things like casseroles, or just a ton of veggies and protein cooked together with some seasoning or marinade.
One Pot Recipes are similar to slow cooker recipes in that you dump everything into a single large pot to cook, but they usually cook in a much shorter time period.
Salads & Meal Prep Bowls are one of my go-to options for cold dishes if I don’t want to worry about microwaving something. You can throw together a bunch of nutritious items with a variety of textures and flavors into an entree container and add dressing just before you eat it.
Wraps & Sandwiches are another super simple way to prepare cold dishes with tons of nutrition, with the added benefit that you can literally eat them while you’re on the move. No fork or spoon needed!
2 Marinate Prep
Another great way to cut down on time in the kitchen before you eat is to do a partial prep strategy—where you get the meal ingredients ready ahead of time and bunched together so that all you have to do is pop it in the oven or into a frying pan just before you eat it.
3 Ingredient Prep
Some dishes work best if you go ahead and cook a few parts ahead of time. You can later add them to different dishes. This is a great option if you hate eating the same thing every day and want some variety.
For example, I’ll often slow cook or bake 2 pounds of chicken breast at the beginning of the week. Then throughout the week, I’ll add that chicken to salads, pasta, and sandwiches when I feel like I need the variety. This works well for dishes like:
chicken salad, tuna salad, or salmon salad
sandwiches and wraps
adding protein to top other dishes like soups, pasta, or salads
Ingredient prep also works really well if you don’t like the taste or consistency of leftovers. By having the meal ingredients ready ahead of time and bunched together, all you have to do is assemble and pop the meal into the oven or into a frying pan just before you eat it.
I suggest subscribing to Nikki Gets Fit on YouTube for more information on how to ingredient prep. She makes tons of content with tips and tricks that many of my clients swear by!
4 Using Pre-Prepared Foods
Another variation of this is to buy already-prepared items from the grocery store or food market to incorporate into your meal prep. I’ll often buy a rotisserie chicken from my local Harris Teeter and add it to my meals throughout the week.
Frozen foods are also a really convenient option for pre-prepared foods. I keep certain veggies like peas, edamame, and broccoli in my freezer at all times to quickly microwave or steam and add to my meals. I also try to keep one or two ready-to-eat meals in my freezer at all times for when I haven’t meal prepped and need nutrition in a pinch. Healthy Choice and Lean Cuisine make some great options for dishes that are packed with protein vegetables.
5 Freezer Meal Prep
Freezer prep is something that I honestly don’t do nearly as often as I should! There are two main ways to use your freezer for meal prep.
The first method involves cooking your meals and then freezing the individual servings to eat later. It’s like making your own Healthy Choice or Lean Cuisine meals—but more tailored to your nutrition goals and with fewer preservatives.
The other method involves chopping & assembling ingredients, then freezing everything BEFORE you cook the meal. Later, when you’re ready to eat, simply thaw and cook. This is a great option if you don’t like the taste or texture of re-heated meals!
Olga’s Flavor Factory is an excellent resource for recipes, tips, and tricks for making delicious and nutritious freezer-prep meals.
Recommended Equipment:
Before you start practicing meal prep, make sure that you have the proper containers to store the food until you’re ready to eat it!
I recommend investing in some sort of entree-size containers so that you can more easily grab and go at meal times. This also makes your food easier to pack in a lunch box if you’re on the go.
For years I used plastic entree containers because they were cheap and lightweight. But over time, these containers tend to absorb odors and get stained, and I also worry about ingesting microplastics.
So recently I invested in glass meal prep containers and I absolutely love them!
Glass food storage containers are not only more durable and sustainable, but they also don’t tend to retain any odors or stains. Also, you can cook your food directly in a glass container—which cuts down on cleanup after cooking. Here are the ones I suggest:
Although they can be heavier and more fragile than plastic meal prep containers, glass containers are my preferred go-to option.
However, if you plan on freezing your meal prep, you might want to use either silicone or BPA-free plastic containers:
For some food items, you may want to use a bag with a zip lock. For plastic-free options, check out reusable and washable silicone bags:
Another favorite storage solution is stainless steel insulated food containers or thermoses. I love these especially for days when I want to keep the temperature of my food consistent until mealtime and won’t have access to either a refrigerator or microwave.
If you’re on the go a lot of times, I also suggest getting a lunch box that will keep your food insulated. I have a multi-compartment lunch box that I use on days when I’ll be in the office for long periods of time.
Clean up your diet 🥦
Clean up your diet and reach your fitness goals in 5 steps.
ABOUT JAYD HARRISON
Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains) is a personal trainer and content creator. She helps people to build muscle, burn fat, and clean up their diets with her online coaching programs and social media content. Check out some of Jayd’s coaching videos on Youtube, or join Jayd live on Twitch and follow on social media:
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