Level-Up Your Lunches With These Top 5 Tips for Any Meal Prep Beginner
4.) Plan In Advance
Starting to cook chicken parmesan only to remember that you forgot to buy tomatoes will suck big time! To avoid this kind of situation, you need to follow one rule: plan in advance.
Your meal prep plan should thoroughly answer these questions:
- What is my goal (a weight-loss diet, a diabetes-friendly diet, a simple balanced diet, etc.)?
- What are the nutrition elements that need to be included in my diet to achieve my goal (focus on proteins, calories, vitamins, etc.)?
- Which dishes will contain all these nutrition elements?
- What ingredients do I need to make these dishes? In what quantities?
Once you finish answering the last question, you will find yourself with a comprehensive grocery list! For an extra tip, try to organize your grocery list elements by categories or aisles (produce, bakery, dry goods, etc.). It will help you shop much faster and avoid running back and forth every time you need to find something.
To help you plan, there are many meal prep templates out there. Our favorite is from Fit Men Cooking. You can download their food list and meal plan templates and fill it in every time you’re prepping.
And for those who browse Pinterest endlessly for their meal prep recipes, we have a more distraction-free alternative — download the Yummly app. Their drool-worthy database will be the inspiration you were looking for! They have filter search options to look by prep time, nutrition or type of cuisine, and you can save your favorite recipes within the app. The feature we love the most though is that the app can turn the ingredients of the recipe into a curated grocery list!
