Meal Prep Question

ashleyjongepier

Hello!

Do any of you meal prep for a family?

I lost over 140 lbs through working out and eating well. It used to just be me so I would meal prep for 4-5 days at a time. I still have 70 lbs to go and I now have a toddler as well as an SO.

I had some success just logging what I ate however for the last few months I have been getting so hungry before or as I make dinner that I just eat too much.

SO's shift times vary and are rarely the same day to day. I am trying to get my daughter (2) and I on a schedule which means eating before SO gets home. I am just so lost trying to figure out how to work a family meal prep? I feel silly prepping our meals vs making them because I am a stay at home mom?

Any suggestions would be so welcomed! Thank you

cbihatt

I am not a fan of prepping in advance, but I know a lot of people prefer it. If you don't want to prep in advance and are getting too hungry, either eat dinner earlier or add in a snack to tide you over. If you like the idea of prepping in advance, there is no reason to feel silly about it. The prep work itself can take some time, but you will be able to get dinner on the table faster in the evening.

I once did a freezer meal workshop with Wild Tree products where you put all the meal ingredients into a ziplock and freeze it all without cooking it. Then, when you are ready to cook, you just defrost and cook. If I were going to prep in advance, that is probably the method I would use. Although, you could also cook things in advance and freeze them in individual sized portions. That may work better for your situation.

enterdanger

I meal prep dinner, the rest is not that hard for me since I have "go to" foods for breakfast and lunch. I highly recommend a crockpot if you don't mind them. That way you and your toddler can eat and you can leave it on the warm setting for your partner.

I made a classic pot roast last night. I like a crockpot with a meat thermometer. You program it so that once your meat hits a certain temperature (like 160 for chicken) it automatically turns itself to warm instead of cook. Might be key if you are running around with your kiddo.

cwolfman13

The only prep my wife and I do is for lunches and what not..as for preparing meals, we prepare in either amounts we intend to eat only or we prepare extra to take for lunch, etc and only put appropriate portions on our plates. Unfortunately due to our schedules, we don't have family meals together except for the weekend...my wife usually gets the boys (5 and 3) their dinner and she sits and chats with them. I don't usually get home until after 7 so we eat together later.

donutbears

I'm not sure what the question is? You would meal prep normally and set aside a meal for your SO to eat when he gets home since it varies day to day. If meal prepping for several days works for you then you should go ahead and do that. Do you mean you feel like you should cook daily instead because you're a SAHM? There's nothing wrong with meal prepping and I'm sure that allows you to have more free time to do other things as well.

scolaris

I plan meals for a family of three, all involved in athletics. I partially prep because the volume of fresh food we buy wouldn't fit in our fridge if I didn't trim it up. So my 'prepping' consists of dividing meats for the dishes I'll be making, cleaning vegetables and cutting them in advance for how we'll use them. That's all. My 13 year old is much more likely to grab fresh veg for lunches & snacks it its all ready to go. Saturday afternoon is my big shopping day. All the cleaning, trimming, repackaging, etc happens by Sunday. I work 7 days a week. 5 as a school sub and 2 as a private caregiver. I don't have time to dither around.