Meal prepping help

goal06082021 wrote: »

Meal prepping is basically just making leftovers on purpose; a meal that yields 4 servings could feed four people at one time, or one person at four times. You cook whatever and then, rather than serving it on plates to yourself and three other people, you pack it into four containers and store them in the fridge to eat over the next few days.

If you're prepping meals for weight-management purposes, you probably also want to use a food scale so that you know how much food you're eating. I use a food scale when I cook to track the amount of each ingredient that goes into my recipe; I put a bowl or other container on the scale and weigh out raw ingredients as I prepare them, writing down the number on a little pad of paper I keep by the scale. For example, I dice an onion and put the onion bits in the bowl, see that the scale reads 250g, and write down "250g onion" on my little pad of paper. I also use the food scale when I pack my servings into their containers, to make sure they're all equal, because I also prep for my husband whose caloric needs are different from mine so his serving sizes are also different. If you're only prepping for yourself, it's less necessary to weigh the finished portions; if you're going to eat all of it eventually, it doesn't really make a difference if you eat precisely 20% of it every day for a week or if your portions are slightly bigger or smaller on any given day, it'll average out.

The containers you use just need to work for you, they don't need to be fancy. If you like brothy/soupy/stewy type things, dishes with a lot of liquid, you'll want some locking water-tight containers like these - brothy soups and stews are easy to prepare in quantity and they often freeze pretty well, so they're a popular choice among meal preppers. Glass works better than plastic if water-tight is important for you. I prefer glass in general because it's nonporous and easier to clean, and microwave-safe.

Hitting your macro/calorie goals works the same whether you prep your food in advance or cook things as-needed. Some recipes do work better for prepping than others - you have to do a little bit of trial-and-error to find the venn diagram section of "food you like," "food that fits your macro/calorie goals," and "food that can easily be prepared in quantity, packaged into single servings, and reheated with whatever means are available to you." One-pot and sheet-pan meals work well for mealprep because, as the name suggests, they aren't very elaborate to prepare; once the food is cooked, you just divide it all up into however many servings.

You technically *can* prep things like sandwiches and salads, but it's generally better to assemble things like that right before you eat them rather than days in advance, so prep for that would be more like building "kits" that you take along with you. You'd package your bread, your sandwich fillings, and any spreads you like all separately from each other, then assemble your sandwich at lunchtime - if you've been to a sub sandwich counter recently, you might notice that most places don't slice your ham and turkey fresh when you order, but rather have a fridge full of pre-made packets of lunchmeats, one sandwich's worth per packet, and they just put that right on your bread. Same idea here. Salads work similarly (leafy base + toppings + dressing all packaged separately), although it is possible to pack a whole salad in a mason jar: put the dressing at the bottom, followed by big/heavy chunks like protein, then lighter chunks like diced veggies or cheese, then leafy base greens crammed into the top. Shake it up and eat it out of the jar, or dump the whole jar into a bowl.