The Best Way to Meal Prep

Eating Healthy and Staying Happy

By: Madyson Callion

One of the best ways to continue your fitness journey into 2022 is to meal prep. Meal prepping is a great way to incorporate essential food groups into your diet and get a visualization of what you’re eating each day.

    A first great step is to make a list of foods you like from the 5 core food groups: fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy. This allows you to see what foods you enjoy that can encompass the major food group areas.

    Next, make a list of the meals and snacks throughout the day. From the list of foods you enjoy, start planning meals that you can have. For example, if I list asparagus, chicken, and rice as foods I enjoy, I can take those foods and make a meal for dinner: pan-seared chicken breast with asparagus and brown rice.

    If you get stuck and run out of options for your meals remember that Google is always your friend. Look up meal prepping ideas and you’ll come up with many different ideas for meal prepping.

    Once you have made your first meal, try to make as many as you can from your list and then order them into the meals for your day. Keep going until you have a full week’s worth of food and then prepare your grocery list. 

    Are you stuck on what to do once you’re back from the store? Take it a day at a time. If you go to the grocery store on Sunday, prep your meal for Monday. Start small and then once you’re comfortable you can grow to building out your meals on the same day you come back from the grocery store. Chopping veggies to prepare them for cooking, seasoning meat and storing it, and cooking rice or grains beforehand to use later on are all great ways to start weekly meal preps. 

    Remember also that meal prepping isn’t rigid, you can deviate from your meal prepping at any time. The greatest thing about meal prepping is having the freedom to choose your meals and how you want to prepare them.