Meal Prep Hacks For Your Busy Schedule
When you want to improve the way you are eating, home-cooked meals are the best context for success. Yet you may think that your busy schedule leaves you with no hope for making your own meals, even if such an approach would save you money. The answer? Meal prep hacks.
I completely understand. I hope to show you some hacks that could work for your unique schedule and lifestyle. Today, I’m sharing a few meal prep hacks so that you don’t have to stress about not having enough time.
Build your meals around your main dish
Try switching it up so that you don’t feel like you’re eating the same thing every day and build the rest of the meal to complement your main dish. For example, you can make chicken with steamed veggies and brown rice for one meal-prep batch and teriyaki salmon bowls for another. This will streamline the process behind meal-prepping while using most of the same ingredients.
Try ingredient-prepping
Sometimes, packaging ready-to-go meals a week in advance can leave your food looking soggy and a bit unappetizing. Plus, you might change your mind as to which ingredients you want to eat in a meal. Instead of creating an entire meal, you may prefer to prepare the individual components. Chop different vegetables, cook a batch of brown rice or quinoa, and separate your fruit into portions. Then, you can assemble your meals and season them according to your mood. The washing, cutting, and cooking take the longest when you meal-prep. If you do that one session on the weekend, the rest of the week should be smooth sailing.
Always make enough for leftovers
Nobody wants to spend more time in the kitchen than necessary, but we all have to eat. If you’re already cooking, double the portion sizes so that your efforts result in two meals. If your dinner doesn’t seem like a convenient meal for packaging to save, then double-up the individual ingredients. For example, if you’re making rice, make double, eat half for your dinner and store the other half of it away for your meal prep. If you’re already chopping up some sweet potato to roast in the oven, add a few extra. This will save you a lot of time.
Switch up your sauces and dressings
This is the best way to avoid your meal-prep becoming boring and bland. If you’ve followed tip #2, you should have your ingredients all ready and prepared to go. The ingredients should be unseasoned unless you have to marinate in advance. When preparing a meal, you can quickly add whatever dressing or seasoning you want. You should also prepare your sauces and dressings in advance so that you don’t have to throw on some store-bought condiments that usually contain a lot of artificial preservatives and sugar. Homemade hummus has a long shelf-life and is so versatile. You can also make a variety of different salad dressings or even pasta sauces, which should last you the whole week.
The best way to improve the quality of your food for the sake of your health is to prepare more of your meals yourself. I’m not saying you have to prepare all of your meals yourself, yet each meal made at home from natural ingredients is a step toward better health. Start small with a few meals and explore ingredient combinations that work for you, then add a few more. If you need some ideas, here are a few that you can try. Your body will thank you.
