Clients tell us all the time how difficult, time consuming and expensive it can be to meal prep for the week. While sometimes it can be, if you carefully plan out and budget your meal prep it can be done in less than an hour with your average spend per meal being <$2. I am going to walk you through one of my most basic, tasty meal prep combos and how to plan out your own food shopping and prepping ideas.
Step 1: Make a Plan
Before I start making my shopping list, I plan out how many meals I want to make so I know exactly how much of each item I’ll need. This week my prep was for Justin so I knew I wanted larger meals than what I would make myself and to have enough made so he can freely eat 1-2 per day. When prepping for Justin, I like to make sure that each meal has at least 30g of Protein, around 50g of Carbs, and plenty of vegetables. He does well with larger meals since he doesn’t have many breaks while training clients. Once all that was figured out, I knew I needed to purchase at least 3lbs of ground turkey, 32oz of brown rice, and two bags of frozen vegetables (this weeks choice was diced peppers).
When planning for yourself, ask yourself how many meals will I need this week? Once you figure out how many meals you’ll need you can start to plan out how much of each item to buy. For example, let’s say you want to make 5 meals this week for lunches at work. If you want to have 4oz of chicken with each meal (approximately 26g of protein give or take) you’ll need at least 20oz or 1.5lbs of chicken. You can apply the same principles when planning out your carbs, fats and vegetable/fruit sources. Having an exact plan helps stop over spending and wasting food that you may not necessarily need.
Step 2: Cook Everything at the Same Time
In order to be as effective as possible while cooking, I have everything going at the same time. While everything is cooking, I am also getting other things done in the kitchen that need to be done. For example, today while cooking I emptied and loaded the dishwasher. I also like to clean up as I go so this way when I’m totally done, there is no giant mess waiting for me.
Step 3: Portion Everything Out – At the Same Time!
Once everything is done cooking, have all of your meal containers and food scale/measuring cups ready. I always weigh out and portion one food item at a time. Today I started by adding the rice to each bowl (the base of the meal), once I was done with the rice I added in the diced peppers before finally topping it off with the ground turkey. Having everything ready to go at the same time and portioning out one food at the time will be the most time effective way to get it done.
The Results:
I spent 1 hour in the kitchen and made 9 meals. Each meal cost approximately $1.61 to make. Each meal contains:
- 458 Total Calories
- 14.2g Fat
- 50g Carbs
- 33.4g Protein
When it comes to prepping your own meals, don’t over think! Have a plan, map out your budget and get it done! You’ll be thankful for the convenience of it once you do.
