You have probably heard the term “meal prepping” if you have ever sought out weight loss advice. Meal prepping has countless benefits, especially for those looking to lose weight and achieve better health. The benefits of meal prepping should not be underestimated! It may sound too simple to cause life-changing positive effects, but that is the point. Meal prepping is a simple way to take control of your health, available to everyone. It is not an expensive fad diet solution for weight loss. It is a method that just requires a few hours each week and some discipline to achieve amazing results.
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How do I know what types of foods to “meal prep?”
If you are trying to lose a significant amount of weight, you may want to seek out professional help from an obesity medicine specialized physician through a medically assisted weight loss program. Patients in a medically assisted weight loss program are provided with:
- Support from an obesity medicine-trained physician
- Nutrition coach
- Customized meal plan (great for meal prepping)
- Exercise routine
- Habit forming tools
- When necessary, prescribed medications and supervision
This may be a great option for you if you have a BMI above 27 and have been struggling to lose weight on your own.
So….what are some reasons to try “meal prepping?”
Portion Size Control
One of the biggest roadblocks when it comes to weight loss is proper portion sizing. We tend to overeat when we don’t practice portion control. This especially happens when we are extremely hungry, as our body is unable to register our hunger levels as quickly as we want to eat. One of the best ways to practice portion control is by meal prepping. When you meal prep, you are able to measure out individual portion sizes with a food scale and separate each portion into its own container. They even sell specific meal prep containers on Amazon to make it easier and separate your meal prep containers from your normal leftover containers.
If you’re trying to lose weight, you should have a calorie limit goal based on your specific goals and needs, which a trained obesity medicine physician can help you to decide. You can save the meals you enjoy into a calorie tracking app such as MyFitnessPal as a favorite, that way you don’t have to recalculate the calories of every single meal.
Tools to use for portion control:
- Kitchen Scale
- Meal prep containers
- Calorie Counting app such as MyFitnessPal
- Customized Meal Plan from your obesity-trained physician and/or nutritionist
Saves Money and Reduces Food Waste
If you want to achieve your weight loss goals without breaking the bank, meal prepping is the absolute best way to do so. You are able to plan your meals ahead of time, with your personal budget in mind. Maybe one week your protein choices are turkey and lean beef and the next week they are salmon and chicken. You are able to plan out your budget much easier this way because you have to prepare your meals ahead of time. When it’s 5:00 pm and you have nothing at home to cook and you run to the store to buy something for dinner, you tend to spend more than if you were to plan out your groceries and meals for the entire week.
You will always save money by reducing food waste. Sometimes we purchase a ton of food at the grocery store without having a plan of what we will use it for. For example, we buy tons of vegetables with no idea in mind of what we may use them for. This can lead to food waste, as we end up preparing meals that require all of the vegetables we purchase, and these vegetables expire. Another way to reduce food waste is to freeze food or purchase already frozen foods such as frozen vegetables. They contain the same amount of nutrients as fresh vegetables in their frozen raw state, so don’t worry about that when purchasing frozen veggies.
Saves Time and Prevents Impulsive Food Choices
Unfortunately, most of us tend to be in a constant state of hurry. This is bad for our health for multiple reasons, especially when it comes to our diets. If we are running late for something and have no groceries at home and no time to go shopping and prepare a healthy meal, we do one of 2 things: 1. We skip meals or 2. We go through a drive-thru or find a quick and easy option that is not in line with our weight loss goals. Neither of these options will bring us closer to our goals, and we must do what we can to prevent these situations.
The best way to prevent these impulsive choices is to meal prep. If you have 3-4 lunches prepared on Sunday evening for the week, you have no excuse not to consume those healthy meals you prepared. You are much more inclined to avoid last-minute drive-thru decisions or processed pre-prepared meals from the store when you take the time to prepare them yourself on a Sunday evening or whenever works best with your personal schedule.
More Diverse and Balanced Diet
When it comes to our food choices, we tend to stick to what we know. If we know we like rice, chicken, broccoli, and bananas, we eat those foods over and over. While routine is great and highly encouraged, it is also important to incorporate a wide variety of proteins, veggies, fruits, nuts, and seeds into our diets. It is important to try and consume produce that is in season. If we only always buy the same foods at the grocery store, we are unable to diversify our diets and provide our bodies with all the nutrients that it needs.
This is why when you meal prep, you can sit down and plan what groceries you will buy and what meals you will prepare with those foods and try to keep things constantly in rotation in order to supply your body with a wide range of nutrients.
Improved Relationship with Food
If you have suffered from a bad relationship with food over the years, meal prepping can help you to build a healthier relationship with food. Some of us associate feelings of stress, sadness, anxiety, or anger with food, and food may soothe those emotions or even further encourage them. If we feel stressed, we may stop for fast food and have a quick, high fat, high carb, high-calorie meal that we think suits our needs at that moment, but then may lead to guilt or sadness in the case you are trying to eat healthier to lose weight or improve overall health. This cycle of associating food with negative or positive emotions can lead to weight gain or prevent weight loss efforts.
If you prep your meals for the week, you are able to dissociate those negative or positive emotions from food and cope with them in other ways. Your meals are already prepared, so even in moments of stress or anxiety, you have one thing under control and it is what you have chosen to feed your body. This can create a sense of relief and pride in one’s self for choosing to treat your body with love, even in times when other aspects of life seem out of control. You will eventually start to see food as a way to nourish your body, and feed it the nutrients that it needs to keep going, and less as an emotional coping mechanism.
Domino Effect
The topic of weight loss tends to be a very popular conversation among many Americans, including friends, family, and coworkers. If you start to take steps towards your goals, such as meal prepping, your family, friends, and coworkers will start to take note. You will start to feel changes in your body and mind, and as you share those changes with your loved ones, they may start to follow your efforts.
Your environment has a huge impact on your own decisions, so having a supportive network of family, friends, and coworkers that admire and support your decisions due to the success they have seen with your efforts can lead to even greater success in your journey to better health. This can also create a sense of satisfaction if your decisions have a domino effect on others and you are able to see the positive changes happening in their lives as well.
Try to find an accountability partner or group of individuals where you encourage one another to meal prep, you share your favorite recipes, and share the amazing changes happening in your life due to your lifestyle changes.
Meal prepping can have so many amazing effects on your physical and mental health and lead to greater success in your weight loss goals, so start meal prepping today!