If you are like many people, you groan at the thought of doing meal prep. While you know it is something you need to do, it does not mean you like it! Meal prep takes time, but if you look at preparing say your vegetables just once for the whole week, then you will find it easier to eat healthy home-cooked meals each evening. Some foods, some vegetables are easy to prepare ahead of time and save well. There are steps you can take with your meal planning to make the task easier and then you will find you spend less time doing the meal prep and more time enjoying your food!
Let us look at a few meal-prep ideas…
1. One Recipe, Many Variations. Perhaps the most significant time-consuming task with meal prep is trying to figure out what to cook in the first place. You have to hunt down recipes, figure out what will work with your weight loss diet and then purchase all the groceries required. Time-consuming stuff!
Instead, look at finding one recipe offering several variations. For instance, you might make a vegetable stir-fry. You can just alter the vegetables you put in the stir-fry, swap out the chicken for beef as desired, and even change the sauce a little. It is the same meal overall, but with small changes that should be enough to keep you interested in continuing to carry on with your weight loss diet plan.
The more you become accustomed to preparing the same type of meals over and over, the easier it will be to plan your meal prep out for the week.
2. Two Words: Slow Cooker. Slow cooking is super easy, and a method of cooking everyone should get into doing from time to time. Just put all the ingredients in the slow cooker in the morning, turn it on, and by the time you arrive home from work, the food will be ready to serve. Plus, you can make a significantly sized batch, which means you will be eating healthy meals several times during your week.
3. Buy Pre-Chopped Vegetables. The last idea to consider is buying pre-chopped vegetables. Cutting up vegetables is often one job people dislike doing the most, so make it easier for yourself. Buy them ready to go, so there is little to no prep work involved.
While you will pay a little more for pre-chopped vegetables, it is money well spent.
There you have a few ideas to think about using to help make meal prep easier. If you follow these tips, sticking to your weight loss diet will be easier than ever.
Although managing your disease can be very challenging, Type 2 diabetes is not a condition you must just live with. You can make simple changes to your daily routine and lower both your weight and your blood sugar levels. Hang in there, the longer you do it, the easier it gets.