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If you're like me, food is probably one of your biggest struggles.
People have all kinds of explanations for why we struggle with food. We're lazy. We're addicted. We're weak-minded. We just don't have enough discipline. And perhaps some of those things are true at different times. I can admit they've been true about me at different points in my life, and I'm a personal trainer who competed for years as a professional athlete.
But for the most part, I think there's something else going on that we don't talk about enough.
I see people every day who are incredibly disciplined in almost every other area of their lives. They're professionals who work hard, make difficult decisions, manage employees, raise kids, pay bills, keep schedules, solve problems, take care of everyone around them, and make hundreds of decisions throughout the day.
Then they get home at night, they're exhausted, they're hungry, and suddenly we're surprised when they don't feel like carefully measuring out chicken and vegetables.
There's actually research behind parts of this. Mental fatigue, stress, habits, our environment, and the sheer number of decisions we make can all affect our behavior. The older idea that we simply have a limited tank of “willpower” that eventually runs completely empty is probably too simplistic, but I think most of us recognize the experience. Making another good decision at 7:00 at night can feel a whole lot harder than it did at 9:00 that morning.
It's one reason someone can manage a huge budget at work and then get home and buy something they probably didn't need on Amazon. Or why someone can stay calm and controlled through one frustrating situation after another all day and then lose their temper over something stupid when they get home.
That's not an excuse. It's something we need to be aware of so we can do a better job managing it.
For me, food has always been one of those areas. I've spent most of my life training. I've competed professionally. I've trained when I didn't want to train and pushed myself physically more times than I could possibly count.
And I can still struggle with food.
That's one of the reasons meal prep can be so helpful. It moves some of those decisions to a time when you're not starving, exhausted, and standing in the kitchen trying to decide between the meal you know you should eat and ordering something that can be at your house in 30 minutes.
Meal prep isn't really about becoming the person on Instagram with 21 perfectly organized containers lined up across the kitchen counter. It's about making some of tomorrow's hard decisions today.
Research has found an association between meal planning and better overall diet quality and greater food variety. Other research has found that people who eat home-cooked meals more frequently tend to have better-quality diets. That doesn't mean meal prepping magically makes you healthier or causes you to lose weight. It simply gives you another tool that can make healthier choices a little easier.
So if you're new to meal prep, don't try to completely change the way you eat overnight. Start simple.
Here are five things that can help.
You don't need to prepare breakfast, lunch, dinner, and every snack for the next seven days. In fact, if you've never meal prepped before, I probably wouldn't recommend trying.
Instead, ask yourself a much simpler question: What part of my day is where my eating usually falls apart?
Maybe you're good at breakfast and dinner, but every day at work you end up grabbing fast food for lunch. Start with lunch. Maybe you get home late, you're starving, and you end up ordering takeout because there's nothing ready. Start with dinner. Maybe mornings are chaos and breakfast becomes whatever you can grab on the way out the door. Start there.
Fix one problem first. Once preparing that meal becomes normal, you can start working on another one. You don't need a perfect diet. You need a system you can actually stick with.
Meal prep doesn't have to mean finding five complicated healthy recipes on the internet every week. Simpler is probably better when you're starting.
Build your meals around a few basic pieces: a good source of protein, some vegetables or fruit, and a quality carbohydrate when it fits your needs. That might be grilled chicken, potatoes, and vegetables. Ground turkey, rice, and peppers. Eggs, whole-grain toast, and fruit. Greek yogurt with fruit and oats.
Healthy eating doesn't have to be fancy, and you don't have to make everything from scratch. Frozen vegetables, pre-cut produce, rotisserie chicken, microwaveable rice, and other convenient foods can make meal prep much easier.
The goal isn't to prove how good you are at cooking. The goal is to have a better option ready when you're hungry.
A successful meal prep usually starts before you ever turn on the stove.
Take a few minutes before going to the grocery store and decide what you're actually going to eat that week. Look through your refrigerator, freezer, and pantry first. Think about your schedule. If you know Tuesday night is crazy and you're not getting home until late, plan around that instead of pretending this week will somehow be different.
Then make your grocery list based on what you're actually going to prepare.
The USDA's MyPlate recommends a similar approach: check what you already have, plan meals for the week, consider your schedule, and choose meals that fit the amount of time you'll realistically have available.
A little planning on the front end can save you from making a lot of harder decisions later.
This is one of my favorite ways to make meal prep more realistic.
You don't necessarily need five identical meals sitting in containers waiting for you. Instead, prepare some of the pieces.
Cook several chicken breasts. Brown some ground turkey or lean beef. Make rice or potatoes. Wash and cut vegetables. Have fruit ready. Boil some eggs.
Now you've got building blocks.
Tonight the chicken might become a rice bowl. Tomorrow it could go into a wrap. Another day it might go on a salad. You're still prepared, but you're not forcing yourself to eat exactly the same thing every day.
This can also make meal prep much easier for families because everybody doesn't necessarily have to eat the exact same meal.
Preparation gives you options.
This one isn't nearly as exciting, but it's important.
Meal prep only works if you're storing your food safely. USDA food-safety guidance generally recommends using refrigerated cooked leftovers within three to four days. If you're preparing food further ahead than that, freezing some portions is a better option.
That means you don't necessarily need to cook seven days of food every Sunday.
Prepare a few days at a time, freeze meals you'll use later, or do a smaller second prep halfway through the week. Find something that fits your actual life instead of trying to follow somebody else's perfect meal-prep schedule.
Meal prepping isn't going to magically fix your diet.
You can meal prep unhealthy food just as easily as healthy food, and perfectly portioned containers won't help much if the plan is so restrictive that you hate your life after two weeks.
For me, the biggest advantage is much simpler: preparation makes the decision easier.
When you're hungry, stressed, running late, tired from work, trying to get the kids where they need to go, or getting home after a long day, you're asking a lot of yourself if that's the moment you expect yourself to suddenly become incredibly disciplined about food.
So make some of those decisions before you get there.
Start with one meal. Pick foods you actually enjoy. Buy what you need. Prepare enough to make the next few days easier.
Then do it again next week.
You don't have to become a meal-prep expert. You don't need 21 matching containers, six hours every Sunday, or a refrigerator that looks good on Instagram.
You just need to make tomorrow's hard decision a little easier than it is today.
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