Guest blogger Alicia Brown explains how to make a few useful changes that will make you healthier and help you make the most of the day.
Prepare
The preparation phase is what really makes meal prep, well… meal prep. This is where all the cutting, sautéing, and cooking happens. Chances are you’ll need at least an hour (likely two) to get through it all.
- Prepare your protein: Start by cleaning, cutting, and marinating your meats. Preparing your proteins first allows the flavours to marinate while you prepare the rest of your meals. I use lean meats: chicken and turkey breast, lean minced meats (turkey, chicken, beef), and fish, which is a great source of good fats. Try salmon or tilapia if you are not a fish fan as both are lighter in flavour but still pack many nutritional values. Tilapia especially is very versatile. (Cookinglight.com has some wonderful tilapia recipes.)
- Dice onions and garlic: Don’t forget about these two. They’re natural antibiotics packed with disease-fighting properties and are a staple in most meals. Be sure to toss them in your meat marinade. In fact, meat cooked at high temperatures can have a carcinogenic effect, but when cooked with garlic, the production of the cancer-promoting chemicals is reduced (100 Best Health Foods).
- Chop your vegetables and fruits: Don’t chop aimlessly; consider your meals for the week so you don’t dice things that should have been sliced and vice versa.
- Start cooking! Prepare everything that can be baked in the oven at the same temperature first, that way you can save time by baking several items at once. Be sure to keep an eye on the clock, as your food items likely require different baking times. While the first round of food is baking in the oven (dinner foods for example), prepare your next set of meals (lunch, salads, snacks and/or breakfast).
- Start packing! Utilize those containers! Some like to keep their foods separated so that all is required is dishing out the food before consumption while others like myself prefer to pre-package each meal. I recommend pre-packaging your meals if you are like me: up early and constantly on the go.
Meal preparation, or the process of preparing food items for easy consumption, allows you to be more aware of the foods that you put in your body, all while helping to avoid spur-of-the-moment, unhealthy decisions.
