My Tips to Get Started with Meal Planning & Prep

When you hear the words “Meal Plan” and “Meal Prep” it can sometimes conjure up images of endless containers of bland chicken and veggies, but that’s not how it has to be, at least not in my take on it.

Getting Started so you’re going to need some method of planning out your weekly or monthly meals. I prefer weekly so I can factor my meals around my social life, as it’s pretty hectic. I use a pre-printed sheet and handwrite it. However, you could fill in a spreadsheet, use an app or just pre-log meals into MFP. Some sort of containers will be useful, I use the plastic kind that you get from Chinese/Indian takeaways for my dinners and small Tupperware tubs from Tesco for my pre-weighed snacks.

Inspiration it’s all around you, I have picked up a couple of low calorie cook books from amazon and get a lot of recipes from Pinterest. But you can also find it from TV programs, free Kindle books, food blogs, social media, family and friends.

Fitting Your Calorie Goal there are a couple of ways to do this, personally I have a reasonably high calorie goal as I have a slower rate of weight loss and a lot to lose, so I pick the meals I want for the week’s dinner and then work in my lunch and snacks around that. If you have a lower calorie goal you could try and limit your calories per meal and factor that into your meal plans.

My Go-To Meal Prep Recipes I love tasty food, I guess that’s why I am here in the first place. I’ve found some great low cal recipes and tweaked some previous favourites. Some of those are Thai Green/Red Chicken Curry, Beef Stroganoff, Salmon Fishcakes, Baked Falafel, Carrot Fritters and Greek Lamb Meatballs. Many of these can be kept for 3-4 days in the refrigerator or frozen for future use. I often take the frozen leftovers for a hot lunch at work with an individual microwave rice bag or some ready to eat salad.

Shopping Not only does meal planning help you to maintain your calorie deficit, but it can also help you lower your food spend and reduce the amount of food you’re wasting. I write up my shopping lists for the week based on the meal plan and split it into 2 shopping trips (1 mid-week and one on Sunday morning before meal prep) so I have the freshest stuff available.

Meal Prep Day I like to prep my workday lunches, my snacks and a couple of dinners on a Sunday. It takes an hour or two but then that’s me sorted for the week. I usually have one crock pot meal, which makes me my Sunday evening meal and 2-3 meals for during the week or to freeze for a later date. I make a couple of pasta boxes or salad jars and some bagel fillings. Lastly I bake a batch of protein muffins, make up some sugar-free jelly and pre-weigh some snack boxes to take to work.

Other uses for a planner sheet My planning sheet is a great tool to also plot in whatever social activities I have on for the week, so if I know I have a night out at the cinema or will be heading out to the pub to watch a game of rugby it’s written in and I will try and factor that in to my calorie goal for the day when planning the rest of that day’s meals and snacks. The sheet also has spaces for my workouts, step target and my weight goal for that week.

If you’d like to check out my Pinterest boards to see some of the recipes I’m using, please feel free to give me a follow (Username Tinkerbellang)