Preparing meals and snacks ahead of time not only saves time, but can save money and lead to healthier choices and habits. The beauty of meal prepping is that it is completely customizable to your specific dietary needs and preferences and can be designed to fit into your schedule. Listed below are some helpful tips and tricks to setting yourself up for successful meal prepping.
Meal Prepping
- Washing and chopping all of your fruits and vegetables as soon as you get home from the grocery store can help to make accessing them for healthy snacks and cooking easier as well as prolong its shelf life.
- Cook components of your meals ahead of time. Rotisserie chicken or precooked protein can be easily thrown into a pan with a carb, veggies, and any seasoning to reheat for a quick, one-pot dinner.
- Buy items that can be used in multiple meals. These can be protein, carbs, or veggies that are interchangeable with various dressings, sauces, or seasonings.
- Cook an extra serving of each meal to keep in the freezer for the nights you forgot to cook or don’t have time to put a meal together. These also make for great disaster preparation meals in the event you lose power.
- Make snack packs ahead of time. Having healthy snacks prepared and packed can help reduce the urge to buy unhealthy alternatives when the urge to snack hits.
Cooking Gadgets
There are a plethora of devices that can assist in making the meal prepping process smooth and easy, while also saving time.
- Vegetable choppers: Many the of the combination vegetable choppers can make meal prepping a breeze by speeding up the preparation needed
- Instant/Crock pots: Throwing a meal together in the crock pot or Instant pot and leaving it to cook all day is a simple way to make multiple servings of meals at once without much work
- Food Scale: Food scales can be used to help to moderate portion size to help track calories and other nutrition information.
We have other blog posts that may be helpful when planning your meals and grocery trips:
Getting Healthy for Your Kidneys
Sodi-YUM: Replacing Salt While Cooking
Share your meal prepping tips and tricks with us on our Facebook page! As always, stay safe and healthy!