Hello everyone,

I have decided to get back into meal prepping to save money. I found that recently I have either been taking a sandwich to work or having to buy food because I don’t want a sandwich or I don’t have anything else prepared. I have also seen a lot of people talking about meal prepping and so I decided to get back into it.

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So what exactly is meal prepping? Well it simply means doing up a batch of food in one setting. Usually it can refer to washing and chopping vegetables but in this case it is about preparing complete meals.

Now many people do their meal prepping for the entire week and store all the food that way. I do not like the idea of just reheating the same thing and eating that for the WHOLE week so for now my meal prep will be for two days. This means I will cook once and eat on that day and have food for meals for the next two days following that.

Normally people use divided containers for meal prep, so this is a constraint for me. I don’t have divided containers and I actually only have about three containers that can hold full meals. I have a few plastic containers but I use them for storing uncooked food like peas and macaroni, so I can’t use those for meal prepping. I would also prefer to use glass containers since those can go from fridge to microwave without any problems. As I get better at this lifestyle I may purchase a few divided containers or microwave safe plastic containers for my meals.

As you can see below, this person will be eating the same thing for the whole week…assuming this is meal prep for an individual.

meal prep 1

image from mealprepsociety.com

I just bought a slow cooker yesterday so I will be using that later in the week to get more food going so I can increase the variety of foods and cut down on actual food prep time. Depending on how things go I may stretch my food prep to four days total if I can get enough variety without putting in too much effort. The meal prep below has a little more variety but I still don’t like the idea of the leftovers just sitting in the fridge.

meal prep 2

image from beachbody.com

I have already done some small meal prepping with my snacks, where I parcel out fruits and vegetables in small containers to take with me. I will continue to do this and I don’t mind doing these for the whole week since I usually have about 3 different items to choose from. We are getting close to the end of the semester but summer school starts soon and I have a lot going on in the next two months. I need to have healthy food ready to just grab and go!

Do you meal prep? What has the experience been like for you?