The Benefits of Preparing Your Meals
With all the events we have going on in our lives from jobs, to school, and having families, our life style becomes hectic, busy, and on the go. We cheat ourselves by choosing take out menus and frozen foods over healthy nutritious meals just because they are less time consuming. Your stomach may be full, but you can’t be satisfied as the body still lacks such vital vitamins and minerals. While you might think pills and extracts can easily supplement this, the supplements can only do so much if you’re not eating well.
Create a Meal Plan
The best way to ensure you’re eating right is to prepare meals 3-5 days in advance. At some point, you will figure out what foods keep longer in your fridge and will be able to prepare an entire week worth of meals in advance without it going bad. This way you regulate your portions, as they are pre made. You can also regulate the times you eat and what you snack on in between meals. By training yourself to prepare meals in advance, you eliminate binges and bags of chips and sweets you pick up from the convenient store on your way home. This is done by creating a plan for what you’re going to eat every day for the next few days. You include everything from breakfast lunch and dinner, to the snacks in-between.
Firstly, dedicate a single afternoon to preparing your food for the rest of the week. For example you can plan to eat grilled chicken breast every evening for dinner, or steak and chicken breast on alternating nights. You would marinate each breast or steak in separate zip lock bags to represent the meal for that day and freeze them. If you’re preparing for a week, you will have 7 zip lock bags of marinated meats. You can also portion dried oatmeal for a week for breakfast, or hard boil eggs and put them in the fridge. You can ration small zip lock bags of home made trail mix or cut up raw veggies. Doing this makes snacking a simple grab and go. It also quickens the cooking process. All you need to do is let the meat sit out in the morning to defrost, then cook it in a pan with olive oil. Your chopped veggies you can either steam with your meals, or simply eat as a snack.
Preparing your meals in advance saves you a great deal of time to make eating at home easier. You can still regulate what you’re eating. You are in more control of your food by preparing it at home, this way you can make sure you are eating healthy nutritious foods. A busy life style is no excuse to result to unhealthy take out meals, when you could just as easily prepare multiple days worth of meals in just one easy afternoon.