Easy Meal Prep (Set Yourself Up For Fat Loss Success)
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We’re going to cover meal prep and how to make it work for you and your goals.
When you’re trying to lose weight it ultimately comes down to how consistently you can stick to a calorie deficit for a period of time. Week to week you’re aiming to eat less calories than you burn.
For those of you that are new to dieting, tracking your food or aren’t already very educated in nutrition the easiest way to make sure you hit this goal lies in some sort of meal prep strategy. That can look very different from person to person. Finding the way that works for you and your schedule is key, so experimenting with different ways to meal prep will help you find the plan that’s easiest for you to stick to.
After all, dieting shouldn’t be unbearable, it shouldn’t be a chore. Finding ways to make it enjoyable and as easy as possible will help you be more consistent. When it comes to weight loss or fat loss, consistency over time is the name of the game. Your fat loss results will come so long as you can maintain consistency and adherence. Making the plan as easy as possible, eliminating the amount of decisions you need to make will help ensure the ease of which you can follow your plan.
Enter Meal Prep. The closest thing you’ll find to a “hack” for fat loss when it comes to nutrition just might be meal prep.
There is a crazy difference in your ability to stick to a diet when you have meals prepped ahead vs. when you don’t.
When you meal prep, you’re generally cooking whole foods with minimal ingredients. You’re able to track each macro, you have complete control over the “sneaky” calories that you find in foods at restaurants, convenience stores and fast food joints.
When you have your meals prepared in accordance with your macro goals its as simple as grabbing the meals from the refrigerator and eating them and you’re on plan.
When you try to wing it each day, getting breakfast from Starbucks, lunch from a cafeteria or fast food and dinner from a restaurant you need a very solid understanding of nutrition to be able to order those meals to relatively fit your macros, with the understanding that each meal probably has higher calories and likely higher fat totals than you account for.
Generally taking this approach will put you above your goal deficit because of those extra calories. The accuracy you are able to track while eating out simply doesn’t compare to when you prep your own meals.
Plus decision fatigue is a real thing. If, every day, you are making decisions for each meal to try and fit them to your macros, over time you’ll likely experience times where you toss that out the window and just order something that sounds good or that you crave and doesn’t align with your fat loss goal or macros. This slows your progress and further drives the cycle of thinking it isn’t working and then you stop. Now you’re back at square one.
It’s not that it didn’t work, it’s that you had a plan that didn’t allow for as much consistency and accuracy as you could get.
If you are not hitting your macro goals, it’s a planning issue.
For new clients and many of you attempting to hit a fitness goal on your own one of the hardest things is usually hitting macro goals consistently enough to see progress. If you feel like you have been spinning your wheels for years, doing your workouts, eating clean but not seeing the results you want, it’s time for a new approach. One that brings all of the variables within your control.
Meal prepping takes this common problem of macros and calories and makes it nearly automatic. It drives consistency through the roof, gives you results and progress and that keeps driving your motivation to keep going.
Your first thought about meal prep is probably that it is too time consuming. But in reality, it saves you lots of time each week. Finding time to cook 3-4 meals a day for most of us is unrealistic. We simply don’t have 1-2 hours a day to cook. And as the week rolls on and you’re tired and stressed from work, the path of least resistance, the easiest thing to do is just order that pizza.
Meal prep takes this path of least resistance and redirects it. This is unbelievably powerful. This is the secret sauce of meal prep.
You’re prepped ahead for these high stress/low willpower situations with meals in the fridge. You don’t have to cook or even order and wait for food. You can simply grab it, reheat it and eat it.
When we are stressed, we always fall back on the path of least resistance. Sometimes you might be able to rely on motivation and willpower but those will always falter at one point or another. If you build a path of least resistance that aligns with your end goal, you are able to amplify your ability to remain consistent and drive progress even in the face of stress and lack of motivation and willpower.
The beautiful thing here is that these successes in times of adversity drive motivation in the future. You were able to take that stressful situation and turn it into a win. You probably feel pretty good about yourself vs when you order the pizza and feel guilty that you sabotaged your goal.
Ok, let's go back to the common pushback on meal prep. It’s too time consuming. A simple meal prep should take 1-3 hours. That’s 1-3 hours cooking for an entire week of meals.
The difference between the short and longer meal prep of 1 vs 3 hours will be in how you set it up and the foods you decide on. When I am meal prepping for example, I am usually not cooking a full week of meals. I like to vary my food choices and cook for 3-4 days instead. So I will spend 1-1.5 hours cooking a few days worth of foods every 3-4 days. If you meal prep for a full week on one day, you can get it done in 1-2 hours on a Sunday afternoon.
Compare that to cooking your meals each day as you need them. They will probably take 15-30 minutes each, possibly more. 3 times per day at 30 minutes comes to 1.5 hours per day which equals 10.5 hours per week making your meals. Meal prep will save you loads of time. Even if meal prep took 5 hours it’s still half the amount of time.
Prepping ahead will FREE up time for you in the week.
So how do you implement meal prepping to help you with your weight loss or fat loss success?
1 - Determine what day or days you will meal prep on
Fairly straightforward, decide which days you will buy foods on and which days you will cook. This could be Sunday you buy everything you need for the week as well as cook.
If the idea of eating food at the end of the week that you cooked on Sunday, add another cooking day on Wednesday or Thursday.
This is how I like to structure it, 2 days per week that have cooking batches of foods.
Don’t get carried away making it too complicated. We are aiming to keep things as simple as possible.
2 - Make a list of your food sources for each macro
Here is a handy graphic to help you decide.
Broken up into the three macronutrients, you have food sources that primarily fall into each one.
Choose a few items from each category for the foundations of your meals.
If you are like me and you don’t like to eat the same meals every day, cook things in batches that can be mixed and matched.
For example, cook batches or rice, quinoa, sweet potato along with batches of chicken, ground beef and salmon. Having these separate allows you to mix and match depending on what you’re in the mood for vs pre-packaging them together and maybe you don’t want the combination you had already packed on Sunday on another day.
Don’t forget the veggies and spices too! While vegetables are technically a carb, they are significantly less carb dense and low calorie, help you feel full and provide lots of nutrients you might otherwise not get.
3 - Buy your food
Using the handy graphic from above, keep yourself on track at the grocery store with the foods you need. I don’t know about you but if I shop without a list, I am certainly going to be buying things that I don’t need and forget things I do need.
This gives you your plan. Anytime you don’t have a plan, you are much more likely to fail. When it comes to shopping without a plan, I’ll wind up with things in the house that don’t contribute to my goal and since they’re in the house I will eat them. Better to just draw up a plan for success and let that guide you.
Planning what you’ll be buying ahead of time, saves you time and money and keeps you on track for your goals.
4 - Cook the food
Here we are trying to make the best use of our time. Unless you enjoy cooking as I do, but more often than not most people don’t. Batch cook your foods in the name of time efficiency.
Here’s How:
Protein
→ Choose your seasonings, spices & herbs
→ Choose how you will cook your meats (these are in order of what I use most frequently)
→ Stovetop in a skillet/pan
→ Oven
→ Grill
→ Crockpot
→ Air Frying
Carbs
→ Typically require less prep time than the meats
→ Staples for most people are items like rice & quinoa
→ Simply batch cook your estimated servings for the week or the 3-4 days you are prepping for
→ Potatoes: Batch cook by cutting up and seasoning and roasting in the oven or air fryer
If you like KFC’s seasoned potato wedges, season some cut up potatoes with seasoned salt and olive oil (make sure to track the olive oil too) and roast in the oven. These are fire.
→ Alternatively for potatoes & sweet potatoes you can simply poke a few holes in them and microwave or cook them in the oven. Quick and zero prep time.
→ Veggies: I don’t know about you but I don’t like reheated vegetables. I cook them as I need them as they taste better and have better texture than reheated. Microwave, sautee, grill or cook them in a dish in the oven with a little olive oil and combine that with the proteins and carbs you have already prepped.
→ Your other carb sources such as fruit, need little to no prep. I tend to stick with berries nearly 99% of the time. (Mixed with greek yogurt or cottage cheese and oats is a great option, quick to make and has a great macro profile of carbs, protein and little to no fat).
5 - Enjoy your food, become more consistent and get leaner easier than ever before
Meal prepping as I mentioned earlier, makes sticking to your macro and calorie goals infinitely easier. And with that comes faster and easier results.
The last piece of the puzzle is making your meals match your goals. Determining your calorie and macro goals is beyond the topic of this article, check out this blog post: The Definitive Guide to Setting up Your Nutrition, Part 1 to get started with that or email me at baileyfitsystems@gmail.com
But here is a useful tool to set up your meals.
The Meal Formula
Add condiments as you desire, but be mindful of those that contain lots of calories, usually sugars or fats. Be sure to track the calories in your condiments as well. They can be sneakily high in calories and throw you off your goals.
Thank you for reading! I hope you found this guide helpful. No matter your goals, fat loss or lean gains, preparation is a key to success.
For more help determining a nutrition plan that will help you get leaner and stronger without making the rest of your life suck CLICK THIS LINK for a free strategy call. If you have any questions about meal prep or fat loss & muscle gain in general email me with the contact link below.