Meal preparation can be a game-changer for ensuring you nourish your body with enough fuel! Not only that, but having food ready to go helps reduce stress during busy weeks. However, preparing specific meals that you eat daily can get pretty boring, pretty quick. Everyone knows that eating the same dinner for a week straight becomes very unenjoyable!
Instead, I always recommend batch cooking/preparation to my clients! This method is more of an ingredient prep, so you can create a variety of meals as you navigate your week depending on what you’re craving, your mood, or the time of day. By using a batch preparation approach, you can ensure that nutritious, balanced meals are always ready when you need them.
Why Batch Preparation?
Batch preparation involves cooking foods from various food groups: protein, carbs, colors, and fat. Rather than preparing specific meals for the week, batch prepping allows you to mix and match prepared ingredients to create a variety of meals. This helps you not get bored of what you’re eating, increase variety and satisfaction, and allows meals to feel less rigid and strict.
I began doing this a few years ago because it not only helps me feel prepared for my week, but also made me feel like I was fueling my body in an enjoyable and non-restrictive way. It felt like after years of trying different methods, I finally found an approach that made food prep actually enjoyable.
Something to note: The Plate-by-Plate Approach
The plate-by-plate approach is a simple method to ensure your meals are balanced and nutritious. This approach helps you take the ingredients you made in your batch prep and combine them to make some really great meals. Read more on the method here. Each plate should include:
- Protein: Essential for muscle repair and growth.
- Carbohydrates: Provide energy and support brain function.
- Fats: Important for hormone production and cell function.
- Vegetables + Fruits: Packed with vitamins, minerals, and fiber.
How to Start
- Plan Your Week: Start by planning for the week. Map out what foods you’ll need to make, what days are exceptionally busy, what days you may want to plan for takeout, and snacks you’ll need to have on hand.
- Create a Shopping List: Based on your week, make a detailed shopping list before going to the store. This ensures you have all the necessary ingredients and helps avoid impulse buys. An easy framework is to buy 2 proteins, 2 carbs, 3-4 colors, 2 fats, 2 sauces, and various snack items to have on hand.
- Batch Cook Staples: Choose a day to cook large batches of staple foods. Here are some examples:
- Proteins: Grill or bake chicken breasts, hard boil eggs, roast a turkey tenderloin, cook ground turkey or beef, or prepare a batch of tofu. You can use a crock pot here to your advantage, too!
- Carbohydrates: Cook rice, quinoa, or pasta. Roast or bake your favorite type of potato!
- Vegetables: Chop and roast a variety of vegetables like carrots, bell peppers, zucchini, and broccoli. Steam greens like spinach or kale. You can also keep frozen veggies on hand, which can be thrown in the microwave for a fast option.
- Fruits: Wash and cut fruits to make a fruit salad to have on hand. Keep frozen fruit in the freezer to always have ready and on hand.
- Fats: Fats don’t typically need much prepping, but always have various options on hand! Avocados, nut butter, nuts, olive oil, and butter are my favorites.
- Stay Flexible: Allow room for flexibility. If you crave something different one day, honor that craving. Nutrition is not only about fueling your body, but also about listening to your body. So, don’t be afraid to adjust your plan. The beauty of batch prepping is that you can change your meals depending on your mood, rather than having one singular meal you have to have each day. For example, you can change the sauce to create a totally different flavor experience!
- Consider extras: Some great extras to have on hand to make meals even more versatile are: hot sauce, nuts, fresh herbs, fun seasonings, cheese, canned beans, lemon/lime juice, sour cream!
Here’s how I do it!
- Proteins: I always pick 2 options here! My favorite is to bake tofu and saute ground beef. I like adding diced peppers and onions to the beef, which adds in some extra color! Both of these will be seasoned depending on my mood that week! You can add taco seasoning, your favorite herbs and spices, etc.
- Carbs: My favorites are rice, pasta, and potatoes. I always cook a batch of rice in my rice cooker, boil some pasta (pro-tip: add olive oil to your cooked pasta so it doesn’t all stick together!), and roast diced potatoes. I don’t count beans as a carb on my plate just by themselves, but I do always keep canned beans on hand to mix into my carbs or add to meals.
- Colors: Roasted carrots are one of my favorites! I love using whole carrots because I think the flavor is amazing. But, you can also use baby carrots. In addition, I typically always roast broccoli, corn, and kale!
- Sauces: I like to have various sauces on hand to spice up my meals. I always keep pasta sauce on hand to add to cooked pasta. Along with that, I love to have sauces that have a fat source to ensure I get fats in at my meal! Yum yum sauce is one of my favorites. Some other ideas are peanut sauce, curry sauce, or chimichurri.
- Fats: I love adding guacamole, nuts, olive oil and cheese to my meals. These are items I always have in my kitchen.
Mix and match from the above for some delicious meals!
