How Meal Prepping Saved My Life

In high school I was rather athletic and one thing that teammates look to do after an event is get dinner. Fast food became a normal thing two or three times a week, which was fine in my teens but as I got older it became a real problem. Growing up, I never learned how to cook and this added to the need to go out and buy food already prepared. Again, I turned to McDonalds, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s to help me out when my stomach started rumbling. Due to this, I became obese in my twenties and would develop kidney stones at the age of twenty-five. The experience was so painful, I decided to make a change in my life and learned how to cook but the thing that would be the most beneficial for me would be meal prepping.

Pros

Food is waiting for you as soon as you get home.

Most people have the same issue. They are coming home from a long day at work and it dawns on them that they need to cook dinner when they get home. No one wants to cook anything after a ten or twelve hour day, so what do you do? You stop off and get a slice of pizza or two to fill you up and this becomes a pattern that can be hard to break. If you prep your meals in advance, they will be waiting for you when you get home, ready after a minute or two in the microwave.

Cook one day a week.

Some of us hate cooking with a passion. I was one of these people, but I grew to love it. Not working in the kitchen but the time away from everything else going on in my life. When I am cooking, that is my time to turn off the world and turn on my cooking playlist. But the best part of meal prepping is you cook once a week and it can be any day that you choose. Make it a Sunday and you can come home after a long day and relax with your dinner waiting for you.

One trip to the store per week

normal for me to think that everyone goes food shopping on Sundays because that is what I learned as I was growing up but these days it seems like people run out of something in the middle of the week and go out that day to get more of it. If you start cooking for your week in one day you will never have to go to the store more than once per week. Everything will be planned out ahead of time and you will know what you need on that one day a week at the store. Now during the week, you will have what you need to enjoy your meals.

Cons

Who to cook on the weekend?

Most people that meal prep do so on either Saturdays or Sundays and that can be a real pain. After working all week and taking care of the kids it would be nice to have one day to relax and you know that one of these days will be filled with some event for the kids. Other are going out and spending time with friends and family which I would agree is a better use of your time than meal prepping. Being able to set a time to prepare your meals for the week is difficult with all the other going on in your life today.

Spending hours in the kitchen

Lets say you set a time on Sundays to meal prep. Now you are going to spend hours prepping your food, cooking it, putting it away in containers, taking up space in your refrigerator, and cleaning the pots and pans afterwards. I have been doing this for years now and still leave dirty dishes in my sink till the next day. a lot of work getting everything together and cooking it. Who wants to clean up at the end as well? if a beautiful day out and all you want to do is a book out in the sun but you can't because you are still cooking or preparing food for the week.

Chicken Again?

After creating all the meals, you will find that by the end of the week you no longer want to eat the same thing you had yesterday and the day before that. This leads you back to the same problem you had before, what am I going to eat? Then you are back in the drive through line at Wendy’s waiting for your turn to order. If this is the case, then why did you spend the time cooking all day last Sunday?

Conclusion

My biggest problem with eating healthy was that I did not have anything that I wanted to eat at home. This cause me to go out to get food and the easiest for people to buy I fast food. Once I started meal prepping, I was able to cut fat food out of my diet and started eating healthier . Some look to this day, I look to it because I like knowing what I am going to eat the next day, but it's time-consuming and takes planning and discipline to continue doing the right . After weighing the pros and cons, I believe that meal prepping saved my life. I still hate looking at the dishes piled up in the sink after I’m done cooking but I would rather have to deal with that pain than a triple by pass surgery like my uncles had.