It’s back to office season! 2022 marks the year that a lot of us have gone back to work or school physically. Love it or hate it, we can all agree on one thing- lunch certainly has us scratching our heads. Sure, you can go out with your colleagues for a meal, or order from a food delivery service, but nothing beats the deliciousness (& convenience!) of a home-cooked meal.
That’s where meal prepping comes in. We’re not talking about aesthetic bento boxes or cute lunch setups, but the basics of getting nutritious, healthy food on the table (or work desk) for lunch.
The idea of meal-prepping is that your lunches are quick, easy and healthy. Here’s our beginners’ 101 guide on how to meal prep!
- Plan ahead
- Pick the right day/time to prep
- Keep lists around
- Store your meals appropriately
1. Plan ahead
Planning is one of the most important parts of meal prepping. How do you meal prep when you don’t know what you’re prepping? If you’re planning for yourself, consider the kind of diet you’re used to and plan around that.
While planning a vegan-keto-Paleo-whole foods diet can make you feel like you’re really making it in life, it might just be too many new things at once. Start with easy, familiar recipes and go from there.
2. Pick the right day/time to prep
Meal prepping takes time. Getting ingredients, putting the meals together, clean-up- it can all be quite taxing, despite the 5-minute prep guide you found on Google. Most people pick Sunday to prepare their meals for the week, so it can take some time.
If your schedule isn’t a traditional Monday to Friday, or if you have more members in your household, make your meal prep schedule work for you. To save time, you can opt for a grocery box subscription, get someone else to purchase groceries, or span it across two days.
3. Keep lists around
Be like Santa and make a list, check it twice. It’s easy to think that we have all our meal prep ideas in our head, but life gets busy and distractions can get to the sharpest of minds.
It’d be best to have a few lists: one for the meals you want to make, and another for the groceries you need. Keep the latter in your phone, and make it a checklist so that grocery shopping is a breeze!
4. Store your meals appropriately
There are so many ways to meal-prep. Some involve heating up before consumption, and others might even involve extra assembly prep. Whatever it is, store it correctly! This might mean that some meals go in the freezer while others stay in the fridge.
If you’re going to need to keep your food stored at work, make sure your office or class has what you need- a fridge, microwave etc. If not, rethink your recipes so that you can either get them ready the morning before you leave the house, or that they require no additional prep.
Happy meal prepping, LIVLOLA fam!
