Easy Tips to Conquer Your Meal Prepping This Year
The new year is an ideal time to evaluate what habits from the past year you can improve upon in the next one. For many people, one of those habits that can be improved is meal prepping or a little bit of planning. Oftentimes, when weeks get busy and we’re dealing with commitments, kids schedules, busy jobs and possibly training for a race, the time available to make healthy foods is limited.
While meal prepping can and does look different for everyone, let’s look at some tips to make meal prepping easier and more successful for even the busiest schedules.
Focus on the Basics
Nobody wants to eat the same thing for an entire week. This tip is counterintuitive, but the easiest way to keep your day-to-day meals new and fun is to stick to the basics— decorate your plate with a protein source, a carbohydrate, and some veggies. Our favorite sweetpotatoes are carbohydrates but have properties similar to many veggies!
When you choose simple foods, you have infinite possibilities for how to prepare them. For instance, if you buy chicken and rice, you could throw chili powder and cumin on half to make burrito bowls and teriyaki sauce on the other half for an Asian dish. You started with one set of basic ingredients but ended with two different and flavorful meals.
Choose Foods You Actually Like
It is surprising how many people choose foods for their meal prep solely based off of what they perceive as “healthy,” rather than what they enjoy eating. Meal prepping is an opportunity to provide the food your body adores while minimizing time in the kitchen and maximizing time with family and other commitments.
The beauty of eating is that there are so many nutritious choices, so you can keep both your body and your taste buds happy.
Here are some of our favorite out-of-the-box ways to use and prep sweetpotatoes:
Sweetpotato White Bean Burgers
This recipe makes 12 burgers, which can be easy to reheat throughout the week. Add them atop of salads or to a bun, and you can freeze what you don’t use!
Sweetpotato Noodle Soup
Soup is a staple in winter months and making a big batch (doubling or tripling the recipe) is a fantastic way to reheat easy meals throughout the week, while nourishing your body with immune-friendly, antioxidant-rich ingredients. This is another staple that can be frozen and used again in the future for busy weeks!
Roasted Sweetpotato and Cauliflower Tacos
To the point above of focusing on the basics, if you dice and roast sweetpotatoes at the beginning of the week, there are several ways you can use them! From throwing them on salads, to in tacos or stir fries, they are extra versatile to use in several recipes throughout the week.
Make a Grocery List
Coming home from the grocery store and realizing you forgot an ingredient is the worst feeling in the world. To keep this from happening, pick your recipes (or just general basic meal plating’s) ahead of time, check your pantry and fridge for what you already have, and make a grocery list based on what’s missing or what you need for this week’s meals.
Having a grocery list not only ensures that you buy the ingredients you need, but it also helps reduce food waste because you won’t buy ingredients you don’t need.
Plan in Some Wiggle Room
Your body has different calorie needs every day, but your meal plan doesn’t know that. In order to account for these fluctuations and meet your body’s needs, snacks can be a great vehicle to fill in the gaps or hungrier times throughout the day.
When you’re shopping for snacks, pick your favorites, and balance between store-bought convenience foods and easy recipes to make at home, such as whole wheat sweetpotato zucchini muffins, a mango sweetpotato smoothie, or healthy cookie dough bites.
Chances are, on the days you need extra food, your body will crave your favorite foods, and you’ll want to have them accessible.
Take Advantage of Your Freezer
More foods freeze well than we realize—soups, pasta sauces, sandwiches, quiches, and more. Especially if you’re meal prepping for more mouths than just your own, prepping food and freezing it until you’re ready is a great option.
Some weeks are busier than others, so on the down weeks, doubling or tripling recipes to have on hand for the future busy weeks is a definite act of self-care and terrific way to future meal prep.