The Ultimate Meal Prepping Guide: How to Save Time and Energy by Meal Prepping

Words: Sa Bal 
Photo: karinsasaki

With our day-to-day schedules packed, maintaining a healthy diet seems impossible. Meal prepping is one simple way to gain control over your nutrition intake. 

Plus, this cost-effective and stress-free approach helps you strive for your dietary goals. Let’s discuss how meal prepping benefits your productivity when on and off-site during work hours:

What is Meal Prepping? 

Meal prepping refers to an organized and scheduled way of preparing your meals beforehand. This way, you don’t have to worry about cooking each day. Curating a meal plan allows you to map out your meals for the week.

It may be of various types, shapes, and forms. For instance:

• You may prepare meals for the week instead of just one day 
• You may entirely prepare your meal rather than sorting products to be used
• You may prepare ingredients separately, like cutting vegetables and seasoning meat to save time  

How Poor Diet Affects Workers? 

An in-depth study shows that poor dietary choices are causing nearly 20% of losses in revenue due to lost productivity. It is either due to malnutrition or obesity plaguing nations across the world.  

The fact is that poor diet and nutrition choices can have disastrous effects on workers. It affects safety, morale, long-term mental and physical health and lowers productivity levels.

At the same time, another research by the British Journal of Health Psychology shows that poor dietary habits lead to fatigue, inability to perform well at the job, and lower mental effectiveness. It also causes higher levels of depression, increases stress and irritability, and lowers your energy throughout the day. 

Moreover, an increase in sick days, lack of motivation and productivity, and long-term illnesses are linked to poor dietary choices. Therefore, you should always eat healthy food to maintain high energy levels at work. 

How to Prep for Meal Prepping? 

Prepping before a meal may sound unorthodox; however, the fact is that taking out time to get adequately organized and ready with all the right ingredients, spices, and such makes the process easier and smoother.

Before heading to the store and meal prepping, here are some tips you should consider following:

• Discuss with your family what meals and foods they enjoy the most 
• Curate an extensive monthly spreadsheet and record the best meal ideas and recipe sites. 
• Start collecting healthy and mouth-watering recipes. You may bookmark recipes you like from magazines or newspapers. Consider maintaining a binder or copying links of recipes you want to make.
• Try making specific foods or meals on certain days of the week. You may enjoy the consistency of already knowing what’s for lunch and dinner. A good idea is Whole Grain Wednesday, Steak Sunday, and so on.
• Make small, achievable goals. Start by aiming to create enough food for two days per week. 

Developing a Meal Plan 

If you’ve never created a meal plan before, developing one may feel challenging and daunting. Consider starting small and slowly to build confidence and ensure your habit is sustainable. 

Here we discuss how you should develop a meal plan to ensure high energy levels while working;

Getting Started

Devising a healthy, balanced, and delicious meal plan is critical to ensure high energy levels while on-site and off-site at your job. For this reason, you should select one day of the week to:

• Craft your meal plan per week or for the month 
• Create your grocery list 
• Go shopping for ingredients 
• Meal prep- you may want to cook most of your food

Breaking down your tasks is a great way to make meal planning convenient and manageable. 

Breakfast

Eating a healthy and proper breakfast is necessary to ensure energy throughout the day. It’s also the perfect time to eat a healthy amount of carbohydrates. Avoid food that is high in sugar and advertised as being healthy.

A healthy breakfast for workers to ensure high energy levels includes:

• A nutritious avocado and peach porridge
• A protein-rich scrambled egg, spinach, and toast 
• Gluten-free protein bars or balls
• An energy-boosting watercress smoothie 

Lunch 

Go down the healthier road and avoid purchasing takeout while working on-site. Instead, you should try eating:

• A healthy chicken and turkey sandwich 
• A nutritious and delicious chicken club panini 
• A rich-in-protein Tuscan tuna wrap
• Two appetizing chicken fillets in Cajun sauce alongside brown rice 

Dinner 

You should combine proteins with good carbohydrates for dinner time to ensure your meals sufficiently meet your dietary requirements. Here are a couple of meals you can enjoy for dinner:

• A delicious steak alongside brown rice
• A grilled chicken breast along with tomato and garlic sauce. Combine it was healthy greens like spinach and green beans 
• A healthy yet delicious meal of almond-crusted halibut and vegetable curry 

Snacks

You can make your snacks healthy and avoid facing the loss of energy that comes with eating unhealthy foods. Here are some foods designed to provide you with an energy boost when working:

• Fresh fruits 
• Organic fruit shakes and smoothies
• A lean, delicious turkey wrap 
• Whole-grain cereal 
• Yogurt

What are the Benefits of Meal Prepping? 

Meal prepping is an ideal way to maintain a healthy diet throughout the week. Here we discuss some of its top benefits:

• Meal prepping saves you the time you may end up wasting trying to decide what to cook or order takeout 
• Meal prepping is one go means fewer dishes fall into your dishwasher. A bonus of cutting back on the number of dishwasher loads per week you can ensure you’re using less energy per week
• Eating healthy is often regarded as being ‘too expensive.’ However, meal prepping is a great way to save money as you purchase ingredients in bulk, spend less on takeout, and freeze extra food for the week
• Restaurants are notorious for giving us more than the optimum portion of food. By meal prepping, you can control your portions and ensure no food is wasted 

To Sum it Up

Enjoy saving time and energy by cooking large batches of grains and vegetables. You may freeze food that you believe you won’t be able to eat during the weekdays. 

Lastly, make sure you have meal-sized, air-tight contains for easy storage. Ensure you eat nutritious and healthy foods to upkeep your energy levels at work.