Meal Prep for Beginners: How to Save Time and Stay on Track

Nikkiey: Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals, and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review, and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask you to do is leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else.

Some tips for you guys for the actual meal prep process. Number one, set aside time. And I say this to everybody I've ever coached in my entire life. Dedicate a specific day of the week and time to meal prep. So for me, an example that I've used already is Sundays, a popular choice. And they are popular for me as well. But it depends on your schedule.

Hey, you guys. What's going on? Welcome to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. On this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident. I am your host, Nikkiey Stott.

Welcome to today's episode, episode 195. We are five away from 200. I feel like I need to do something elaborate for 200, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to. But anyway, five away. And also, it was super cool, I just checked our stats, and I'm still so mind blown at this. We have 620,000 downloads to this podcast since its birth in January of 2023. That means we are about 380,000 downloads away from 1 million downloads. And I want to be able to do that. I think we can totally do that before January 2025, before The WarriorBabe Show two-year birthday.

So the way that you guys can help do that is just keep spreading the word. Keep leaving reviews. Share it with your girlfriend, a fitness friend, your co-worker, your aunt. Keep sharing this podcast with as many people as you think would find value in it, because that just keeps spreading the word, keeps getting more people to download the episodes, and helps us reach that goal of 1 million before our two-year birthday. Let's do it. I'm putting it out into the universe. Let's do it, guys.

But today, let's dive into the episode. I think this episode will also kind of help with the last episode that I recorded, which was about intuitive eating. They kind of go together, and this will make you feel more successful with intuitive eating as well. So let's talk about it, because this topic is near and dear to my heart. If it wasn't for this topic at the beginning of my journey, I don't think I would have been as successful as I was, without making sure that I was very disciplined in this aspect, this responsibility, this task that I had to deploy on in order to stay on track.

So with that being said, today's topic, I believe, is a true game changer for anyone striving to stay on track or striving to find success with the nutrition aspect of your journey. And that is, drumroll please, do you guys have any idea what it is? Meal prep. I want to talk to you about meal prep 101. And maybe if you're a tenured listener of this podcast, you're like, Nikkiey, I know meal prep like the back of my hand. Maybe you'll pick up tips and tricks from this episode that can speed up your meal prep game.

Or if you're new and just starting out, I get it. Dude, when I heard about meal prep when I first started, I was like, this is so tedious. This is so time consuming. And you're not wrong. But when it's done right, it can actually save you a ton of time. It can reduce a lot of stress. And it can help you be way more successful in hitting your goals. So whether you're just starting out your journey or you're trying to refine your meal prep routine, I hope this episode provides you with some practical tips for making meal prepping easy and more efficient.

And guys, if I'm stumbling on my words, it's 5:45 p.m. on Thursday, and I'm at the end of my day after already recording the intuitive eating podcast earlier, then going through five different meetings, and being in and out of all different types of energy throughout the day. So I'm wrapping up with this. I was like, what's a good topic I can still bring to them that's super easy and I could just jam on for the next 30 minutes, and meal prep came to my mind. So I hope this serves you guys in a way that's helpful or beneficial one way or another. And like I said, if you're in your journey and you already know meal prep, maybe pull something out of here that will help make it more efficient and faster for you.

Anyway, let's talk about why meal prepping is so important, especially when it comes to achieving your goals. Guys, meal prepping isn't just about having food ready for the week. It's not just about having food in your fridge ready for tomorrow or the next day. It's about taking control of your food. It's about taking control of your nutrition. When you meal prep, you eliminate the guesswork. You don't have to scramble to find something healthy when you're too busy or too tired. And you avoid those last-minute decisions that often lead to unhealthy choices, unhealthy behavior, unhealthy takeout, unhealthy snacking.

When you meal prep, you are in control. You are deciding what you are going to be eating the next day. I remember at the beginning of my journey, when I wasn't so honed in on meal prep yet, I would be at Wawa, the convenience store, the gas station I've talked about a couple of times on the podcast. And I'd be in Wawa scrambling to find a protein bar or something that looked healthy, but in reality it's not really healthy and it's unhealthy snacking. Or at the end of the day, if I'm too tired, I'll just resort to making a last-minute decision, like, oh, I'm going to order takeout tonight.

So there are so many aspects of meal prepping that are beneficial. One being consistency. Meal prepping allows you to stay consistent with your nutrition, which is so critical for seeing results, whether you're in a fat loss phase, a building phase, or a maintenance phase. It doesn't matter. If you are meal prepping consistently, it allows you to be consistent with your nutrition, which is so important to seeing the results you want to see along your journey.

Number two, it allows you to have portion control. By prepping your meals ahead of time, you can make sure that your portion sizes align with your macronutrient goals. You're much less likely to overeat when your meals are already pre-portioned. At the beginning of my journey, I loved this aspect of meal prep because I would meal prep all of my meals. I'd weigh out all of my meals and put them in their own respective containers. I would have three different Tupperwares with three different meals, and I would put them into the fridge. The next day I would be able to take them out, already pre-portioned and already logged inside MyFitnessPal, and I would just take that with me to work. And that allowed me to be so much more successful on my journey, which allowed me to be consistent, which allowed me to see results.

And another huge benefit of meal prepping, which I don't think a lot of people take into account or think about so much, maybe you do, maybe you don't, I don't know, is that it saves time and it saves money. Even though you think it takes a lot of time and maybe the grocery bills run up, you're saving time by taking 30 minutes to an hour out of your day on a Sunday to prep all of these things, rather than last-minute thinking and thought processes about what am I going to eat, and spending so much time going back and forth because your friend doesn't agree on what you want to eat. And then you're stuck in this limbo of, where are we going to go for lunch? Or at the end of the day, you're like, honey, what do we want to have for dinner? That's time. You're thinking about what you're going to eat. But with meal prep, it's already done. So it saves time.

And it saves you money, even if the grocery bill looks like a lot. It's because you're paying in a lump sum for your meals across the day and the week. I broke this down per individual. I'm an individual, and I know there are families and moms listening to this episode as well, so you can break it down for your family too by doubling or tripling what I say here, depending on how many heads you have to feed. But I think roughly my grocery bills are anywhere between $100 and $130. So let's just go with $115 for the week, divided by seven days. That's $16 a day. Divided by, let's say, four meals, that's $4 per meal.

I think a meal out right now, with how much things are, has got to be around $10, right? Or maybe even more, $15. I don't know, because all I focus on is either meal prep or I use Just Meats. By the way, a little drop in here: I'm not affiliated with them. I don't have an ad for them. This isn't an ad. It's just something I personally do, and I freaking love them. I've been using them for the last three months. I don't know if I've talked about Trifecta in prior episodes. I got away from using them because they changed the whole way the product was made. It was just interesting to me, and I'm not a fan of it anymore. So I use Just Meats. Now, Just Meats is just protein. But you know how easy it is? I grab mashed potatoes or rice or some type of carb that's super easy to heat up or make, and I just combine the two.

But yeah, $16 a day. Again, if you're eating four meals, it's $4 a meal. $16 usually gets you one meal out. If you bulk your food, it saves you time. And if you bulk your ingredients, it all reduces your overall expenses and time, is what I'm trying to say. And it avoids the temptation of spending too much out to dinner. Let's say you don't have meal prep, then you go to takeout and you're spending 50 bucks right there. So all in all, it sounds time consuming, but it's not really when you break it down and look at it realistically. And you think it's a lot of money, but it's not really when you break it down and look at it realistically.

Nikkiey (ad): Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with the body changes you're experiencing during menopause? It's time to take control. If you're between 45 and 65 years old and tired of struggling with body fat and muscle loss, WarriorBabe is here for you. At WarriorBabe, we've helped over 18,000 women just like you lose body fat, build toned muscle, and understand their bodies better with personalized plans based on hormone and thyroid testing and more. Imagine knowing exactly what your body needs to see real results, and results that last. Don't wait anymore. Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women. Visit warriorbabe.com/apply today to start your transformation. That's warriorbabe.com/apply.

Nikkiey: All right, let's get back to the show. How would you get started with meal prep? I want to break down some simple steps if you're newer to the game. I'm going to go through these super fast, because I'm not sure how many of you are new, to be quite honest. But I want to help you make it easy to integrate into your weekly routine so you don't feel so daunted getting into meal prep. My intuition is that a lot of people listening know they have to meal prep, but they don't do it because, like you're saying, it takes too much time. Okay, look, so let's get started with meal prep. I want to break it down into three simple, easy steps.

The first aspect of meal prepping is planning. Decide what your meals are going to be so you can prep them ahead of time. It's often helpful to focus on the meals that are the hardest to fit into your schedule. For example, when I was working in the emergency room back in the day, one of the hardest things for me to fit into my schedule was lunch, because I worked seven to three or seven to seven. It was easy for me at home, and I think for a lot of you, if you're at home early in the morning, it's easier to prep and make your breakfast. But then it's up to you to figure out, okay, what am I going to do for lunch? And what am I going to do for a snack? That's usually where I found I was stumbling the most.

Actually, hold on. Lunch was the one that was hard for me to plan. I wanted to backtrack so you have a takeaway of, okay, this is what I'm starting with, this is what I need to do. Your first step is planning meals. Look at your weekly schedule and decide how many meals you need to prep. Do you have busy work days? Do you have nights where you might not have enough time to cook? Planning ahead for those ensures you're never caught without a healthy meal. For me, lunch was it. I would look at my week and know I'm working Monday through Thursday, seven to three. So on Sunday, I'd plan all my meals, prep them, and put them in the Tupperware, and they would be ready to go for those four work days so I could pull them out and make sure I'm staying on track and consistent. So think about that. Take a look at your weekly schedule and decide how many meals you have to prep.

Then, once you've decided on your meals, you can make a grocery list. Write down everything you need for your recipes: what proteins, what carbs, what fats, what vegetables. Having that list helps you stay organized and prevents you from buying unnecessary things, which can tack on to the cost. Then you're able to go to the grocery store and choose things that are simple, yet fun, healthy, nutritious, and enjoyable. Because what I hear a lot of the time is, oh, meal prepping is so bland and so boring. But if you think about fun ideas for your meals, create a grocery list, and have it all written down, think how fast you can navigate the grocery store as well.

And then from there, it's just about making fun things that are easy to make in bulk. So you can do grilled chicken and roasted vegetables, you can do quinoa salads, you can do stir fries, you can do overnight oats for breakfast. Keep it simple. No need to overcomplicate it. I'm not the type of person who's going to be adding in paprika and parsley and X amount of this ingredient and that ingredient. I'm going to keep it super simple, especially if I'm just starting out. So if you're just starting out with meal prep, keep it silly, stupid simple to begin with. Don't overwhelm yourself.

And I'm thinking about all the concerns and questions that are going to come out of this. Well, I have a family. Okay, for the time being, just try to navigate this for yourself and then make multiple quantities of the meals you're making for yourself for your family. They may not like it because it's boring or whatever, but you can totally spice it up with different sauces, switching up flavors, or using different cooking methods. So it doesn't have to be overly boring, but you do have to make some type of change from where you're at right now to where you want to go in order to get results. If you're the sole proprietor of making all the food choices and cooking all the meals, you are the one who can say, hey squad, right now we're going to navigate this type of style for a little bit because mom's trying to do X, Y, and Z, and I want everybody to be on board, but I'm going to try to make it as enjoyable as I can for everybody. You're in control of that. And you get to make everybody healthy along the way.

Okay. So those are three simple, easy tips if you're just starting out: plan your meals, create a grocery list, then keep it silly, stupid simple. Now that you've planned all your meals and shopped for all your groceries, let's actually talk about the meal prep process. I want to give you a step-by-step guide to make your meal prep easy, quick, efficient, and stress-free. By the way, if you go to WarriorBabe's YouTube, you can see I did a meal prep. It's pretty chaotic, I'm not going to lie. But I challenged myself to do meal prep in 30 minutes or less, and I got it right on point at 30 minutes. So if I can do it, you guys can do it too.

I'll say, though, at the beginning of my journey, it took longer. It's the same thing I said in the last episode with macros. Yeah, it's going to take longer at the beginning when you've never done something before. But if you keep doing it over and over and over again, it's going to get so much faster and quicker. And that's why I can do it nowadays in 30 minutes or less.

So, some tips for you guys for the actual meal prep process. Number one, set aside time. And I say this to everybody I've ever coached in my entire life: dedicate a specific day of the week and time to meal prep. For me, an example I've used already is Sundays, a popular choice, and they are popular for me as well. But it depends on your schedule. What I would recommend is on Sunday, or whatever day of the week works best for you, set aside one to two hours to get everything done. And so that it's not daunting or overwhelming or boring, or whatever feeling you associate with meal prep, make it fun. Put on a podcast, put on some music you can dance to, put on your favorite show in the background. Think about it as a Zen time where you can focus on putting one or two hours of meal prep together. And then envision the outcome, which is going to help you be so successful, because that's what's going to make it a little more enjoyable.

The second tip, and if you more seasoned veterans listening don't do this, do it, because it's going to absolutely change the game for the way you meal prep: cook in bulk.

Nikkiey (ad): Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with the body changes you're experiencing during menopause? It's time to take control. If you're between 45 and 65 years old and tired of struggling with body fat and muscle loss, WarriorBabe is here for you. At WarriorBabe, we've helped over 18,000 women just like you lose body fat, build toned muscle, and understand their bodies better with personalized plans based on hormone and thyroid testing and more. Imagine knowing exactly what your body needs to see real results, and results that last. Don't wait anymore. Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women. Visit warriorbabe.com/apply today to start your transformation. That's warriorbabe.com/apply.

Nikkiey: All right, let's get back to the show. Focus on cooking proteins with proteins, carbs with carbs, and vegetables with vegetables, in bulk. You can grill, you can bake, you can do it several different ways. But cook a batch of rice, a batch of quinoa, a batch of chicken, a batch of vegetables. That way you can mix all of the ingredients throughout the week to create different types of meals. But you do this all at once. Some people like to do two days of meal prepping, and that's totally fine. Find what interests you the most or how you want to jam on this. Some people do Sundays and Wednesdays.

But cook all of these things in bulk and cook them all at the same time. You can bake the protein in the oven while at the same time you've got vegetables on the stove, sweet potatoes in the air fryer, and rice on the stove, because you can do that while the air fryer is taken up. Try to multitask. And if you're a mom, you can multitask no problem, so this should be no problem. Not only are you cooking in bulk, but you're also multitasking with the different things you're cooking at the same time.

Then, the third tip: once your food is all cooked, portion it out into individual containers. Portion control is the third tip. What I would say is, okay, all of your protein is in one container, all of your carbs are in one container, all of your vegetables are in one container. That's how I specifically do it. Then when you're ready to pull it out and portion out your day, you would use a food scale and track your macros, and portion it out to specifically what the meals need to look like. This step is so critical for making sure your meals align with your macro goals, and it helps prevent you from overeating.

So it's two steps. You can portion out all your protein, fats, and carbs into their own containers and then from there portion out your meals. Or you can portion out all of your meals. Or you can do both. I would portion all of the protein into its own container, and then at the end of my days, I would portion out all of my meals for the next day from the bigger overall protein, carb, vegetable, and fat containers. So that's like a step two, three, and four. Then obviously you're putting all of these containers away in your fridge.

So: set aside time, a specific day and time to meal prep. Cook your items in bulk, but also cook them all at the same time. And another trick that just came to my mind for how to navigate that: protein takes longer, so protein goes into the oven first. Then I start on the rice. Then I start on the sweet potatoes. And I finish out with the vegetables because they're pretty quick. Or you can even put the vegetables in the oven at the same time. You know what I mean? You've really got to strategize it to make it quick, efficient, and stress-free. Yeah, this is all clicking. I hope this is all clicking for you guys.

And I touched on this a little bit, but some concerns when it comes to meal prepping are that it can be boring, or I'm eating the same things every single time. But it doesn't have to be that way. What I would recommend for people just starting out their journey, to keep it silly, stupid simple, is that you'd pretty much be eating the same meals for about two weeks. After that, it can get kind of boring, right? So use different seasonings, different herbs, different spices, different flavors that can spice up your most basic food types. For example, grilled chicken can be seasoned with Italian herbs one week and then turned into a spicy fajita bowl the next week. You know what I mean? You can totally switch it up.

Use different cooking methods. You can do grilling, baking, roasting, all those different types of things, and that can give you a little bit of a different flavor when you're eating the meals. My favorite thing to do was sauces and dressings, healthy sauces and dressings that can transform the most simple, basic meal into a next-level meal. And then rotate some of your recipes. I would say for anyone starting out, keep the same lunches and dinners for two weeks; you could have different breakfasts and different snacks on a daily basis. Then after those two weeks are up, you switch out the lunch and the breakfast, or the lunch and the dinner. So just rotate your recipes. I hope you guys are finding this super helpful, because as I'm talking out loud, this is even a nice little refresher for my brain on meal prepping tactics.

So as we wrap up this podcast, I've talked about ways you can get started with meal prepping, and once you have those basic starter things down, how to actually be successful in the meal prep process. But before we wrap up, I do want to talk about challenges people face and how to overcome them.

One being time constraints. I want to talk about this because I know some people say it's a concern: it takes too much time, I don't have the time, I'm too busy. I want to just nail this excuse out the door. If time is a concern for you, you can still be successful by focusing on prepping just one or two meals ahead of time. You don't have to meal prep for every single day of the week. You can start small, and as you get more comfortable, you can increase the number of meals you're prepping for.

So just prep some chicken and some ground beef tonight for tomorrow. You see what I mean? You don't have to overwhelm yourself with getting eight chicken breasts and two pounds of ground beef and prepping all of that. If time truly is a constraint for you, just focus on going to the grocery store after work tonight, grabbing a chicken breast and a pound of ground beef, and meal prepping that for your meals tomorrow. And then once you're like, ah, I can do this, see, it's just about starting small. Because once you do that, you believe in yourself a little more, you feel more confident and more comfortable, and then you can increase the number of meals you're prepping for.

Same thing goes with portion fatigue. Like I told you, you can feel like you're doing the same thing over and over again. So mix and match different veggies, different sauces, different carbs, different proteins. I feel like that will keep your meals more exciting. Those are ways you can overcome some common challenges, if you have them, one being time and one being portion fatigue and getting bored. Swap it out, move things around, change it up. Eliminate those excuses from your brain. And just know that this can be successful for you if you are willing to figure it out, essentially.

Because at the beginning of my journey with meal prepping, I felt all the things you guys feel when you're first starting out. Or even if you're fatigued halfway through and you're like, oh, how can I make meal prepping more enjoyable? I had to figure out some things that work for me. So while I'm giving you all these tips, tricks, strategies, and processes to make it easier and more time efficient, you also have to take this and figure out what works best for you.

At the end of the day, meal prepping is one of the most effective strategies to stay on track with your nutrition and reach your goals on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. You just have to put in a little bit of planning and preparation. When you do that, you save time, you can stay consistent with your macros, and you can avoid the temptation of making unhealthy food choices throughout the week. Like I always say, fail to plan, plan to fail. No, I was saying that backwards. If you're failing to plan with your meal prep, then plan to fail with the goals you have set for yourself in your journey. Because, as I said at the beginning of the podcast, meal prep is a game changer for staying on track with your nutrition and, most importantly, being successful with it.

And remember, it's not about perfection. It's about progress moving forward. So just start small, experiment with different things, find a meal prep routine that works for you, and adjust it as you go. If you're in the middle of it, hopefully you found some takeaways for spicing up your routine. But no matter what, you'll notice how much easier it is to stick to your nutrition plan and make healthier choices at the end of the day.

All right. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I hope there were some takeaways. Share this episode with somebody else who may be struggling with the meal prep aspect of it. And hopefully you were all able to take something from it and go apply it to your day to day. That's all I hope for out of these episodes. All right, guys, catch you on the flip side. See you in the next episode. Peace out.

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