Four Major Benefits of Weekly Meal Prep
By Brian Acton
From the outside, preparing an entire week’s worth of meals in one day might seem like an enormous task. Bulk preparation of your breakfasts, lunches, or dinners definitely involves some upfront work, because you have to buy all the ingredients ahead of time and spend some extra effort in the kitchen once a week.
But whether you’re interested in prepping breakfasts, lunches, or dinners ahead of time, the benefits of weekly meal prep can be very real. Weekly meal prep can save time, money, and even help you follow a diet. Here are four major benefits of weekly meal prep.
- Meal Prep Can Save Time
Preparing your meals ahead of time may sound time consuming. But it can actually save you time in the long run by combining multiple meals into a single cooking session.
Consider how much time you spend preparing meals during the week. For every meal, you have to shop, prepare your ingredients, cook your meal, and package it up if you’re taking it elsewhere. That process must be repeated multiple times a week.
By combining all your cooking, you’ll need to spend some extra time in the kitchen on your prep day. But it can save you time compared to repeating the same process, in miniature, five times or more each week.
- Meal Prep Can Save Money
If you tend to dine out, order takeout, or get delivery, prepping meals ahead of time can help you save a lot of cash. Reducing the amount of restaurant meals could save you hundreds of dollars a month, depending on how much you dine out.
Beyond that, you can save money on groceries by buying ingredients in bulk. You can buy more food ahead of time and enjoy a reduced bill at the supermarket.
- Meal Prep Can Help You Eat Healthier
Weekly food prep can reduce the amount of meals you eat out. Restaurant meals often contain larger portions and are laden with extra calories. Meal prep can help you avoid these fattening meals.
Plus, prepping your meals once a week can help you commit to a healthy diet. You may be more likely to stick to a diet if you’ve already got your healthy meals ready to eat. And, you can plan out your meals based on calorie count and nutritional info, if you wish.
- Meal Prep Can Reduce Food Waste
Meal prep gives you total control of portion sizes and can help you avoid food waste. Once you’ve got some experience prepping weekly meals in the kitchen, you’ll know exactly how much food you need to buy to feed yourself or your family for the week.