The Benefits Of Meal Prepping

I know the following familiar scenario will sound familiar, but tell me to stop anytime it doesn’t.

Okay, it’s Sunday. And instead of praising the Lord like you’re supposed to be doing, you’re on Instagram. Now, as you scroll through your feed, what catches your eye not once, not twice, but a handful of times?

Yeah, what catches your eye is a week’s worth of perfectly portioned meals posted by multiple people. Why are multiple people posting a week’s worth of perfectly portioned meals?

Ummm…because Sunday is #MealPrepSunday!¹

Well, upon seeing that week’s worth of perfectly portioned meals, you immediately start thinking to yourself, “Fuck, maybe I need to get on the bandwagon and start planning out my meals, prepping them, and posting about it on social media because it’s not only such riveting content that stretches the boundaries of creativity and originality but also gives me something else to do on Sunday that has nothing to do with praising the Lord like I’m supposed to do.”

I noticed that you didn’t stop me at all.

So that can only mean that the scenario sounds familiar and occurs every single Sunday in the EXACT manner I so accurately described.

That, in a nutshell, is why you’re here now. You want to find out some of the benefits of meal prepping besides the social media cool points you’ll gain from posting about it, which is pretty fucking important! Well, let’s run through some of the reasons to plan and prep your food. The following should be more than enough to help you better reach the decision on whether or not to do it.

SAVE TIME

Cooking food meal by meal takes time. Add more if you don’t know what to make and need inspiration. That’s a lot of time that can be better spent doing more worthwhile things. Well, planning and cooking meals in advance frees you up to do shit you couldn’t do if you had to scour Pinterest for food ideas and recipes and then butcher them.²

Also, because the serving sizes and nutritional info of every meal and snack is already figured out, you don’t have to log and track all of your food each time you eat something. This frees you up to do even more of the shit you couldn’t do if you had to keep a running record of everything.³

SAVE MONEY

Know exactly what food to buy when grocery shopping so you don’t leave the store with so much shit in your cart that people think you were playing Supermarket Sweep, a dated pop culture reference that’s revealing my age so I’m going to shut the fuck up and quit while I’m ahead.⁴

And sure, there’s the eating your own cooking part of it, but cooking your own food is cheaper than eating out, especially when you use coupons and buy in bulk.⁵

SAVE FOOD

By knowing what you need and buying no more than that, you cut down on food waste. According to economists, the average U.S. household throws away about 30 percent of its food, an annual cost of $1,866. So yeah, this goes hand-in-hand with saving money.

STAY ON TRACK

We start each day with only a limited amount of willpower, or the ability to make quality decisions. This self-control gets depleted as the day drags on with work, traffic to and fro, dealing with the kids, keeping our significant other from finding out about our action on the side, and a host of various stressors.

Take a guess what this leads to when you don’t know what you’re having for dinner and have to figure it out on the fly? Yup, it leads to you picking up the phone and ordering Chinese rather than expending the mental energy to look through your pantry and fridge and come up with a better alternative.

You’re too plumb tuckered out to give a fuck anymore!

The finite nature of willpower is why most people are successful with their diets early in the day but then fall apart in the evening.

This doesn’t have to be you, though.

Meal prepping takes the utterly complex decision-making out of your hands, with you just simply having to warm up what you’ve already set forth to eat.

REDUCE STRESS

Your life during the week is already busy and stressful enough with all the shit you have to do and take care of.⁶ This is where meal prep comes in, as knowing what you’re going to eat and having it already prepared is one less thing for you to concern yourself with.

CONTROL EVERYTHING

Ordering out or hitting the drive-thru is easier than measuring your food and making ALL your meals. But that convenience comes at a cost, and not just monetarily.

Regardless of the restaurant choice, whether it be fast food or a healthier sit-down joint, it turns out that you’ll consume 200 more calories than you would have had your culinarily-challenged ass consumed a home-cooked meal.

Over time, those added calories add up to added weight.

Guess what’s the solution to this difficult as hell problem?

Yeah, cooking your own food!

Cooking your own food allows you to know exactly what’s going into your mouth, with you controlling everything from the amount of sodium, cholesterol, and fat in the entire dish right down to how big of a serving you need to satisfy your nutritional needs.⁷

MODIFY BEHAVIOR

The more you eat the foods and amounts you’re supposed to eat, the less tempted you are by the things you’re not supposed to eat. Meal prepping makes this possible by ensuring that what you’re supposed to eat is always available.

There are a lot of reasons to meal prep but if there is one reason not to, it’s the lack of variety. Because you’ll be preparing several days worth of food, you’ll be eating the same stuff for 3-7 days in a row. If you’re the type of person who needs a varied menu because you get easily bored with food, then meal prepping might not be for you. Apart from that, there’s no other reason not to engage in the practice.

Now, as with everything you’re inexperienced with, the task of planning, shopping, cooking, and storing your food may seem daunting. But as with everything you were once inexperienced with, the task of meal prepping will become less of a chore the more frequently you do it because you’ll become more efficient at it.

So start meal prepping!

…

Or you could take all the money you’re saving from using coupons, buying in bulk, and not eating out so much and just hire someone to do the meal prepping for you. Then when they’re done cooking and have laid everything out in Tupperware, you can shove them to the side to snap a selfie with your prepped food in the background, after which you can make a #MealPrepSunday post about how much work meal prepping is but how it’s sooooooooooo much worth it.

Yup, you could always just do that!

Glossary: calories, diet, dietary fat

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Monster Longe

Monster Longe is a personal trainer in San Diego. He has been lifting weights for +25 years and training clients in the gym and online for about half of that time. When not working with clients or making content that's easy to read, understand, and apply to everyday life, he enjoys long walks and leaving buildings crushed and entire city blocks decimated in his wake.