If you’re trying to eat healthier but you’re frustrated by how time-consuming it is, what you need are some good meal prepping secrets. Changing your diet always has a bit of a learning curve, but you can take some of the stress out of the equation by being smart in how you plan and prep your meals. 

There are lots of ways to meal prep, whether you make full make-ahead meals or prep a bunch of ingredients and keep them ready to go for cooking throughout the week. Meal prep saves money, reduces waste, and helps you stay on track with your health goals. Here are some meal prepping secrets that will help put you on the path to better health.

1. Start small: If you’re new to meal prepping, ease yourself into it. Start by having some leftovers from dinner for lunch the next day to get a feel for what types of foods work well when cooked in advance. This can help guide you toward the types of recipes you can start prepping for the week ahead.

2. Use single-recipe meals: Don’t make meal prepping overly complicated or you’ll never stick with it. One of my favourite meal prepping tips for beginners is to find some healthy one-dish meals you love and look for ways to make them meal prep-friendly. Lentils and curries are two examples of one-dish meals that can easily be prepped and stored without losing flavour or texture.

3. Follow a formula: If you want to be healthy, you can’t just haphazardly throw together whatever foods strike your fancy. Instead, follow a formula to ensure you’re hitting all the important nutrients. A basic formula is protein + grain + vegetable, but if you’re going to low-carb route, you might replace the grain with a second vegetable. Vegetarians can try legume + grain + vegetable. Add different sauces to keep things interesting.

4. Get organised: You’re going to need lots of containers of various sizes to store your food when you meal prep. FoodSaver containers are a great option, since you can vacuum them and preserve the lifetime and quality of the food.

5. Don’t shy away from shortcuts: Pre-cut vegetables and fruits at the store might be more expensive, but if it’s going to take some stress out of your day and make you more likely to eat more fruit and veg, it’s worth it! Frozen vegetables are also a great solution.

6. Double up: If you’re turning on the oven to make tonight’s dinner, see if there’s a meal prep opportunity you can take advantage of. For example, perhaps you can throw another sheet in the oven at the same time to roast the veg you’ll need for tomorrow’s dinner. Or, chop a little extra of this and that – components of meals can help you put together a quick snack, or lunch even.

7. Make healthy snacks easier: Most healthy snacks require a little more work than their unhealthy counterparts. For example, before you can munch on carrots with hummus, you have to peel and cut the carrots, which often makes that grab-and-go bag of crisps look pretty appealing. If this sounds like you, make healthy snacks just as easy to grab and go by chopping up raw veg the day you bring then home from the store and portioning them. Again, vacuuming them will help them last much longer.

8. Make a list of healthy foods that are great for meal prepping: Starchy vegetables like potatoes and root vegetables are quite filling and can last in your fridge for several days after cooking, as can stiff raw veg like bell peppers, carrots and celery. Healthy whole grains like barley, quinoa and oats are also very easy to meal prep and keep well, while pulses like chickpeas, beans and lentils can provide any meal with plenty of plant-based protein.

9. Make it fun: If the idea of standing in your kitchen and chopping vegetables sounds like it’s about as much fun as going to the dentist, find ways to make it more exciting so you’ll stick with it. Maybe you’ll listen to a podcast while you’re doing it, or perhaps you can make the most of your weekly phone call with relatives by popping on a Bluetooth headset and prepping at the same time. It may even end up being something you look forward to!

10. Break it up: If you’re not quite ready to have a meal prep session, do a little everyday. This is fabulous if you’re already really busy and spending time meal prepping doesn’t sound like it will fit into your busy agenda. There are plenty of ways to do this, but I’ll give you 2 examples.
1: Prep extra. Chopping an onion? Make it 2. Cubing 1/2 a bell pepper? Cube a whole one. These ingredients can be used for an omelette or salad, for example.
2: Meal prep on slower days. Look ahead at your meal plan and prep in advance. For example, it’s Monday and the kids have no extra curriculars. You have no errands. The next 2 days are choc-a-bloc. You marinate tomorrow’s chicken in advance, a prepare a salad for tomorrow and the next’s day dinner. This is how we do things inside The Dinner Plan, only you do not have to rack your brains because we give you a meal prep guide, complete with meal prep tips for every single day.

All the best meal prepping secrets have one thing in common: making it easier for you stick with healthy eating. When you’re not stressed about putting dinner together, those last-minute stops for takeaway or supermarket ready-meals will become a thing of the past. 

I’ll be teaching you meal prep inside our 4 day batch cooking challenge! Registration opens in one week – on October 7th! 🥳 We hope you’ll join us!