3 Reasons To Develop The Habit Of Meal Prepation
Approximate Read Time: 4 Minutes 30 Seconds
Venturing forth on a journey to improve your health and overall lifestyle can be incredibly overwhelming. There are a multitude of worthy habits that can be pursued all of which are challenging yet will most certainly progress you forward with your health goals. For many individuals this is why their actions last such a short while as they attempt to make all of these worthy habits a reality at once. There are a few habits that I believe to be of incredible benefit to individuals initiating the journey to improve their health. Meal Prepping is one of those habits! If you’re looking to develop a health-conscious structure in your life AND the challenge of making healthy food decisions is currently a struggle – here are 3 reasons why Meal Prepping should be your first habit!
Improves Time Management
Meal Prepping almost immediately eliminates the common excuses that parallel, “I don’t have the time to cook.”, “Healthy meals take too long to prepare.” And “I don’t have healthy options on the go.” Meal prepping is time efficient. In a few hours of focused work (shopping / cutting / cooking / packing) you can eliminate the necessity for cooking for 5-7 days at a time! Talk about a return on investment! By portioning out and packaging those healthy meals that you just cooked it is possible to take meals with you ANYWHERE. Now you have options when you’re at work, watching the kid’s soccer game or any other situation in which you may find yourself in a pinch!
Provides You With Structure
When you have your meals prepared in advance you are not likely to ignore / throw them away in order to purchase something that is potentially unhealthy. That meal prep took both TIME AND HARD EARNED MONEY! I’m not saying it’s impossible because we’ve all done it BUT the likelihood is significantly less. When overwhelmed; your healthy option is already available, mitigating the risk of you gravitating towards unhealthy options! The more meals you have prepared – the more opportunities you have to chalk one up for success. The less “thinking” and “deciding” you have to do relative to your eating habits the better! This is especially true when you’re just getting into the swing of things! By avoiding decision fatigue your healthy meal structure will dominate your lifestyle! If you happen to go off the rails here and there it will not be nearly as damaging to your overall progress because so much of your week is structured around healthy meals and snacks.
Less Expensive
It’s common to become wrapped up in the habit of eating out. It’s convenient and requires little effort other than to hand over the cash or swipe a card and ~ VOILA ~ food is ready to fill your grumbling belly! This approach is incredibly costly in the long term. Certainly the convenience of a freshly made chicken salad or similar can be strategic when time is of the essence or when an unhealthy choice is egging us on and tempting our taste buds! Just be aware that making a habit of eating out – healthy or otherwise will CERTAINLY make your wallet slimmer! Prepping foods ahead of time allows you to purchase larger quantities of a food item if you so desire (often at a better price) not to mention you are not paying another individual to prepare the food for you nor are you paying the overhead of the establishment in which it is prepared.
Meal preparation completed for multiple days in advance cultivates strong, health conscious habits. By proactively preparing meals your weekly lifestyle structure will be built on a firm foundation of REAL food that promotes the success of your health and fitness goals. You may still slip up and trip up but it increases your likelihood of long term success and improves your ability to return to structure post stumble. You are much more inclined to eat the food you’ve prepared especially when incorporating Tupperware containers which allow you to bring your food with you on the go. Last but not least you avoid spending as much of your hard earned money by preparing your food in larger amounts as opposed to eating out, eating heavily processed foods or purchasing small quantities of healthy food at a time. I’m almost certain that you can find something productive to do with those saved monies! Perhaps a vacation to show off that future beach body you’re working on?
Failing to prepare is preparing to fail...
TIME TO START PREPARING THOSE MEALS!