According to Healthline, meal prepping or meal preparation is a concept of preparing meal ahead of schedule. Its proponent said that meal prepping saves time, money and makes us in control of our nutrition. So, I am on a journey to prove that it's saving my resources and energy.
If you look at Pinterest, there are tons of unique ideas on the prepping meal menu. However, many of them belong to the mid-upper budget. Before showing you my meal preparation, I will say that my budget is low to middle. I roughly spend 15-20$/week on food alone. I used to do take-aways and food delivery service. It's incredibly convenient, but the numbers add up.
Because I want to revamp my current spending, I thought about cutting my expenses without being miserable. So, I revert to the ways that I know, Meal prepping. It helped me save money before, so this time, I thought it would do the same.
On Sunday last week, I started listing all the food that I will eat in a week. I try to avoid any ingredients that may cause inflammation and hinder my productivity during the day. After I wrote everything on a piece of paper, I planned to shop the next day.
The next day, I bought the paper with me and began to shop. Little did I know, the shopping quickly stole my day. I spent half a day buying all the vegetables from the market nearby. In the end, I came home feeling exhausted and had no energy left to do anything else. Even worse, I didn't get anything I wanted and had to shop at a different place for it. So, the shopping continued to the next day.
During these days, I ended up eating the food that my mom made. It made me lazy and lethargic. I need to eat a low carb, rich protein and fibre diet. Meanwhile, my mom cooks whatever she can find. So, another day being robbed from my productivity. However, that night I finally gathered all the ingredients and started meal prepping.
The first lesson is that finish all the shopping in one go.
Wake up as early as you can and make sure to have all the list. Do it during the day when you don't have work. Otherwise, you will feel like your day was being robbed.
For breakfast, I plan to have Milk + Egg + Oatmeal + Muesli + Dried fruit. It's pretty simple as I already have its ingredients, and I didn't have to shop for it. I like to eat that kind of breakfast because they give me just enough energy to start my day. I also eat boiled eggs before I am taking my nootropics and started my workout.
For lunch and post-workout, I usually make something light. This time, I was prepping cabbage + cucumber + fresh tomato salad with olive oil dressing. I made enough for two days. I did not have a lot of containers, so I can only make them for two days. I also pan-seared some of the fish and the chicken. I added a light thousand island dressing for pimping up my lunch.
In that way, I still have to cook every two days, which was quite cumbersome. I would save more time if I had all the ingredients chopped instead of freshly made. So, that's another lesson. Instead of making a fresh meal, try to pre-made the meal. Essentially you will need to cook about 10 minutes the most, I am pretty sure that's not a lot to invest. Plus, that ensures the freshness of the meal.
For the nights to come, I made scrambled tofu with toast and peanut butter. This week was not my best meal prepping in years. I think I ate randomly, and I ended up spending way more than I should. That because I din't consider that I love snacking + spices expenses. So, the third and the final lesson would be, ask yourself if you love snacking. My go-to healthy snack is almonds and homemade popcorn.
Also make sure to include fresh fruits. I love dragonfruit, and it's in the season.
The final lesson would be to cut cost, buy fruits that are in season.
I certainly learn from that experience, and I want to make my next experience better and to save more instead of causing unnecessary spending.
Let me know in the comment section if you have this experience.