Meal prep is one of those things that can be absolutely life changing when it comes to staying consistent and getting good results from your hard work in the gym.

As we know, nutrition makes up about 80% of your body composition, and 20% of the work comes from the actual work you do in the gym.

So you can completely bust your butt in the gym, but if you’re not eating right for your goal, you’ll likely see very little results physically.

Let’s go over my 10 best tips when it comes to making nutrition much easier by doing meal prep.

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Plan Ahead

In order to meal prep, you need to physically sit down and write out or at least take mental note of what you’re going to cook for the upcoming week and the ingredients you’ll need to buy.

Schedule specific times each week (preferably the same times each week) to sit down and plan out your meals, write out your grocery list, go grocery shopping and to meal prep in order to stay consistent.

Simplicity is key

Cooking can be extremely overwhelming especially if it is not something you enjoy.

Make sure to choose recipes that will be easy for you to cook given your skill level and/or desire to cook to avoid throwing in the towel altogether.

This is something I make sure to key in on as I hate cooking and whatever I can do to make it as simple as possible, you bet your butt I am doing!

Sometimes that means pre cooked rices, pre cooked meats or chicken, frozen fruits and veggies, etc.

Food selection

First, choose a protein base that you can use in all your meals for the week. You can choose more than 1 if you don’t want to eat the same exact thing every day (I get grossed out easily).

Cook an entire package (or packages) and use it for various different recipes in the same week.

For example, buy a massive package of ground turkey and you will be able to make turkey burgers, turkey tacos, turkey chili, etc.

This makes it so that you have to purchase less ingredients overall and keeps costs down while shopping.

Plan meals with the same ingredients

Similar to the protein base, another hack is to buy 1-2 vegetables and the same seasonings so that you can repurpose them in all your meals.

For example with the ground turkey, you could buy either taco or chili seasoning and use it for all 3 of those recipes.

You can also make your own seasonings.

This will keep grocery lists shorter and less expensive.

Include a variety of foods

Ensure a mix of lean proteins, whole grains, vegetables, and healthy fats for balanced nutrition.

You don’t want to be prepping meals that are straight protein and nothing else. You need healthy fats and carbs to live.

I mean, technically you don’t need carbs but they are super tasty and helpful for storing energy for the gym.

Buy in bulk

Try a wholesaler like BJs, Costco, Sam’s Club, etc. opposed to your traditional grocery store.

These are great places to buy fruits, vegetables, meats, poultry, seafood, etc. in larger quantities for lower costs. More bang for your buck!

Portion control

Make sure that you’re cooking enough food overall & measuring out the portions for each meal so they align with your nutrition goals (calories and macros).

Each meal that is prepped should have the same quantity of everything in that meal to making tracking an easy copy and paste.

Remember – meat, poultry and other protein sources generally give you nutrition facts that are in the RAW portions. If you have no way to measure before cooking and separate the proportions while cooking, just weigh it all after and break it out that way.

You can look up some calculators or guides to convert from raw to cooked as an estimation.

Generally while cooking these types of protein, they shrink about 25%.

So 4 oz of raw chicken is about 3 oz of cooked chicken.

Storage

Make sure to buy airtight sealed containers to store your prep.

Place your prep into the containers without covers and let your food cool completely before covering and placing into the fridge to avoid a food borne illness manifesting in your container from the condensation.

If you make meals for more than 3 days at a time, it is recommended to freeze them to maintain freshness.

Reheating

Instead of heating your prep in a microwave, opt for a pan so that your meat, chicken, etc. does not get rubbery. You can still put it in the microwave but it might not taste as good.

If you don’t have anything in your prep that would get gross from microwaving it, definitely feel free to microwave it as that is the most convenient option.

Don’t forget the snacks

Along with your meals, you can also meal prep quick and easy snacks that you can take on the go with you.

Things like protein smoothies, frozen fruits treats with greek yogurt, energy balls, vegetables with greek yogurt dip, seasoned nuts and seeds, homemade beef jerky, etc!

These are great for when you are in a pinch and can’t eat a whole meal.

Conclusion

Meal prep can be a bit time consuming but if you only do it once a week, you actually save yourself a lot of time throughout the week.

Not to mention, you save yourself the stress of having to think about what meals you will eat each day and if you’re going to hit your calorie/and macro goal or not.

It almost guarantees you success as long as you stick to the plan!

If you feel you need more help with recipes to meal prep, setting your calories and macros and tracking – work with me 1:1. I’d love to help you through everything!

Until next time,

Coach Emily