Pros & Cons of Meal Prepping

happiness is a fully meal-prepped fridge.

Meal prepping has seriously been a lifesaver in my life. I really started getting into the habit of it my last semester of college when my days started at 6:00 AM and didn’t end until 10:00PM Monday through Thursday — I would go to my sports nutrition internship, go to class, go home for an hour or two (where I usually took a power nap) and then would finish off my day working my tutoring job. My schedule was exhausting and left zero room for cooking, let alone healthful, complete meals. Even now as a late twenty-something, I still find myself with packed weeks and spontaneous weekends, so it’s easy for rest and convenience to take precedence over cooking. Ergo, I'll order food instead of being able to conveniently grab pre-made food from my fridge. However, meal prepping or finding simple-to-throw-together meals for my weeks are key to helping me stay on track with my health goals. If you’ve been considering implementing meal prepping into your routine, here are my personal pros & cons.

pros

Cook free weeks

When I come home from work I usually head straight to relaxation mode. I have plenty of other errands and chores to do without cooking having to be one of them. Meal prepping over the weekend makes it so easy to have one less thing to worry about and makes mealtimes easy to just “grab-and-go,” because sometimes that’s all I have the time or energy for.

Thought-out meals

When I plan out my meals in advance, I get to take the time to make sure my meals are more complete. If I’m trying to plan when hunger is setting in, it gets easier to rush through the cooking process to get it over with, skip healthy sides, or to give into less-than-healthy cravings. When I meal prep, it’s far more likely my plate will include a larger variety of fruits & veggies paired with my meals.

Better portion control

Meal prepping has makes it so much easier to refrain from overeating. I’ve found that, for me, if all the servings are together in one place, I'm much more likely to overeat because it makes it easier to overestimate portions or go back for more. But meal prepping has made it easy to divvy up the food into equal, single-size servings from the start. Portion control is a huge factor when it comes to weight loss, so if that’s a goal of yours, meal prepping would be beneficial habit to pick up.

Decreased temptation to eat out

It is painfully easy these days give into stopping for a quick meal when I know I don’t have the desire, time, or energy to cook. That’s where meal prepping is a lifesaver because by having all my meals done in advance; home-cooked meals essentially become “fast food” because it’s all ready to warm up and serve. Plus, the added bonus is that if you lose part of the temptation to eat out, you’re going to save money in the process!

CONS

It’s tiring

It’s exhausting being in the kitchen cooking for hours on end and then cleaning the dishes, only to dirty them up again making the next item on the menu for the week. Finding the motivation (or simply the energy) can be tricky. But the exhaustion of that single day can be well worth it when you don’t have to even think about cooking for the next week.

Potential Boredom

I try to make a few different meals for the week, but sometimes it can get boring eating the same meals for a week — especially if you don’t end up liking something you made as much as you were hoping you would. One of the most important things when it comes to nutrition is making sure you’re excited about what you’re eating. Look for recipes that excite you to try and avoid potential boredom with your meals. I've personally found more success at finding the best recipes in cookbooks versus Pinterest or Google.

Food waste

This is one of my biggest pet peeves because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made food and can’t get through it all. It’s a blessing and a curse to have so much food, but it’s irritating to not be able to get through it fast enough without 1) burning yourself out on that food, or 2) feeling like you wasted money on groceries that just went bad. It’s tricky finding the serving-size balance when you’re cooking for one person — I don’t want to have so much that it goes bad, but I don’t want to not have enough, either. If a particular food you make is freezer-friendly, freeze and store for a later week when you’re in a bind or just don’t want to spend the money on ingredients to make a whole new meal.