How To Stay On Track With Your Diet If You Hate Meal Prep

Last updated on October 3rd, 2019 at 07:16 am

Everyone is meal prepping now. It’s like: if you don’t meal prep – you’re not allowed to breathe. Let alone eat, if you’re trying to stay healthy or lose some weight.

As much as everyone else is excited about having their meals ready for the whole week on Sunday, all I have to say is: I hate it.

I hate all about it.

My biggest issue is I have to eat old food on Wednesday already.

That’s the reason whenever I try to make anything to eat ahead (like more than 2-3 days) it lands in the trash. My heart breaks every time.

How Meal Prep Made Me Overeat

Before I started to meal prep I was actually better at keeping a healthy diet and my weight down. After I started doing it, I gained 10 pounds (which wasn’t my goal).

The reason?

Whenever I had something “homemade” ready for me, I would start craving something completely different (even if it’s just a different salad). But since I didn’t have the time or groceries to make it at that moment, I’d go out and buy junk food. Having that meal ready for me did not help at all. If I want something else, I’ll either go get something else or cook it.

I have never liked junk food. I still don’t like it. But at that moment, it just feels right. And let me tell you, when you eat junk food a few times – it stops being disgusting. It starts being really good.

On top, because I hate throwing out food, I’d eat what I’ve prepared too. So yeah: double meals. Double calories.

Well, thankfully I figured this out at some point and got out of this rut. I now eat healthy, but I don’t meal prep, at least not the way everyone else does.

If you don’t like eating old food and meal prep, but still want to eat healthier, then maybe the ideas below can help you too.

Note: I’m not saying meal prep is bad and doesn’t work – it just doesn’t work for me. If it works for you – awesome! If not take a look below.

How To Eat Clean If You Don’t Have Time and Hate Meal Prep

1. Grocery shopping

The biggest challenge with making HEALTHY meals ahead in my opinion is eating enough fresh produce. A lot of the meal prep recipes I see are basically chicken with roasted vegetables.

Which, let’s be honest, might save you time and is definitely better than junk food, but isn’t the healthiest (or most exciting) way to keep your weight and stay healthy.

You need more unprocessed vegetables (and fruit) in your diet! They have the nutrients that actually can make you healthier. Those are called antioxidants, yes – you do need them to look good, to feel amazing and to age well. Roasted vegetables don’t have that many. 4-day old roasted vegetables, have even less. And vitamin C is super important when it comes to weight loss – fresh fruit and vegetables are the BEST source!

So what can you do about it?

Well here’s what I do and suggest: Make a list of all the fruits and vegetables you like, buy them and whenever it’s time to eat those – just add them to your meals.

To make it easier – prewash the vegetables, dry them properly (I use a paper towel) and store them in zipper bags. Just so you know, when you precut your vegetables you do lose some of the antioxidants, but if precutting is going to help you eat more fresh produce – don’t overthink this!

If you only buy food once a week, you’ll know that some vegetables spoil faster than others. Especially greens like spinach.

So what I do is:

When I do buy spinach I buy half fresh and then I buy some already frozen.
The first 2-3 days I use the fresh spinach for salads, smoothies – anything and the last 2-3 days I use the frozen spinach.
In the last few days, I depend on fruits and vegetables that don’t spoil that fast to get my vitamin C. Lemons, oranges, broccoli, cabbage, pineapple, watermelon – all that can keep fresh for a long time.

2. Half meal prep

Just because I don’t like eating a 5-day old salad, doesn’t mean I can’t prepare some of the ingredients. It doesn’t take that much time and saves me the excuses.

So I would pre-cook quinoa, rice, lentils, chickpeas or buy those cooked in jars already. The same way you can pre-cook chicken, shrimp, some fish, eggs…Just about anything that you’d need already cooked to assemble the meal you want to eat.

When you have those “main painful ingredients” ready, it’s easy to throw together a healthy and delicious dinner spontaneously in 5-10 minutes.

You can also pre-make anything like hummus, tzatziki or other dips – they usually keep in the fridge for up to 3 days.

Here’s what’s key for me: keep the things you prepared in separate containers. This way the food stays fresh longer AND I can keep my options open. I mean on the one night I might not like quinoa with hummus – I might feel like quinoa with tomatoes and zucchini.

When I have the quinoa – I will make this in 10 minutes MAX and my meal is fresh and warm. When I double the recipe – I have some leftovers for work.

Or I make some cold salad-like meal with quinoa, chickpeas, and vegetables. Could be a wrap, could be a bowl – when you’ve half meal prepped – life’s super easy.

3. Get Your Healthy Meals Delivered

Another option if you don’t have time to go grocery shopping and don’t feel like coming up with new recipes or looking for them is to try a meal kit delivery service like Sun Basket.

You basically get healthy recipes and all the ingredients you need to make the meals delivered to your home. Everything is organic, the recipes are healthy and take 30 minutes to make. This just makes it easier to stay consistent with eating healthier. If you want to give them a try, you can save $35 on your first order.

4. Make breakfast easy

As much as I’d like to eat pancakes every day, I don’t have time to make them.

Better choice: overnight oats. Or if you actually know a good recipe: chia pudding. I have never tried chia pudding to be honest with you. But overnight oats are probably my favorite breakfast.

Reason? Taste amazing and they’re ready in the morning. But. If someone tells you, you can actually store overnight oats in your fridge for 5 consecutive days, tell them to come and eat those overnight oats themselves on the fourth day.

They spoil within 2, max 3 days, TRUST ME!

Now, if you really don’t have even 2 min in the evening:

make a mix with the dry ingredients on Sunday
if you want to take it a step further – fill them into small jars for each day.
the night before just add some water/plant-based milk/yogurt and some frozen berries (optional).
on the very morning – some nut/butter and nuts.

That’s it. No cooking, no baking, just a little mix mix, and fridge fridge. (I am proud I just said that).

Other than that you can bake some healthier muffins ahead, have leftovers from lunch/dinner or just take 5 min to make this avocado toast.

5. Plan 10-20min every other day to “cook” something you actually like.

Once you have all the heavy stuff ready (like grains & protein) – you can make a delicious meal every other day. Just set aside 10-20min, whenever possible for you. And show up to this appointment. This way you’ll be eating fresh every day.

WARNING: If you’d like to make salads ahead, do not put the dressing or tomatoes (if there are any in the recipe) inside the night before.

This would make a salad soggy. Basically any food that has too much fluid in it, will not do great after a day in a salad. Instead put those ingredients right before you eat.

6. Eat more raw foods

I recently started experimenting with more raw “cooking”. No, no raw meat, fish or eggs – I mean nuts, seeds, spices, fruits and vegetables.

And let me clear this up: I am not a raw vegan. I just like trying new things.

And I admit, in the past whenever someone would tell me they’re raw vegan, I’d think “You’re insane”. But now I kinda get it.

The food tastes amazing – like nothing I could’ve imagined and I feel so good after that. It’s delicious. And the cooking part is super fast. You basically put things in your food processor and the magic happens within 5 minutes. Then your meal is ready for the next 2 days.

7. Have healthy snacks around

Snacks are very important for healthy weight loss. They keep you going through the day, prevent the whole starvation madness, which helps you make better choices for your main meals.

But healthy snacks do not need to be complicated. You do not need a ton of recipes.

I used to prepare so many healthy snacks, thinking I need to be ready when I get hungry and I realized: they actually made me gain weight.

The reason: I was eating way too many of them. Just because they were healthy, I’d eat the whole batch in a day when I had them. Stupid decision.

When you do prepare healthy snacks – make one recipe for the whole week and eat one serving a day. The good thing is – you can actually keep those healthy snacks in the freezer, so that’s easy.

| RELATED: 15 easy healthy snacks you might want to try.

8. Freeze smoothie ingredients in zipper bags

Now this one I actually don’t do, but I think it’s a great idea if you don’t have ANY time.

Here’s what to do:

precut fruit and vegetables for your smoothies
divide them into portions
fill them in freezer bags.
each day you take out 1 bag and just throw the ingredients into the blender with some water or plant-based milk.
then you blend and tadaa smoothie is ready in less than 3 minutes.

9. Know what you will order at a restaurant

Knowing how to actually make the right choice at a restaurant or when you’re out will save you a ton of wondering around and fat on your belly.

Make a decision ahead and stick to it. Go for soups or salads or for a whole-grain wrap when on the go.

Do not overthink this. This is not a decision that your life depends on.

And if you do buy something like pizza sometimes – don’t feel guilty, have it and eat lighter later. As long as you don’t have a pizza every single day, you’ll be on the safe side.

10. Stop expecting everything to be perfect

That’s just a little bonus tip. Stop expecting that your diet needs to be perfect or that you have to be prepared to stay on track. That if things don’t go the way you planned or imagined they will not work at all.

Planning is great, but sometimes we use it as an excuse to actually not do what we need to do.

Yes, you can make things a lot easier for yourself by getting rid of all the junk food in your kitchen and by buying and preparing food for the whole week. But the only thing that matters in the end is the choice you make in the very moment.

If you learn to consistently say no to junk food and yes to whole natural foods – that’s all you need to be healthy & lose weight. Even if you have to do it over and over again in the beginning, once you make it a habit – that’s all you need.

And that’s it from me, hope this helps you, it definitely helps me more than preparing a ton of food in one day and then thinking I actually have to eat it.