The power of pre-planning your meals, food prepping and freezing meals is a huge advantage to weight management. How often do you stop at the grocery to grab a few quick items and become easily tempted to purchase foods off your weight loss plan? To avoid unnecessary calories, try food prepping and freezing foods for busy days of the week. Simply make your weekly meal plan, grocery shop, cook meals, and freeze for the upcoming week. Cooking your own foods helps to avoid high sodium in prepackaged meals, and lets you create a menu to satisfy your own taste buds!
Here are a few suggestions to make this easy for you.
- Plan recipes that will make several serving sizes. For example, if your recipe makes 8 servings, you will have 8 individual meals frozen.
- Plan to cook at least 4 meals and you can freeze 32 individual meals.
- Take one day to chop items like onions, bell peppers, celery, and garlic. Now these are readily available to add to your recipes.
- Use containers which have a really good seal to avoid freezer burn. Cool food before storing in the containers.
- Purchase fresh or frozen vegetables to add to recipes. You will feel fuller by including at least 1-2 cups of vegetables at each meal. Cooked vegetables can be added to prepped meal containers and frozen with the entrées.
- Get together with a friend to meal prep. Four hands are better than two! Food prepping can go really fast with a friend’s help, and you both walk away feeling proud and looking forward to your upcoming meals!
