Meal Prep: Our tips for organizing your weekly menu
Are you looking to improve your diet and better organize your time during the week? You've heard of "Meal Prep", but it seems a bit vague?
Don't worry, the idea is to share with you tips and recipe ideas for preparing and carrying out your weekly Meal Prep without any headaches!
The idea is to prepare all your meals for the week in around 1h30 in the kitchen, and it's totally feasible if everything is well prepared in advance.
With a meal prep, you'll save time, stop wasting food, eat better thanks to balanced, home-cooked meals, have fewer cravings during the day thanks to more complete, better-prepared meals, and have peace of mind during the week when it comes to cooking and washing up.
Say goodbye to processed meals and Uber Eat after work: with a meal prep, all you have to do is open your fridge and you've got a healthy meal ready to eat!
Before starting this method from the USA, you need to choose your meals for the week, make your shopping list and have airtight containers for 7 days!
Step 1: Planning your Meal Prep: how do you organize it?
You need to plan a minimum of 14 meals, i.e. recipes for lunch and dinner from Monday to Sunday. When planning meals for the week, you can even add snacks during the day, especially breakfast, depending on your mood and diet.
The best way to do this is to draw up a table of the days of the week on a sheet of paper, noting all the meals you'll be eating each day, or you can do it in the form of a list. Don't forget to include a dessert after each meal, such as fruit, a square of dark chocolate, yoghurt or homemade cake.
Now you're going to need some inspiration when it comes to choosing recipes!
To start with, I'd advise you to make dishes that you often cook and enjoy.
Then, you can plan a theme for one day of your meal prep, for example a 100% vegetarian day, or Mexican or Asian dishes, depending on your culinary preferences.
Running out of meal ideas? Go to Pinterest, a social network that's full of healthy, well-balanced ideas for your meal prep, so don't hesitate to get inspired! You can also find ready-made, super-complete, time-saving meal plans.
A little tip: use seasonal fruit and vegetables for your meals to reduce the final cost of shopping and get better-quality food.
You can also plan to make several recipes with the same base to save you time (for example, with one batch of rice, you could cook a chili con carne, a rice salad and a mushroom rice).
Step 2: Prepare the week's shopping list
Once you've completed your weekly chart or list, you'll need to make a shopping list of the ingredients you'll need. If, at the end of your meal prep, you still have some food left over, don't panic, you can re-use it for next week's meal prep to avoid wasting food.
Organize your shopping list according to the departments you find in the supermarket to optimize your time. Prepare your list by classifying your food into the following categories: Fruit and Vegetables, Meat and Fish, Fresh, Frozen, Savoury, Sweet, etc.
Important: look in your cupboards and fridge for what you have, to avoid buying food you already have.
Step 3: Get out your ingredients and get cooking!
Put the food you need on your work surface and start with the ingredients that take the longest to cook, such as meat, fish, starches, legumes, etc. While these are cooking, you can prepare your fresh vegetables by washing and cutting them into the shape you want. While these are cooking, you can prepare your fresh vegetables by washing them and cutting them into any shape you like.
Once that's done, put your food in containers and label them according to the day you need to eat them. Use any leftovers to make dishes for the following week, or if you've left a hole in your meal prep.
Now all you have to do is pop your lunch boxes in the microwave on the big day!
Storage tips:
Put the dishes you're going to eat at the end of the week in the freezer.
Give preference to water-rich fruits and vegetables at the start of meal prep, as they don't keep well in the freezer and can spoil when defrosted.
Meat and fish keep for 1 to 4 days in the fridge.
Pulses and starches keep for 5 days in the fridge.
Dairy-based sauces become lumpy after 3 days in the fridge.
Vegetables keep for 3 to 5 days in the fridge.
Need to know how to put together a meal prep? Here are a few ideas:
Monday:
- Breakfast: 2 slices of Creamy Peanut Butter wholemeal bread with a sliced banana + 250g fromage blanc with fresh fruit of your choice. (Bonus: add Protein Crunchies for extra indulgence)
- Lunch: Chicken stir-fry with peppers + wholegrain basmati rice
- Snack: A slice of healthy banana bread
- Dinner: Butternut with fresh goat's cheese, bacon and baked honey
Tuesday :
- Breakfast: Avocado toast
- Lunch: Spinach and ricotta gnocchi
- Snack: Raspberry Smoothie (oat/almond milk, a handful of frozen raspberries, 1 banana, 1 scoop of vanilla-flavored Whey Proteine Advanced )
- Dinner: Coral lentil and egg dalh
Wednesday:
- Breakfast: Oatmeal porridge + almond milk, apple and cinnamon topping. (Bonus: add syrup Yummy Zero Syrup 0-calorie chocolate or caramel syrup or add a spoonful of Creamy Peanut Butter)
- Lunch: Wholemeal wrap with tuna, cheese spread, avocado, cucumber and tomato
- Snack: Crunchy Protein Bar + seasonal fruit
- Dinner: Pasta with cream cheese, spinach and tomato sauce
Thursday:
- Breakfast: Healthy banana pancakes (Bonus for a ready-made breakfast: Protein Pancakes)
- Lunch: Thai noodle salad with beef
- Snack: 2 petits-suisses + banana (Bonus toppings: Yummy Zero Syrup 0-calorie chocolate flavor and Protein Crunchies)
- Dinner: Baked cod with sautéed seasonal vegetables
Friday (Theme day: 100% vegetarian):
- Breakfast: Sweet potato waffle + soft-boiled egg
- Lunch: Cucumber and mint gazpacho and salad
- Snack: Oatmeal cookies with dark chocolate
- Dinner: Quinoa salad with avocado, cranberries, chickpeas and feta cheese
Saturday :
- Breakfast: Wholemeal bread toast with cottage cheese or Creamy Peanut Butter + Scrambled eggs
- Lunch: Home-made steak & bacon burger + sweet potato oven fries (Bonus: accompany them with the Tasty Zero Sauce 0-calorie barbecue flavour)
- Snack: Seasonal fruit salad
- Dinner: Salmon and broccoli quiche
Now all you have to do is prepare next week's meal prep on Sunday - it's easy and time-saving!
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