Why you Need to Improve your Life with a Meal Prep Lifestyle Now
I have lived a meal prep lifestyle since March 2013. I didn’t even realize I’d lived a meal prep lifestyle for that long until I was prepping and researching for this post. I went combing through my social media accounts, which started in 2013 and the earliest picture of my meal prep lifestyle was dated March 10, 2013. To be honest, I think I was living a meal prep lifestyle prior to this, but I hadn’t started sharing about my meal prep lifestyle to others.
I cannot even really recall how I came to know about or decide to live a meal prep lifestyle. I do remember that around that time I started to learn about and complete extreme workouts like P90x and Insanity to name a few. I was getting frustrated that despite putting in the work (blood, sweat and tears, I wasn’t seeing the type of results (muscle and definition) that I wanted. I heard my video trainers (ShaunT and Tony Horton) consistently telling me that I had to eat for my results. They both preached pretty heavily that diet, sometimes even more so than exercise, was what would lead to great results. Somewhere around that time I decided to care more about what I ate. Because of my busy life teaching and being in a PhD program, I knew my only chance of being successful was to live a meal prep lifestyle, even though I had no clue that’s what it was called at the time.
What is a meal prep lifestyle?
Well, meal prep is a system where you prepare your meals on a specific day or days to have greater control over how much and what you are eating. There are many different reasons why people live a meal prep lifestyle and many different goals people try to attain by living a meal prep lifestyle.
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For me, living a meal prep lifestyle has always been about wanting to eat clean (eat a greater majority of food and meals that are good for me, that do not include large amounts of unnecessary and harmful sugars, fats etc.). I have never been very rigid in my meal prep lifestyle. For example, I stick strictly to my meal prep lifestyle during the week, but am very relaxed on the weekends, unless I am completing a workout program or trying to achieve some type of specific goal.
Case in point about a time when I was very rigid with my meal prep lifestyle was when I was preparing for my wedding in Jamaica and also when I was trying to feel more like myself after having my son. Normally, I try to aim for the 85/15 rule as I live my meal prep lifestyle, which means that I eat clean 85% of the time and the other 15, I will eat whatever I feel like, regardless of its nutritional value.
Now don’t get me wrong, I do not always do a good job living a meal prep lifestyle and for a long time I made several meal prep mistakes. There are some days and weeks when I just don’t want to eat clean and I choose not to, but because I usually eat clean whenever I don’t or if I overdo it, I feel awful and am happy to get back on my meal prep lifestyle track quickly.
How does meal prep work?
Well, to live a meal prep lifestyle, you pick a day or days when you will prepare your healthy meal options. For me that day is usually Sundays and here and there on a Monday. I will cut, cook and prepare all my meals that help me to live a meal prep lifestyle for the week on Sunday and then share them into containers to be eaten as breakfast, lunch and dinner and snacks for the week.