MEAL PREPS; IT’ S NOT JUST FOR DIETING | BY QSM 7
WEIGHT LOSS When people hear meal preps the one thing that comes to mind is usually for dieting reasons; and they wouldn’ t be wrong either. If you are on the road to healthy eating, the smart thing to do is to prepare your meals for the week. When I go to work and I don’ t take my lunch, I end up having to resort to what is accessible and convenient. And typically it ends up being something that is not healthy for me. I work in a hospital; you would think that healthy food options would come easy but they don’ t really. You get choices like burgers, fries, sandwiches, Panini’ s, etc. These all may sound delicious but they are complete torture and counterproductive for someone who is trying to eat healthier or lose weight.
HUGE TIMESAVER When you live a busy lifestyle, who has time to come home and cook every night? I know I don’ t! I can recollect my earlier years of being a single mom; things were tough for me. It was a new experience and I was so used to just having to take care of myself. I didn’ t have to worry about what I was going to eat when I got home because I usually ate out. But having a child to care for when I got home proved to be a lot of work. I was spending a lot of time coming home doing homework, bathing, taking out school and work clothes for the next day, cooking dinner, cleaning up, putting the kid to bed and then trying to catch my breath before it was time for me to go to bed. I am tired just rethinking all of that. I had to come up with a better plan because putting a child to bed at 10pm every night meant mornings were going to be that much tougher. One of the things that helped me was doing our meal preps on Sundays. After church I would come home and cook a big meal to last us for the week. I packed them in individual Tupperware bowls and stored them in the refrigerator. I even did this for our lunches so when it was time to eat I could pop them in the microwave and dinner was ready. It saved a lot of clean up time as well.
MORE MONEY TO SAVE If you are anything like me then I am sure you don’ t have money to throw out the window. When you are eating out every day that is just what you are doing. Depending on where you work, you can spend a lot of money a day on just food alone; that can add up quickly. For me, if I didn’ t do meal preps I could spend about $ 6 for breakfast a day, and about $ 10 a day for lunch. That is $ 16 dollars a day / $ 80 a week / $ 320 a month / $ 3840 a year. That’ s a lot of money just for eating at work. Imagine what you can do with that money for the holidays.
WWW. QUEENSIZEMAGAZINE. COM | APRIL 2017 ISSUE