Healthy Recipes for Weight Loss: Meal Prep

Meal preparation has become a popular way of life for many health fanatics and organised families. If done right and followed with discipline, meal prepping can pave the way for your weight loss journey success. It can also save you money if you don’t deviate from your meal prep for weight loss grocery list when you go shopping.

Benefits of Meal Prepping

Apart from the two major benefits mentioned above, there are other surprising benefits that go hand in hand with meal prepping.

Cut Out Convenient Fast Food

It’s difficult to stay away from convenient fast food after a long day of work. You’re definitely not in the mood to cook and there are about three different take-away places to choose from conveniently on your way home! With meal prepping and careful planning, you can skip the queue in the drive through, kick off your shoes and pop your prepared meal into the microwave. As mentioned above, this will save you both money, and unnecessary calories.

Save Time in the Week

Whether you have a family that you’re looking after or not, weekdays can often escape us, especially in the mornings! Getting food prepared is not something that mornings always permit, so it makes a whole lot of sense to have healthy meals you can grab and go.

Proper Portioning

Meal prepping will help you eat less, because your meals need to be portioned correctly as part of your planning. If you stick to your portions, you’ll lose weight because you won’t be overeating.

Prepared Meals Refrigeration and Storage Guide

There is a rulebook to follow when it comes to storing your meal safely.

Refrigeration at 4^oC or lower

1-2 days: Cooked ground poultry or ground beef

3-4 days: Cooked whole meats, fish and poultry; soups and stews

5 days: Cooked beans; hummus

1 week: Hard boiled eggs; chopped vegetables (in air-tight container)

2 weeks: Soft cheese, opened

5-6 weeks: Hard cheese, opened

Freezing at -17^oC or lower

2-3 months: Soups and stews; cooked beans

3-6 months: Cooked or ground meat and poultry

6-8 months: Berries and chopped fruit (banana, apples, pears, plums, mango) stored in a freezer bag

8-12 months: Vegetables

Meal Prep Recipe to Get You Started

Curry and cauliflower rice – This is a great recipe for healthy meal prep because you can adjust the amount of ingredients (i.e. double the amount) if you are looking to prepare for the rest of the week.

This is an official Slender Wonder recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 bay leaf
• ½ tsp curry powder
• 1 tsp vinegar
• ½ tsp sweetener
• pepper
• salt
• ½ garlic clove diced
• 20g chopped onion
• 100g lean mince
• 1x crushed Crackerbread
• 100g boiled cauli-rice

Method:

1. Brown the onion in a frying pan and add in the mince frying until brown
2. Add in the curry powder, vinegar, sweetener, garlic, salt and pepper
3. Mix the ingredients until combined
4. Add in the crushed Crackerbread, some water and the bay leaf
5. Simmer until thick
6. Serve with boiled cauli-rice
7. Serve and enjoy!