Food Prep: Making Good Nutrition Easier
Good nutrition becomes considerably easier when the food you want to eat is actually available when you need it.
You can have the perfect nutrition plan on paper, but if you finish work at 8pm, you're starving and the only thing in your fridge is half an onion and some questionable cheese, that plan isn't particularly useful.
This is where food prep comes in.
And food prep doesn't have to mean spending your entire Sunday filling identical plastic containers with chicken, rice and broccoli.
Food prep is essentially the art of thinking ahead.
THE BEST PLAN IS ONE YOU CAN ACTUALLY FOLLOW
"Optimal" isn't always optimal for you.
You could design the theoretically perfect diet containing freshly prepared meals, enormous food variety and precisely calculated nutrition.
But if preparing it requires two hours every evening and you hate cooking, it's probably not going to last very long.
Your nutrition needs to work around your actual life.
Work.
Family.
Training.
Socialising.
Travel.
The days when everything goes according to plan—and the days when it absolutely doesn't.
Instead of asking:
"What's the perfect way to eat?"
Ask:
"How can I make eating reasonably well easier this week?"
That's a much more useful question.
LOOK AT THE WEEK AHEAD
You don't necessarily need to prepare seven days of food every Sunday.
Just look ahead.
Where are you going to be?
When are you training?
Which evenings will you get home late?
Are you eating out?
Which meals are likely to be difficult?
Then solve the obvious problems before they become problems.
If you know Wednesday is ridiculous and you'll have ten minutes to eat between clients, Wednesday probably isn't the evening to discover that the chicken takes 45 minutes to cook.
Prepare something beforehand.
Take food with you.
Have something quick available.
Or buy something suitable while you're out.
Preparation doesn't always mean cooking.
BUILDING A MEAL
Meals don't need to follow one perfect formula, but a useful starting point is to think about:
Protein
Fruit and/or vegetables
A source of carbohydrate
Some dietary fat
The amounts will depend on your overall diet, activity and goals.
You can use the hand-portion method from the Portion Sizes guide if you don't want to weigh or track food.
And every meal doesn't need to look perfectly balanced.
Maybe your breakfast doesn't contain vegetables.
The nutrition police aren't coming.
Look at what you're eating across the whole day and week, rather than trying to create a nutritionally perfect plate every three hours.
PLAN YOUR SHOP
Having useful food in the house makes useful food considerably easier to eat.
Before shopping, have some idea of what you're going to make and what you already have.
A basic list can:
Reduce unnecessary purchases
Reduce food waste
Save repeated trips to the supermarket
Make meals easier to put together
Stop you buying six completely unrelated ingredients and hoping they'll somehow become dinner
Online shopping can be particularly useful because you can build your shop around actual meals rather than wandering around a supermarket hungry and discovering that apparently you needed three types of crisps.
KEEP SOME EASY FOOD AROUND
Not every meal needs to involve cooking from scratch.
Convenience is useful.
Things like:
Frozen vegetables
Microwave rice
Tinned beans and pulses
Tinned fish
Pre-cooked grains
Greek-style yoghurt
Eggs
Frozen fruit
Pre-prepared vegetables
Ready-cooked protein sources
Good-quality ready meals
can make eating well considerably easier.
There's nothing nutritionally virtuous about spending 25 minutes chopping vegetables you could have bought frozen.
Sometimes paying someone else to do part of the preparation is an excellent trade.
LEARN A FEW BASIC COOKING SKILLS
You don't need to become a chef.
But being able to confidently prepare a few basic ingredients gives you considerably more control over what you eat.
Learn how to:
Boil — eggs, rice, potatoes, pasta.
Roast — meat, fish and vegetables.
Fry — meat, fish, eggs, tofu and vegetables.
Steam — vegetables, fish and dumplings.
Use an oven or air fryer without incinerating everything.
You don't need fifty recipes either.
Get good at five or six meals you genuinely enjoy and can make without thinking too hard.
Those become your reliable options.
Then gradually add more.
LEARN BASIC KNIFE SKILLS
You don't need to chop an onion like Gordon Ramsay is standing behind you with a stopwatch.
But basic knife skills make cooking quicker, easier and considerably less annoying.
Learn how to safely chop the foods you regularly eat.
Speed comes naturally once you've done it enough.
And if you really hate chopping things?
Buy some of them chopped.
Problem solved.
MAKE FOOD TASTE GOOD
"Healthy" food doesn't have to taste like punishment.
Use:
Herbs
Spices
Garlic
Chilli
Salt and pepper
Lemon and lime
Sauces and condiments
Yes, some sauces and condiments contain calories.
That's okay.
The goal isn't to remove every unnecessary calorie from your food until dinner becomes nutritionally efficient sadness.
If adding some sauce means you genuinely enjoy eating your meal, that's probably a fairly useful addition.
COOK MORE THAN YOU NEED
If you're already cooking something that stores well, making extra portions can save a huge amount of time.
You're cooking tonight's dinner anyway.
Making enough chilli for tomorrow's lunch doesn't require twice as much effort.
Portion the leftovers, refrigerate or freeze them and you've solved another meal before you've even reached it.
That's food prep.
USE YOUR FREEZER
Your freezer is one of the best food-preparation tools you own.
Frozen food isn't nutritionally inferior simply because it's frozen, and freezing leftovers can reduce both waste and the number of times you need to cook.
Freeze meals in useful portions so you don't have to defrost enough chilli to feed a rugby team every time you're hungry.
Label things if you're likely to forget what they are.
Because six months from now, that anonymous brown block could be absolutely anything.
HAVE AN EMERGENCY MEAL
This is one of my favourite strategies.
Have one or two meals available that require almost no effort.
Something you can make in five minutes when you're tired, late or simply can't be bothered.
That might be:
Microwave rice + pre-cooked protein + frozen vegetables + sauce.
Eggs on toast + fruit.
Yoghurt + oats + fruit + nuts.
A decent ready meal with some extra vegetables.
A shake and something simple alongside it.
It doesn't need to be your perfect meal.
It needs to be better than having absolutely no plan when you're starving.
IN CLOSING
Food prep isn't about covering your kitchen in Tupperware.
It's about making tomorrow slightly easier.
Look at what's coming.
Identify the meals that might cause you problems.
Shop accordingly.
Cook extra when it's convenient.
Keep quick options available.
Freeze things before they go bad.
And learn a handful of meals you can reliably make and actually enjoy eating.
The best nutrition plan isn't the one that looks perfect on paper.
It's the one that still works when you're busy, tired and really can't be arsed to cook.