How to Meal Prep to For Weight Loss

Planning and preparing your meals can be a helpful skill to develop when you’re trying to lose weight.

It’s much easier to follow your meal plan when your fridge and freezer are stocked with ready-to-go snacks and meals that align with your health goals. 

As a bonus, and if you’re very organized, you may even save some money by meal prepping because you can build a grocery list that takes advantage of weekly deals. 

Keep reading to learn how to start meal-prepping and why working with a registered dietitian could benefit your weight loss journey. 

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Can Meal Prep Help You Lose Weight?

Knowing how to create delicious, balanced meals that satisfy (but don’t exceed) your daily energy targets is important for losing weight.

So, if you don’t already have an eating plan, it’s highly recommended that you develop one with a weight loss dietitian. 

Your personalized eating plan can serve as a guide to meal prepping, which is the act of cooking meals and snacks in bulk so they’re ready to eat later. 

Routine meal prepping can be a lifesaver during busy weeks, especially if you have an unpredictable work schedule or children to care for when you get home. 

Additionally, some research suggests that meal planners have more variety in their diets and are more conscious of choosing nutrient-dense foods.

The study's authors speculate that meal prepping could prevent obesity, but more research is needed. 

Benefits of Meal Prepping for Weight Loss

Preparing your meals and snacks in advance could aid weight loss by: 

• Ensuring you have access to plenty of vegetables, a staple of any nutritionally balanced diet. 
• Prioritizing nutrients that support weight loss, like protein and fiber. 
• Eliminating the guesswork about what you’re having at your next meal (which can keep you from gravitating to something that’s convenient but maybe not as nutritious.) 
• Including treats and snacks in moderation (this may decrease a restrictive dieting mentality, which could prompt overeating). 

How to Start Meal Prepping for Weight Loss

Here are five steps to start meal prepping for weight loss. 

1. Set Your Weight Loss Goals

Before you plan your meals, write out and establish your weight loss goals (which can include the amount of weight you hope to lose or how you hope to feel).

Keep in mind the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) defines a realistic, healthy weight loss as one to two pounds per week, which can be achieved by a modest calorie reduction of 500 calories daily or more. 

You can also ask your dietitian how many calories you should eat to lose weight.

Then, you and your dietitian can use this number to start building a personalized eating plan. 

2. Plan Your Meals and Snacks

Build your meal plan by jotting down your favorite dishes and snacks first.

Then, make modifications (if necessary) to help them better fit your calorie goals. 

Some easy, lean cooking methods you can use to prepare meals include: 

• Grilling. 
• Broiling. 
• Roasting. 
• Baking. 

Alternatively, you can search for new recipes.

Try browsing your grocery retailer’s website, national food association and health organization websites, or dietitian blogs. 

You can also take advantage of prepackaged, nutritious snacks like bars, trail mixes, and precut fruit and vegetables when planning. 

Check out our dietitian-approved Costco and Trader Joe's snack lists for more ideas. 

3. Create Your Grocery List

Make a list and write down everything you need to complete your meal prep.

This is a great time to look at flyers and coupons to see what’s on special that week. 

Depending on your needs, you may also want to buy high-use items in bulk (like nuts or seeds) for additional cost-savings. 

You can buy frozen produce, which can be more affordable than fresh options depending on the season.

Don’t forget to check out canned items for inexpensive proteins such as beans, legumes, and fish. 

4. Choose the Right Containers

Meal prepping is much easier when you have the right tools and containers.

Before starting, stock your kitchen with a sharp knife, a few cooking bowls, measuring utensils, and a couple of pots or pans. 

Also, you may want to invest in Tupperware with tight-fitting lids to ensure your prepped meals stay fresh and are spill-proof during transport.

Be sure to choose microwave-safe dishware and pick container sizes that reflect your appetite (you don’t want to be hungry after eating!) 

Lastly, consider buying a lunch box that stores your lunch, cutlery, and drinks if you don’t already have one. 

5. Set Aside Time to Meal Prep Each Week

Pick a day and time when you’ll be available for meal prep. Many people do a few hours on a Sunday, but if weekends are busy, you can pick a different day. 

Treat this weekly commitment as though it were an important meeting that you must attend.

You can make it fun by playing a podcast or movie while you cook or invite some friends over and turn it into a social event. 

If a few hours sounds too long, keep things simple by scaling back your prep.

Other helpful tasks include cutting or cooking your vegetables for the week, cooking your proteins, creating snacks, etc. 

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Meal Prepping Tips to Maximize Weight Loss

Here are some meal-prepping tips to help you support your weight loss efforts. 

Get Familiar With Portion Sizes

All foods can fit in a nutritionally balanced weight loss plan, but you’ll still need to monitor your portion sizes. 

At Nourish, we don’t believe you need to count every calorie, but it can be helpful to understand which foods are high in energy and how to adjust your portion sizes. 

Using the hand jive model is an easy way to remember portion sizes. 

• Two hands full is for vegetables and fruits. 
• The palm of your hands is for protein. 
• A closed fist is for carbohydrates.

Having trouble losing weight? Take the weight loss quiz to understand your next steps and reach your goals.

Stay Mindful of Macronutrient Content

Macronutrients provide energy and are essential to your diet.

The three macronutrients are fat, protein, and carbohydrates. 

When building a meal, you can balance these macronutrients to create a nourishing and filling dish that aligns with your weight loss plan. 

You can follow the MyPlate tool to build these meals: 

• Fill half your plate with fruits and vegetables. 
• Fill a quarter of your plate with lean protein from animal or plant-based sources. 
• Fill the final quarter with carbohydrates (choosing complex carbohydrates like whole grain pasta, breads, and crackers at least half of the time). 
• Use healthy fats to dress and season your meals. For example, oil and nuts in a salad. 

Store and Label Your Prepped Meals

Keep track of your inventory by clearly labeling your prepped meals.

You can write on freezer bags with permanent markers, use color-coded tags (red lids are for meat-based proteins, green lids are for vegetables, etc.), or write on Tupperware with washable markers.  

Most foods can last in the fridge for 3-4 days and in the freezer for 1-3 months. 

Meal Prep Ideas

It’s OK to keep meal prep simple. Try to be consistent and use easy-to-follow recipes. 

We’ve included some meal prep ideas below to get you started. 

Breakfast

• Meal prep overnight oats with fruits, nuts, seeds, and milk. 
• Bake eggs in a muffin tin with vegetables (asparagus, cherry tomato, and fresh basil). 

Lunch

• Mix a hearty grain salad with wild rice, pomegranate seeds, cucumber, green onion, yellow bell pepper, and feta cheese. Store this in the fridge for up to four days. 
• Cook a big pot of chicken soup with chicken breast, chicken stock, celery, carrots, onion, garlic, and bay leaves. 

Dinner

• Stew beans, carrots, bell peppers, diced tomatoes, garlic, onion, corn, and spices to make a bean chili.
• Make ground turkey sliders by mixing ground turkey, dill, lemon zest, salt, egg, and whole wheat bread crumbs. Bake and then store in the fridge or freezer. 

Maintaining Your Weight Loss with Meal Prep

After you lose weight, you’ll need to shift into “maintenance mode” to make your results last.

This is defined as a weight loss stage where you try to stabilize your weight (not gain, but not lose anymore) by continuing to complete healthy habits, like meal-prepping.

To keep up your routine, save your favorite recipes so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every week. I

f you’re craving something new, search online and choose easy recipes you want to try.

It might also be fun to designate themes for your meals, such as beans and legumes on Monday (meatless Monday), Tacos on Tuesday, etc. 

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Takeaway

Prepping your meals each week could make following a weight loss plan easier. 

You can start meal prepping by making snacks for the week and then graduate to batch-cooking several meals that you can store in the fridge or freezer. 

To keep meal prep simple, try to use easy-to-follow recipes and ask your dietitian for more ideas if you get bored with your current meal choices. 

How a Dietitian Can Help

A registered dietitian (RD) is a nutrition expert and licensed healthcare professional who can help you lose weight.

Nourish can connect you with an RD online so that you can complete visits from the comfort of your home.  

You may not know what to expect if you’ve never met a dietitian. Here are some questions others have asked: 

• What are the best-frozen meals for weight loss?
• Should I drink lemon water to lose weight? 
• Is protein powder good for weight loss?
• Do any vitamins help with weight loss? 

Find a dietitian who accepts insurance through Nourish.