I know you want to eat well. You want to have most of your meals at home. But if you are anything like our household more often than you would like to admit you find that yet another week has gone by and you have mostly had frozen foods, pizza, and cereal for dinner.
Is Your Meal Preparation Associated with Dieting?
If you know me at all, by now, you know that I’m anti-dieting for a whole bunch of reasons.
For many, meal prep can feel like yet another diet plan. It often feels like a should, versus something you want to do for yourself and your family.
Meal preparation takes work. And diet mentality makes it feel like even more work. The stress of the “shoulds” associated with dieting make us dread meal preparation. “I should cook.” “I need to grocery shop.” But these thoughts only further our stress level and then we eat more processed foods, and reinforce our negative beliefs about ourselves.
Sound familiar?
The Reality of Food Preparation
The reality is, unless you have a personal chef or can afford to order healthy pre-prepared meals every day, you are going to have to spend some time on this.
Eating well and improving habits requires some level of planning, shopping and meal preparation.
If you are anything like I used to be, this sounds exhausting and inconvenient. I mean, frankly, we have better more exciting things to do with our time.
The Purpose of Today’s Post
I am all about setting you up for success and making things easier. And to make best use of your precious time, planning ahead is key.
However, this isn’t just a typical meal preparation post. We will talk about using the science of motivation to prep in a way that feels less taxing, because you do it from a place of self-respect. That is, you are doing it from a place of WANT TO instead of SHOULD.
It’s also helpful to look at the process of meal preparation and the parts of it that drain you the most. When we truly take away the self-judgment, we can see things more accurately. From there we can find ways to simplify, streamline and make things easier for you.
When you come to any problem from a place of curiosity and non-judgment, and stop beating yourself up for what you haven’t done in the past, things because much easier. And the great news? The work you do to relate to yourself differently as you change your meal prep strategy will last well beyond any specific diet plan ever has.
If Your Going to Meal Prep, You Might As Well Have the Right Motivation
We need internal, autonomous motivation to keep yourself doing the healthy meal preparation over the long-term. This means:
- Doing it because something about the behavior itself is rewarding (e.g., it’s fun, challenging, enjoyable) and/or
- Because it’s integrated into your identity (how you think of yourself)
For example, you might think, “I’m a person who values my health and feeling great, so I take the time to prepare food on a regular basis.”
Example from My Life
I have always wanted to learn to be a better cook, but after having my daughter, I got the final push I needed to make it happen consistently. Part of this was valuing home cooked meals even more since becoming a mom, but another part was logistics. I finally found a great tool to help me out.
I was working with a cardiologist who talked with his patients about the numerous benefits of plant-based eating. He recommended the Forks Over Knives Meal Planner App. I tried it just to experience it first hand and over 3 years later, we are still using it most weeks for our meals.
Make it Enjoyable… if you Can
It was clear to me, I very much valued learning to cook. But I definitely did not naturally enjoy it. But downloading the meal planner gave me the push to use it during my 7 day free trial (now they do 14 days!) and see what we thought.
After my daughter would go to bed, I would turn on my favorite Netflix show (at the time I believe it was Parks and Recreation), podcast or audiobook and follow the steps on the meal planner.
Making It Part of Who You Are, Over Time
Did I enjoy this all of the time? Nope. The mindless show made it easier, but I was tired. I had worked all day and all I wanted to do was watch that show snuggled with my dog (and maybe my husband?) on the couch.
But after the free trial was over, we liked it enough to keep going. Did I love it yet? Definitely not. Do I love it now 3 years later? Sometimes.
But becoming a mom who at least attempts to make whole unprocessed meals for my family has become part of my identity. Or at least, it’s a work in progress.
Providing further motivation is the fact that our family found out that we have a genetic mutation that makes us much more prone to cancer than the average person. Although this was extremely upsetting news (and still is), meal prep became even more of an internally motivated behavior. That is, it feels like something positive I can control in attempt to prevent a scary reality (someone in my family getting cancer).
So Do I Love Cooking Now?
I definitely like it more. But if I’m honest, other priorities, like working on my business or blogging are much more appealing to me. I still struggle at times to make it happen, but I keep showing up week after week to learn, grow and improve.
The health of my family and feeling good about what we are all eating is too important to me. So I will keep trying to become a better cook. And maybe find another appealing Netflix show. 🙂
Steps to Decreased the Mental Workload and Make Meal Planning Easier
It’s important to ask yourself, what part of meal planning and prep that you hate the most? Is it the planning part? The shopping? The chopping?
Consider where you can reduce the mental and emotional burden of doing something you really hate. How can you streamline the process and make it easier?
Do You Dread Grocery Shopping?
Is getting to the grocery store something you really drag your feet on?
- Maybe consider using a service like Instacart or Shipt. Although there is a cost to this, sometimes it can be worth it, especially if it makes healthier eating easier and therefore reduces eating fast food or other sit down or take out options, all of which can add up! Additionally, options like Curbside pickup offer the opportunity to avoid the shopping part and shop online.
All of these options, some of which are free or very low cost, help reduce that burden for you.
Is it the Planning Itself that Stresses You Out?
- There are many services out there now that pre-plan meals for you and pre-populate a grocery list. This is what I really enjoy about the Forks Over Knives planner. I actually do not love meal planning but I also cannot eat the same thing each week. The meal planner pre-populates each week, 3 meals per day for 5 days. You can swap out and change it up, but it gives you a place to start with new recipes coming out each week, which I love.
Do You Hate the Chopping? The Actual Cooking?
- Consider ways to make this more fun. Can you involve your kids? Or you could watch your favorite show on Netflix or your favorite podcast (the Psychology of Wellness is coming out with a podcast soon, don’t you worry!)? What about involving your spouse or listening to music?
Benefits of Using a Meal Planning Tool
It takes time to get a new process working well so be patient with yourself and keep trying.
For me, the idea of planning 5-6 dinners a week (assuming you eat out 1-2 times per week or grab something easy) is exhausting even if you don’t have a million other things on your plate (which most of us do).
I find the Forks Over Knives meal planner super helpful because it:
- Creates a meal plan each week, then I can edit and customize
- Creates an automatic grocery list that changes as I adjust my menu
- Allows me to go through the fridge and cupboard and mark down what we already have
- Gives me optional prep day tips (like make my brown rice for all recipes on Sunday so meal prep for each meal is faster)
- Gives me variety without me having to think it through, do a search, and come up with new meals each week
Tips to Make Sure You Have a Plan for Meal Prep
Forks Over Knives clearly isn’t for everyone. I like it because I eat about 80% vegetarian and I hate preparing raw meat. So I get occasional meat at a restaurant if I want. I also kind of hate meat leftovers, unless it’s pepperoni pizza.
What type of help do you need for your eating plan?
- Evaluate Your Meal Preparation Strategy. It’s time for some honesty here. Where are you at with this? Do you plan ahead at all or just fly by the seat of your pants. How is it working for you?
- How Much Can You Eat the Same Foods. We are all different here. Some people can truly eat the same thing over and over, day in and day out. Now, in terms of a fiber diversity, it’s best to do a lot of different plant foods and get some variety in, but preferences matter too, a lot. So be honest with yourself, how much variety do you need. For me, I really like variety in our dinners, but for breakfast and lunch I’m fine with less variety.
- Consider Using a Tool. If you are anything like me, I just want things made simpler for myself. The great news is there are a million meal prep apps out there now. How people did it 20 years ago, I have no idea. Besides Forks Over Knives, there is Mealime and EMeals, although I have limited experience with the second two. Do you have any that you like? Let us know in the comments below!
Make it a Family Affair
Struggling to get the meal preparation done alone? Involve your family!
This is a big focus for me, because I want my kids to see me cooking often, learn cooking skills and hopefully have fun in the process. I also want entertainment and fun while I cook, selfishly.
Additionally, them being around reminds me WHY I’m cooking. They are the #1 reason I cook, because I want to reduce our family’s risk of cancer (of which we are quite highly pre-disposed), heart disease, and generally help them live long healthy lives.
For this reason, my daughter uses a step-ladder to help me cook and I’m getting my son this cooking stool from Amazon for Christmas this year so he can join us safely. Don’t tell him ok? 😉
I’m also getting my daughter some child friendly knives and other cooking utensils including a cute apron to help make the whole ordeal more fun and hopefully re-engage her in the process. We’ve gotten away from cooking together a bit since my son was born. She mostly just wants to sit and watch Frozen while I cook…. I guess I can’t really blame her!
Live alone? Consider doing a Zoom cooking date with someone and catch up on life while you do your meal prep.
What about Done for You Meal Services
The next step up is you can use a meal service that sends the food to your door, with varying levels of chopping and cooking needed.
For the reasons I mentioned above, we prefer mostly meatless when it comes to cooking at home, so many of the meal preparation kits we’ve used are vegetarian. But there are a TON of great ones out there.
Here are the one’s we’ve used:
- Hello Fresh
- Purple Carrot
- Hungry Root (this one is mostly chopped up and ready to go for you, very little prep involved): We used this for about 6 months after my son was born, when we needed to make meals in 10 minutes or less.
I’d Love to Hear From You!
What has worked best for you and your family? What do you still struggle with most when it comes to meal preparation?
Does it stress you out and feel like a should? How have you shifted your mindset about it?
If you want to try out Forks Over Knives FREE for 14 days, check it out here and let me know what you thought!