Meal-prep has been a part of my life since 2018. I have found that it has saved me money, stress, and more importantly, time. If you don’t meal-prep now, then I hope by the end of this post that you become a believer. I’ll give you 5 reasons you need to start meal prepping today.

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Meal Prepping Saves Money

When you start meal prepping, you will save money in several ways. One, you eat out less. Instead of grabbing breakfast on the way to work ($) or heading down to the cafeteria at work for lunch ($$), you can make these very same meals at home for far less. Let us take, for example, the bacon, egg, and cheese at McDonald’s. It costs about $3.29, depending on where you live.

If you wanted to make the same breakfast at home, you can use a Thomas’ bagel, an Eggland’s Best egg, a Kraft Single, and an Oscar Mayer bacon slice. When pricing out those ingredients at Stop & Shop in August of 2020, it would cost about $2.08. You could bring that cost down to about $1.25 if you shopped generic. If instead of buying that sandwich daily, what if you made your own breakfast for just half of the year? You would save approximately $371.28. What could you do with that extra money? You could start an emergency fund, save for a goal, or start investing. Making your own lunch means even bigger savings!

Meal Prepping is Healthier for You

Have you ever looked at the list of ingredients for your favorite ready-made meals at the grocery store? Or your go-to fast food favorite? There are ingredients in there you couldn’t pronounce if someone paid you. Now I’m not saying to avoid these for the rest of your life. That is just not realistic. However, letting that make up the bulk of your diet is simply unhealthy for you.

The reason a lot of these ingredients exist in our food is to maintain the illusion of freshness. Otherwise, the vast majority of people would not eat it. Especially in America, we love our food picture-perfect. If you look at the same McDonald’s bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich ingredient list, then you’ll see that each component has a longer ingredient list than a similar product in-store. Compare the McDonald’s bagel to the Thomas’ bagel. It’s striking! If you get your bagels at a local bakery, then their ingredient list is bound to be even shorter and you get to support a local business.

Also, since they want the food to be affordable, these quick breakfast places use lower-quality ingredients that have less nutritional value to your body. At home, you could control the quality by using ingredients that have fewer additives. If you can afford to do so, you can also purchase organic ingredients that carry a higher nutritional profile than their traditional counterparts. Every bit you can do benefits you in the long run. And if weight management is a part of your goals, meal prep makes it much easier to maintain consistency in your diet and makes it easier to track.

So rather than rely on these mystery ingredients to make our food LOOK fresh, you can make and eat fresh food. What a concept! This alone is an awesome reason to start meal prepping. Do not make it too complicated so that it doesn’t deter you from doing it.

Meal Prep Saves Time

Who’s time isn’t precious to them? If your food is already prepped and ready to go in the fridge, then you avoid having to make your food in the morning. If you normally buy food, meal prep saves you the time you lose waiting in line to order and receive your food. Maybe for you, that means you can stay in bed a little longer. For others, maybe you will get to work on time.

Meal Prep Decreases Stress

The phrase “Stay ready, don’t have to get ready” can be taken all sorts of ways. When it comes to meal prep, if your food is ready to go, you do not have to get it ready at the time you need it. It would have been done so that when you need it, you only have to grab and go. That is a convenience that cannot be beaten even by your local Starbucks. Especially when you’re stuck behind the person who can’t make their mind up about their order or buying food for the entire office.

When I do not meal-prep, my anxiety goes through the roof. This happened a few weeks ago. Since I usually plan my meals with my weight-loss goals in mind and rarely eat out, I had no clue how to get myself a cost-effective & healthy breakfast & lunch. Even if I had made the time to plan that out, I would have felt so much better.

On top of that, I got the same sandwich at work for two days straight. But yet, the sandwiches could not have been more different. Day 1’s sandwich was so delicious and enjoyable that it felt like it was made with love. On day 2, my sandwich was made by different staff and the sandwich was just fine. If I am paying for food when I had no real desire to, I want it to be worth it. On that note…

Meal Prep Provides Consistency

If you’re anything like me, it’s the worst when you order your favorite meal and it isn’t at all like you thought it would be. You know… that dish that you look forward to at your favorite place to eat. I remember the first time I was betrayed by my favorite burger spot. I was a regular and the flavors were always spot-on. Until one day, the cook didn’t season my patty. My husband is terrified of sending food back to the kitchen so I ate my bland burger and paid for it. If you’ve ever felt this strongly about your food, your friends likely classify you as a foodie like me. Outside of your home, how much you enjoy your food depends on the cook who handles your food. Even then, with each new bowl or pan used, there’s an opportunity for the flavor to be affected.

Here’s how meal prep differs greatly. Each bowl is made from the same pot/pan so the flavor is consistent across your meals for that week. And the biggest factor in the consistency is that the person making each dish is the same. You also get to season the food the way YOU like it before the food leaves the kitchen. It doesn’t get any better than that and unless you own a restaurant, it’s the only way to get food customized to your taste.

Bonus Reason: I Bet You Never Heard This One Before

Dishes! It saves on constantly having to do dishes. When I don’t meal-prep, I make food every day, which means having to do pretty much a full load of dishes every…Single… DAY! And while my husband is the one who does the majority of the dishes in our house, the sight of a full sink every evening adds to the anxiety I feel every time I step foot in the kitchen. On the other hand, the day I meal prep is the only day the pile of dishes is high. Every other day, it’s a much smaller load thus easier to manage.

If you’ve considered meal prepping but find it daunting, start small. Make a no-cook breakfast like overnight oats or simple egg muffins. For lunch, you can make a sandwich with a side of fruit and/or yogurt. If eating the same thing all week bothers you, you can make variations of the same meal. A chicken and rice bowl can be flavored with Mexican flavors one day and BBQ the next.

To-Do List

• Start by picking one meal a day for meal prepping.
• If you don’t cook and you’re about to start, you should check out my kitchen faves for useful and durable kitchen tools.
• Pick a day that will work best to prep for the week.
• Plan your trip to the grocery store.
• Make food with as much flavor and variety as you’ll enjoy with as little or as much work as you are willing to put in.

Your turn? What are some of your favorite meal-prep recipes? If you’ve never done it before, what would stop you from starting next week? Share in the comments.