3 Common Struggles with Meal Prep and How to Fix Them

Have you given meal prepping a try and it just doesn’t seem to be working out? Maybe the idea of even getting started is a little overwhelming for you? Take a big breath and check out these 3 Common Struggles with Meal Prep and How to Fix Them.

Many people start with the good intentions of meal prepping only to find they are struggling. In the same stroke, some folks never start because they are too overwhelmed with the idea of doing it. While we all have our own reasons for having a hard time when it comes to changing how we live, eat, and cook, there are common struggles with meal prepping that happen to many people and they all have pretty simple fixes.

If you want to get started with meal prepping or have already given it a try and are worried it’s not working for you, here are 3 Common Struggles with Meal Prep and How to Fix Them so you can meal prep with ease.

3 Common Struggles with Meal Prep and How to Fix Them

Struggle #1: “Meal prepping has to be complex.” Many people think that meal prepping has to be so complex and is a very overwhelming task to get going. The truth is, meal prepping helps solve the complexity issue in cooking at home by making it easier to do so. If you are worried that meal prepping will be too complex and overwhelming for you, try simply doing it for one major meal a week such as dinner or lunch. Once this becomes a habit and is easy to do for you, move onto adding a second meal. You will see that it is very easy to do if you start small.

Struggle #2: “Meal Prepping take too much time.” Meal prepping is designed to save you time, actually, and it does! You can do your meal prep by batch cooking all of your proteins in one afternoon for the entire week. You can find batch cooking tutorials here. On top of it, if you use kitchen appliances like slow cookers and pressure cookers, you can virtually walk away and let these appliances do the work for you while you do other things around the house. Once you get the hang of it, it will take you far less time to just toss cooked and fresh ingredients together as set out in your plan, rather than to try to cook something from the start every night. Most meals I make with meal prepping take less than 10 minutes to actually put together every night. That’s less time than it takes to get dinner through a drive-thru!

Struggle #3: “Meal Prepping limits me too much and I don’t like to be told what to do.” Some folks just don’t like to be overly organized for many reasons. Maybe they are spontaneous people or perhaps things are constantly changing in their lives and they need to be adaptable and the last minute. For these folks, it is recommended that you still do meal prep, but be far less rigid on when you will make certain dishes. Don’t go assigning a certain dinner to a certain night. Instead just plan what you will make for the week and make a list of what you have prepped for so you can choose the one that makes sense in that moment.

Avoid meal prep struggles, use these meal prep tips to help you start meal prepping.