Healthy Meal Prep Cookbook for Beginners: Weekly Recipe Plans for a Healthy Living and Weight Loss

By Mary Gaskins

Meal prepping is the art of preparing meals ahead, packing and storing them. Meal prepping offers a budget friendly alternative to Individuals who want to save money, eat healthy and have access to nutritionally balanced meals which lead to increased energy levels, fewer cravings and an effective weight management.

With meal prepping, your schedule becomes lighter, providing you with more time to spend with your family and friends, go out and do fun exciting things and live life on a larger scale.

This Healthy Meal Prep Cookbook for Beginners offers you a professional and practical yet simple guide to meal preparation that you can easily adapt to either as a beginner or an expert in the field. With 3-weeks meal plan optimized for effective weight loss and principal living, your search for a budget friendly and practical meal prep cookbook ends here. 

In this cookbook, you find a 100 prep-friendly recipes, carefully written for easy understanding, execution and systematically sub-categorized into chapters such as breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, smoothies and soups for yours peruse.

Join me in exploring the world of meal prepping.

• Language: English
• Publisher: shalombrain
• Release date: Jan 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9788835365266

Book preview

Strawberries

INTRODUCTION

Meal prepping is simply the process of preparing food ahead, packaging and storing. And lately this has become the hottest food trend in the country and to be honest, I couldn't be happier. I have been meal prepping since my early College days simply because it's a great way to manage time, money and eat healthy.

The art of meal prepping can be learnt, mastered and harnessed for its many benefits such as premium health, weight loss and a quality life. This was a gift I got from living with my grandmother in my teenage years. I grew up to watching her prepare food for weeks ahead at a time and some other time even up to a month and I used to covet how this tactic helped her to manage her budget and provide with more free time.

I'm so happy to see that many people are starting to show interest in this method of cooking hence the reason why I decided to prepare a beginner's guide to help people fully grasp the concept and get over the seemingly intimidation of meal prepping.

Like the saying goes, knowing will only get you half way through the battle, the knowledge for effective execution will successfully get you through to the end. This is why I have taken my time to take you through a step by step process of prepping meals for a healthy living.

I look forward to reading your testimonies and reviews.

Cheers, to a better living.

Mary Gaskins

WHAT IS MEAL PREPPING?

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Meal prepping or meal preparation can simply be defined as the process of preparing a meal or recipe, then dividing it into different portions for an easy grab-and-go food for later. Meal prepping allows you to prepare some or all of your meals ahead of time, it's like a fast food dinner except that this food will be prepared by you with better, healthier and unprocessed ingredients.

Majority of us expose ourselves to the consumption of potentially harmful foods, although not deliberately, but because of the lack of healthier foods to eat, meal preparation proffers a solution to this by offering us healthy, unprocessed food every time you want. Meal prep allows you to have 3-7 days’ worth of food at a time.

Why meal prep?

1. Helps you to maximize your time and budget

2. Help you to reduce wasteful cooking

3. Provides you with a lot of free time and convenience

4. Provides you with tasty, unprocessed homemade meals

5. Helps you to save money

6. Helps you to regulate your body metabolism

7. Provides you with healthy nutrition dense food

8. Helps you to live a better and longer life

9. Allows you get involved in other activities

10. It gives you control over what you eat

What should I meal prep?

It is important to know the kind of food and meals you can prepare ahead and this is because not all types of food can last long after preparation, some are best eaten immediately within a day or two days of preparation while some can stay out longer.

Below, I will provide you with a list of food item that works best for meal prepping and those that don't;

Best food items to meal prep

Cheese

Cooked meat

Whole fruit

Cooked beans

Nuts & seeds

Dips and sauces

Roasted vegetables

Cooked grains & pasta

Hearty fresh vegetables

Foods that are not best to meal prep

Fried food items

Crunchy food items

Softer fruits and veggies

Although for food items such as these, the best way to pack them would be individually and not with other food ingredients as this will help them last longer and not contaminate each other.

How long can I meal prep for?

Most meals can last for a duration of 4-5 days when stored in the refrigerator, just like a majority of the recipes in this book, although some meals can last a little longer but it is always better to start with the refrigeration guidelines set by the FDA, and then compare them against your own preferences.

The longer a meal is stored in the refrigerator the more it starts to slowly decline in quality this is why I don't advice that a meal should be stored for more than a week at a go. Meals that stay long in the refrigerator might become too lifeless or limp to enjoy but then the lifespan and preferable changes in flavor and texture is strictly subject to your taste.

What do I need to meal prep efficiently?

When meal prepping, the most important item you will need to have is a good container to store your prepared food in. Using a right or wrong container can make or break your meal preparation and this is why it is important to pay carefully attention when picking out your storage containers.

For effective storage, whichever container you decide to make use of must have the following qualities;

BPA Free

Reusable

Stackable

Microwavable

Freezer Safe

Dishwasher Safe

Storage containers that you must have handy;

Reusable ziploc bags

Pyrex glass containers

Divided glass container

Bento box containers

Fold or zip top sandwich bags

21 DAYS MEAL PREPARATION

Day 1

Breakfast: Riced Cauliflower with Meatballs

Lunch: Sriracha Cauliflower Shrimp Meal

Mid-Day Snack: Banana Oat & Chocolate Bars

Dinner: Stuffed Sweet Potato Boats

Day 2

Breakfast: Proteineous Egg Muffin

Lunch: Chicken Pizza Meal

Mid-Day Snack: Chocolate