Last week, we provided some New Year’s Resolution tips to aid the many wayward souls looking to get their year off to the right start. This week, we’d like to take a deeper look at one of the most common resolutions of the past few years: meal prepping.
We’re here to answer the question that scholars have posited for centuries: why meal prep? Is it a shallow fad, yet another habit simply made to trend on social media? Or is it a truly helpful practice, one that can aid in several areas of your life?
As you can likely tell from the title of the blog, we’re firmly in the camp of the latter. Here’s why.
It makes the week easier
The idea of meal prep is that it front loads all of the work into one day, allowing you to easily make the meals later in the week after all the heavy lifting has been done. The meal prep day is undoubtedly going to be a busy one. Cramming a week’s worth of meal cooking into one prolonged period sounds like a recipe for several frustration induced broken kitchen appliances, but you have to look at the bigger picture here.
Once that meal prep day is over, the rest of the week is, pardon the pun, gravy. You have freed up literal hours from your upcoming week schedule. That load of laundry waiting in the corner of your room? That book you’ve been meaning to get back into? That season of Fargo that’s been on your TV binging backlog? You’ll suddenly and finally have the time to get to them!
Time is of the essence for busy travel nurses, so meal prep’s ability to give you more of it will feel like a superpower.
It helps portion control
One of the key facets to a healthy diet is portion control. The great thing about meal prep is that portion control is baked into the design. The fact that it inherently forces you to portion things out for the week means you’re locking in healthy sized helpings of your meals, providing a healthier you.
It saves money
Food can be expensive so you should always strive to get the best bang for your buck. Guess what helps achieve that? Yep, it’s our good friend meal prep!
Meal prepping forces you to be more considerate and measured in your ingredient choices, thus giving direction when grocery shopping. This should help you avoid unnecessary and impulsive food purchases which, let’s face it, often end up in the garbage after being discovered in the fridge two months later. If you’re not wasting ingredients and food, you’re not wasting money, allowing you to be more efficient with your hard-earned travel nursing income.
Meal prep makes you far less likely to order out as well, providing another avenue to thrifty living. Nothing can make a bank account shriek in pain like three straight days of Door Dashing Five Guys burgers.
It makes you more mindful
Finally, since meal prep is all about planning ahead, it leads you to making thoughtful choices about what to put in your body. Thinking strategically about your diet and what it consists of means you’re less likely to make poor snap decisions, like the aforementioned ordering out. This can result in better physical and mental health, which will create compounding positive benefits.
