Do you want to start gaining muscle and cut down on your eating out? Here’s how to meal prep as a teen, as well as some simple meal prep ideas to try!
Before we begin, please keep in mind that this is not dietary advice. These are only suggestions for meal preparation procedures.
It might be difficult to get healthy food together as a teenager between school, homework, and other activities.
By the way, everyone who wants to meal plan and store their food safely should have some Tupperware on hand.
Hopefully, you’ll be able to take something beneficial from this tutorial with you into high school and beyond!
Let’s get started…
Meal prepping is a term used to describe the process of preparing meals ahead of time.
Meal preparing is the process of making many meals in one sitting to feed yourself for the next few days.
On example, instead of making dinner for one night, you cook enough for four evenings and freeze the leftovers.
Are There Any Drawbacks to Meal Preparation When You’re a Teenager?
As a teenager, meal preparing is a wonderful method to save time in the kitchen. However, there are certain disadvantages to meal preparation to consider:
Every day, eat the same meals
When you don’t have access to a car, you can’t go grocery shopping.
Money for food is scarce (unless parents help)
Aside from these few drawbacks (assuming they apply to you at all), meal planning is incredibly advantageous in every other way.
Why Should You Meal Prepare as a Teen?
It’s usually a good idea to have meal ready goods on hand for any occasion. Here are some more advantages to meal planning as a teenager:
Cooking time is saved on a daily basis.
It encourages you to eat more healthily.
The simplest way to gain muscle or lose weight
Fast food consumption is reduced.
Reduces anxiety (not having to worry about meals when busy)
It is cost effective.
You’ll improve your cooking skills.
As you can see, there are other advantages in addition to simply saving time!
You will eventually develop a healthier relationship with food. Everything that enters your body will be within your control.
That is why it is worthwhile.
Meal Preparation for Teenagers
If you’re thinking about meal planning, there are a few things you should do as a teen to improve your meal prep game…
1) Perform the calculations
What are your meal-prep objectives? Do you want to lose weight, save money, gain muscle, or simply get more done in less time?
Whatever choice you choose, you should do some simple math to figure out a few things:
The cost of groceries
Calories
Macros
Before you do anything further, you’ll need to complete these three calculations.
What is your grocery budget (or how much are your parents willing to contribute)?
Are you aiming to consume a certain number of calories each day? If that’s the case, you’ll need to know how much food to divide each day.
If you want to meet a specific protein goal, you’ll need to know which protein sources to buy and how much to include in each meal.
Calculating doesn’t take long, and it will assist you with every other aspect of meal preparation as a teenager.
2) Make a timetable
The reality is…
When you actually go in the kitchen and start cooking, meal prep takes around an hour or two. It’s difficult to fit something into your schedule if you don’t plan ahead.
Meal prep should be done on a specific day and at a specific time. I’ll assist you in organizing your schedule so that you don’t miss any weeks.
Include meal prep time in your days if you have a calendar, reminders app, or any other kind of organizing.
Remember, the whole goal is to free you from having to prepare healthy meals every day.
Later on, I’ll expand on that…
3) Select a protein, carbohydrate, and fat
All three macronutrients should nearly always be included in your daily meals. Knowing how to food prep as a teenager is essential!
Here are a few options for proteins:
Chicken
Beef
Fish
Pork
Tofu
Seitan
Beans
Eggs
Here are a few carbohydrate options for you to consider:
Rice
Noodles
Pasta
Vegetables that are able to withstand the elements (potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash)
Veggies (broccoli, Brussels sprouts, spinach)
Here are a few options for healthy fats:
Avocados
Olives
Avocado and olive oils
Nuts
Other proteins contain it (beef, fish, pork)
You can potentially build hundreds of different meal prep combinations by selecting one thing from each of these three lists.
Use this as a guide to help you prepare meals in the future. Especially considering so many of the options are inexpensive and simple to prepare!
4) Distribute the Work
If you could cook once a year and never have to worry about food again, meal preparing would be wonderful.
Foods, unfortunately, don’t operate that way, but that doesn’t imply it’s a negative thing.
Meal preparing twice a week is strongly recommended (however you want to fit it into your schedule).
This will divide the task into two parts, which has a few advantages:
You’ll be able to sample a variety of cuisines.
Cooking takes less time than eating.
You have more working hours to choose from.
You’ll have more time to shop for a missing ingredient or work around a hectic day if you lighten your load.
5) Prepare only lunch and dinner
Morning is not only difficult to meal prep, but it is also much more appealing to eat freshly prepared breakfast items.
Plus, many teenagers dislike eating breakfast too early in the morning.
You’ll be able to cook less and eat more when you’re most busy if you merely prepare your lunch and dinner meals.
Cook two different recipes at the same time to avoid having the same lunch and dinner for the following few days.
When you want to save time and effort, use culinary appliances like ovens and slow cookers.
