Meal Prep & Intuitive Eating
Meal prep has gained popularity over the last few years as users began posting pictures of their well-organized refrigerators and mason jar salads all over social media. At its most simple, meal prep is the idea of having meals prepared and ready-to-go for a few meals throughout the week. This can make your life easier in a lot of ways – you don’t have to worry about coming up with new recipes and can avoid having to cook every single day.
Meal prep can be as effortless as making an extra portion of your dinner and saving it for lunch the next day. While some people prefer to make more elaborate dishes, making a single pot of rice, a few chicken breasts, and some roasted broccoli will do the trick for others. All you need is a free hour or two, some airtight containers, and the ingredients you love to cook with!
If you’re not familiar with intuitive eating, it is a non-diet practice that focuses on internal rather than external cues. While diets tend to have strict rules that dictate what, when, and how much to eat, intuitive eating aims to turn your cues back inward to notice your signals like hunger, fullness, and satisfaction. Intuitive eating also includes principles on challenging good vs. bad thinking around foods, movement, gentle nutrition, and body image.
Because intuitive eating emphasizes eating foods you love and honoring your cravings, a common misconception is that meal prep is off the table. Thankfully, that’s not the case!
1) Meal prep can make eating easier and more convenient.
An important piece of intuitive eating is learning to honor your hunger. When we get too hungry, we often experience a strong drive to eat past fullness, which can lead to lots of physical discomfort. Because we live in such a fast-paced world, taking the time to think of and prepare a meal when you’re already hunger can be a challenge. Enter: meal prep. Having meals stored and ready-to-go in your refrigerator can help you honor your hunger while it’s still pleasant, rather than when you’re ravenous.
2) Make sure to prepare meals you really enjoy.
Satisfaction is a key component of intuitive eating. If we’re not eating foods that truly satisfy us (think: having cauliflower rice when we’re really craving rice rice), we may experience the same drive to eat past fullness that we do when we’re truly deprived of food. Tap into your satisfaction factor by preparing meals you really love, rather than ones that a fitness influencer you follow suggested.
3) Give yourself permission to choose something else.
While meal prep can take some of the thought work out of deciding what to eat, some days you just might not be in the mood for what you prepared – and that’s okay! Give yourself permission to choose another option if you have the time and resources. Prepared a chili but a heatwave rolls in? Maybe it’s more appealing to grab a cold, crunchy salad or some sushi instead. If you have leftover meals at the end of the week, consider having one for dinner or freezing any extras.
Remember, meal prep does not need to be Instagram-worthy to work for you!
