Meal Prep: A Way to Help Maintain Gains at the Gym

Healthy eating habits are important to maintaining your gains at the gym. Meal prep helps you to eat healthy while reducing stress about what to eat, because you’ve already planned ahead!

Do you feel like your progress at the gym has stalled?

It might be time to consider changing up your diet.

When you hit a plateau at the gym, changing your eating habits may be just what you need to get your progress back on track. Fast food is quick and easy, but eating fast food all the time gives you a quick and easy way to disrupt and diminish any gains you have made in the gym.

New Milford Fitness & Aquatics Club is committed to helping you on your fitness journey. Healthy eating is just as important as exercise. So today, we’re going to focus on changing your diet and the way you approach your meal planning.

A simple way to do this is to PREPARE! When you hear the phrase “meal prep” it may make you feel uneasy or fearful, but we’re going to give you some tips to help make “prepping” life a little easier.

MEAL PREP TIPS

• Invest in the right containers!
  • This is very important because this is how you are going to transport your food. You want reliable containers that are going to last. Our favorite containers are the glass ones as they are heavy duty, easy to clean, and they allow you to reheat your meals without changing containers!
  • TIP: Buy all the same brand containers so you don’t have to struggle with finding the right lids to the containers. If you need a little help picking out the right container for you, this guide on the best meal prep containers may be helpful.

• Spice it up!
  • The stigma to eating healthy is that it tastes bland or tasteless. It doesn’t have to be! You just need to go to the grocery store and peruse the herbs and spices section. Buy smaller bottles first to try them out. Have fun experimenting! Once you know which ones you like, feel free to buy in bulk to save some money. 
  • TIP: Experiment with making your own spice mixes. Store-bought spice mixes often have unnecessary additives that you don’t need. This Fajita Seasoning recipe is one of our favorites! If you want a little more inspiration, try some of these spice combos!

• Use the Slow Cooker
  • Utilize the slow cooker. It is your friend! Slow cooked meals usually have little meal prep time and the hands off cooking allows you to multitask while waiting for your meal to be done!
  • TIP: Preheating your slow cooker is a step that is usually overlooked. You preheat your oven; your slow cooker also should be preheated. This article from EatingWell also has some other great slow-cooking tips.

• Make the List!
  • We have all made the mistake of walking into the grocery store with no shopping list before, thinking we could just pick out the things we thought would go well together. Inevitably what happens is you don’t have the right ingredients or even all of the ingredients to make one meal! Making out a DETAILED list will help you plan out the grocery shopping to make meal prep easier.
  • TIP: Watch the sale circular at your local supermarket and then plan your weekly meal prep around that to save a little money.

• Create a place to store recipes you like
  • Establish a place where you store recipes that you like and want to try, so that you can find them easily. Pinterest is one option, but whatever works best for you is what you’re most likely to stick with.
  • TIP: Use technology! There are a number of apps out there that can help with your meal prep and just eating healthier in general. One that we like to use is “Handpick.” This app allows you to select ingredients that you already have. It then gives you healthy recipes, using those ingredients. Now not all of these recipes will be good for meal prep, but it is a good start to eating healthier. Another good app is “My Fitness Pal.” This app allows you to record recipes and meals so that you can reuse them for future use.

What are your best tips for meal prep? Share them with us!