UPDATED 03/17/2025
When I originally wrote this post, everyone was talking about doing meal prep. Doing it can help in so many ways! You stay healthy, lose weight, and have less stress about what to eat every day. But I’ve aways had a problem with it. That’s why I turned to menu prep instead.
I tried to meal prep and it took so long to get everything washed, cut up, and prepped for cooking. On Sundays, I would meal prep. But I spent 8 hours (Yes, EIGHT HOURS!) meal prepping. It was dreadful and I was never excited to do it. I distinctly remember one day my husband came home from golfing and couldn’t see the dining room table. Every inch of the table had greens on it. Kale, spinach, bok choy, bell peppers… You name a vegetable, it was probably on my table.
While it was helpful and cut down on cooking time, all the prep felt so tedious. All the chopping and cutting of vegetables, cooking rice and beans just to let them cool and be stored… It was a lot of work. I even went to the extreme of weighing the food so I could make sure I had just the right portion. It was painful, but I thought it was necessary because I really wanted to focus on my nutrition and lose weight.
Even though cooking time was less, the food became really boring over time. When I meal prepped, I ate chicken and vegetable almost every single night for dinner. Even though the veggies were different, I was still eating vegetables. Remember that table of greens? I would eat as much as I could of those greens throughout the week. And while I like vegetables, I need variety in my life.
Despite all of my complaints, meal prepping is beneficial.
- It can help you regulate your diet, which is especially good if you live with a chronic condition.
- You have to cook less often, which is great for people that despise cooking.
- In some cases, it can help you lose weight. Mainly because you’re eating so consistently.
- You save money because you’re purchasing the same thing and you never stray from your grocery list.
- And the best part is that you don’t have to put a ton of thinking into what you’re going to eat.
Meal prepping worked for me for a while and it served a purpose. But the boredom and the amount of actual prep involved was too much. I was spending more time preparing food than I was spending with my friends and family. What fun is that? So I decided to try something else—menu prep.
Each week, particularly on Sundays, I spend about 45 minutes to an hour doing menu prep for the dinners we would have each night. Each day, our breakfast is the same (typically eggs, a carb, and some protein) and our lunch is leftovers or something small so I didn’t need to plan those. I got to try recipes from all the cookbooks I have, experiment with new dishes, and find the ones my husband and I like the best. We ate anything from homemade hot pockets to turkey, avocado BLTs, and even dill pickle chicken with sweet potato fries.
What’s great about making a menu plan? You only have to shop once a week for your normal breakfast and lunch items and the ingredients for the meals you’re going to make for dinner. It let’s you cook in smaller batches, be in the kitchen together without electronics, and actually have conversation while you work together. Making a menu plan is perfect for smaller families because you don’t always have to buy a ton of food, nor do you have a bunch of leftovers you won’t eat. And what’s even better is that it only takes about 45 minutes to write out your menu and your prep time is basically cut in half.
Meal planning was great and it served its purpose, but for me, it got boring, strenuous, and too exhausting. If you’ve been meal planning and feeling like I did, try to menu plan. See if that works better for you and your family and let’s you have more fun and more variety in life without sacrificing your health.
