Meal Prepping or Meal Planning?

Over the last month, we have been focusing on some major decluttering with our physical spaces and our minds. We’ve been challenging our intentions with how we want to create our space that will ultimately keep us disciplined and focused. 

Last week we focused on decluttering our pantries, freezers, and refrigerators. Now that we have neat spaces and designated zones for food, we need to switch focus a bit to our meal planning. 

Meal prepping and planning are two very different things. Let’s define the differences:

Meal Prepping is prepping meals prior to eating them. We can prep the night before, the morning of, or one day prepping for the week. I’ve even seen very dedicated people do it for the entire month. If you have the designated time to do this for the week or month, I strongly encourage you to try it as it will help with snacking and making sure you are meeting your macros without all the math every day. 

From what I struggle with personally when it comes to meal prepping is eating the same thing over and over. Now, you can add some variety to this and space out different meals but again, requires a lot of prep work and time for cooking.

Meal Planning is just designating meals for the day by writing down what you are going to make and when are you going to make them. This does require some prep work in that you can plan the meals for the next day the night before, the morning of, the week of, or even for the month. This is effective when it comes to budgeting, making sure you are eating all the food in the home so it doesn’t go to waste, and planning out what you are going to buy when you do go grocery shopping.
I think having a system, regardless of whichever you choose, is super important when it comes to maintaining discipline and keeping with your intentions. 

If you are planning on doing the meal prepping, I’d strongly encourage you to set aside 3-4 recipes for the week and/or month that you can make in bulk and investing time to prepare them. 

If you are planning on doing meal planning, I’d suggest creating a place to write down and/or display the food for the day, week, or month so that it becomes a visual reminder. 

My decluttering mission this week is to set-up a system for meal planning with some prep to help create more structure and routine. As we move on to focusing on self-love and self-care this month, what we put in our bodies and how we fuel it is the best love we can give.