Meal Prep on a Budget: Tips, Recipes & More | the herbalist's way

An insurance policy on future decisions

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MEAL PREP: I do it (personally), and have for nearly my whole life. It’s part of what kicked off my career in wellness: people took note of the fact that I always had my own food. And it was often considered pretty strange, prior to the wellness industry normalizing ingredients like spirulina and reishi. The term, to the best of my knowledge, either originated with or was co-opted and popularized by the bodybuilding community, which was actually one of just a couple communities deep into “wellness” tactics before the industry became a thing. Think: Macros and cycling, supplements (hey creatine, which is returning in a big way lately) and … meal prep.

For the past decade, I’ve taught clients how to prepare food in advance of needing it, because the benefits of doing so are far more numerous than most people realize:

• Improve health by having healthy nutrition on-hand—at home, at work, or while traveling.

• Save time: As you know by now, do not cook for pleasure. But, I cook 99.9% of my own food and always have. To reduce the amount of time I have to spend cooking, I do it just once or twice a week—prepping everything I’ll need ahead of time. (Speaking of time: For you time-management fans, this is what we call task-batching. Big fan.)

• Reduce stress and/or decision fatigue about what to eat. We make thousands of decisions every day and especially when we’re tired, or hungry, decision-making gets hard. Do it for yourself ahead of time, when you’re in a sober state of mind. (This practice is also something I live by: Do whatever you can now to lighten the load for your future self.)

• Save money: Americans spend, on average, hundreds of dollars each month on dining. (In New York, it’s 130% more.) Impulse buys, eating out, and ordering in are all well-and-good when we want to be spending money that way. But, I don’t have to tell you that buying food in a pinch adds up fast. Prepping lunches for example—or even snacks—can affect a budget quickly.

• Establish a routine, that includes self-care, and healthy habits, and that allows for complete insight into what you’re eating, and how it’s making you feel.

• Nutrition is a practice, just like fitness, mindfulness, beauty care, and everything else we do to live our best lives. The surprising twist of meal-prep is that while it appears to require us to do yet another thing, or spend more time thinking about food, the opposite is true. Plus … (see all benefits listed above^).

Before the how-to, let’s talk about food as medicine …