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Some time ago, I was a person who spent 4-6 hours in the kitchen on a Sunday prepping her meals. Almost every Sunday, like clockwork, I’d get into the kitchen, buckle down, and make all my meals. I hated every second.

Back then, I was really obsessed with food & dieting, and was convinced that if I didn’t have every. single. piece. of food that I put into my mouth prepped, calculated, and measured, I would somehow go off the deep end, and literally gain fifty pounds overnight.

Far into that journey, I realized that I didn’t actually like what I was eating. I wasn’t in the mood for turkey patties with steamed asparagus, but it was what I “had to eat”, because it fit into my day. So I ate it anyway, and then craved more stuff later.

I hated baked tilapia with lemon pepper sauce with steamed broccoli, but I ate it anyway, even after the 6-7 days it spent in the kitchen, which I’m sure you can imagine tasted awesome.

It wasn’t until I found myself bingeing several times per week that I came to the realization that the energy I was putting into my meal prep was NOT worth it. Although my intentions were good (and also really obsessive), it didn’t do what it was supposed to do: keep me feeling good and getting me to my goal.

I also didn’t have the knowledge of nutrition that I do now, or the knowledge of cooking, which has been streamlined exponentially since when I first started.

I did still love having an idea of what I was going to eat during the week and doing some sort of semi-prep, but one that didn’t take up as much energy or time, and one that would allow for some breathing room and flexibility.

Once I began to batch cook, everything changed, and it’s so convenient that I’m compelled to share three reasons why it beats meal prep, always.

1. You get to decide what you’re in the mood for & you get to LIKE what you eat. Gone are the days that I’m eating plain chicken breast and romaine lettuce with yellow mustard because it’s what’s ready and it’s what’s on the plan and therefore it must be eaten. Did I ever ask myself if I actually LIKED what I prepped? Never! UGH. With batch cooking, you prep a few batches of ingredients, a few awesome & flavorful sauces, and mix and match each meal exactly to your liking based on what your’e in the mood for. This flexibility and priority towards pleasure & enjoyment keeps me on track, feeling amazing, and able to sustain my eating habits happily for the rest of my life.
2. You save time. You only know the hell of meal prepping all your food in one day for one week if you’ve done it. It’s definitely NOT where I want to spend my time. I’d make sure that I had no plans for a good chunk of a weekend day so I could make my food, and looking back, it makes me really sad that I was so deep into my obsession that I favored meal prep over social time. Now, I batch cook 1-2 hours once per week, then I spend probably 15 minutes of active time every day making something from that short cooking session, and I’m always happy about this decision. I also LOVE what I eat spending significantly less time cooking, as compared to hating everything I made during meal prep.
3. Your meals are fresh. Ever eaten week old food and vegetables, week after week? Yeah, you know how appetizing that is. There ARE some foods that do last for a longer time and are still delicious (salads with sturdy veggies, stews), but some foods are NOT meant to be eaten after a day. With batch cooking, many of the ingredients are semi-prepped, and you finish cooking & assembling right as you’re about to eat, taking no longer than ten minutes. Some meals ARE ready to be eaten in the first few days, and others are rolled out as the week goes on, so you always have fresh food. What’s important is that YOU are deciding how you like your meals and eat them as such.

I hope this helps you to give batch cooking a try. If you want a free plan & template for how to do this in your every day life, sign up for my FREE 5-Day E-Course, #PrepLikeAPro!