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How To Fast Track Your Weight Loss Through Meal Prep

Youtubers and fitness fanatics make meal prepping look easy, but for us mere health newbies and gym rookies, it’s not always as simple as it looks, especially if we are trying to keep count of our calories, break down macros, all while trying to meet our weight loss goals.
UPDATED ON Jul 12, 2022

Clean eating can be tough work and time consuming, which means for many of us meal planning can be exceptionally difficult. But changing your eating habits and planning out a healthy meal for each day, doesn’t have to be difficult. So before you run out to consult your local dietitian, consider some quick and easy meal prepping steps which are bound help you achieve the healthy lifestyle and balance you are searching for!

To make the process a little bit easier, we have gone ahead and simplified some of the techniques used to minimise calorie intake and to help you stay on top of portion control, helping to put you on the right track.

The four steps:

According to nutritionist and author, Cynthia Sass, there are four steps to check off when meal prepping, to ensure consistency and accurate portion control.

When you’re prepping your ingredients include about two cups worth of these low-calories veggies.
If you’re not a meat eater, you can instead aim to include around one cup of beans or lentils.
The amount of healthy carbs you include in your prep is also dependent on your activity levels, size and age. For example, if you’re active, young with a larger muscle mass, you can include more carbs in your meal prep.
This can simply be a tablespoon of EVOO thrown in with some of veggies you included in stage one.

By separating these foods into portions, it allows us to measure what and how many calories we are consuming with every meal, making organising our calorie intake and eating plan for the week much easier. The difficult part often is finding the right foods and understanding the difference between healthy fats & carbs and starchy & non-starchy veggies.

It’s all about the food choices, but sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish which food we should be consuming.We have gone ahead and listed some of the healthy food you can add to your shopping list to include in your weekly meal plan.

Non-starchy veggies:

  • Cabbage
  • Artichoke hearts
  • Broccoli
  • Cauliflower
  • Asparagus
  • Eggplant
  • Cucumber
  • Mushrooms
  • Green beans
  • Zucchini
  • Beets
  • Celery

Lean proteins:

  • Skinless chicken breast
  • Pork loin
  • Skinless turkey breast
  • Beans
  • Lentils
  • Peas
  • Cod
  • Halibut
  • Tofu
  • Lean beef 

Healthy fats: 

  • Avocados
  • Salmon
  • Whole boiled eggs
  • Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
  • Coconut oil

Get organised

To make your life a whole lot easier, dedicate one afternoon to preparing all of your meal planning and meal prep. Choose different foods which can be thrown together in any way you choose, cook and pop in the refrigerator ready to assemble.

Finding, making and storing your dressings in advance will make the assembling process quicker and easier. 

There are so many quick and easy recipes online but many of them lack the balance provided by your new meal prep techniques, but what’s stopping you from altering them to fit your agenda? As long as you follow the four main steps, your meal prep will have you on the fast track to weight loss!

Georgia Marr
Georgia Marr
Gold Coast based Journalist, entertainment writer and lover of a good story with a penchant for food and beverage writing.
Have a question? Contact us

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Georgia Marr
Georgia Marr
Gold Coast based Journalist, entertainment writer and lover of a good story with a penchant for food and beverage writing.
Have a question? Contact us