The Single Most Important Part of Healthy Eating: Preparation

Last weekend was a food-prep weekend for me. I try to do this when I have three days off, so I can spend most of a day (or two half-days) cooking without spending the entire weekend in the kitchen.

The first day I prepped food just for myself. I made:

• tuna salad
• salmon salad
• both from canned fish, stored in portions in muffin tins
• brussels sprouts
• part of my return to eating vegetables I love that my partner doesn't eat
• sweet potatoes
• ditto!
• chicken broth, using healthy bones from truLocal and my Instant Pot
  

The second day I cooked these dinners, to freeze. Each is a double batch, which should be enough for three or four meals, for two people, times two.

• spaghetti and meat sauce
• made with ground bison in one pot, using the Instant Pot on pressure cook -- super easy and delicious
• turkey meatballs
• also pressure cooked
• chicken burrito bowl, made with brown rice
• Instant Pot on slow-cook
• pork tenderloin with honey-garlic sauce
• my first time making this! very easy

I was so pleased with myself!

I have more truLocal meat waiting for another round of cooking. Right now my entire arsenal of Pyrex containers are in use, along with an assortment of repurposed glass jars. Plus four dinners in one morning was my limit. I'll do another round three or four weeks from now. (I also have really nice frozen seafood from truLocal, specifically for quick dinners on days I'm not working.)

All this food-prep reminded me of something I wrote several years ago on another blog. I'm re-posting it here in slightly edited form. 

* * * *

Healthy eating has one cornerstone, one key concept from which everything flows: advanced planning.

You can't eat healthfully without planning in advance. The more you can plan ahead, the more you can control what you eat. The more last-minute and spontaneous your eating, the less healthy it will be.

This applies to whatever manner of healthy eating you're trying to achieve, whether it's cutting down on sodium, fat, white sugar, or processed food, eating less meat, eating more vegetables, or anything else. It all comes down to planning. There are probably exceptions to this, but it's as close to an infallible rule as you'll find.

Here's one small example from my own life. Healthy breakfasts are [were -- at the time I wrote this] an ongoing challenge for me. One healthy breakfast that I like is scrambled eggs with veggies. If I'm going to eat that once or twice a week, I have to remember to put the vegetables I want on the shopping list and -- this is the key -- prep them and put them in containers in the fridge in advance. Without that, it doesn't happen. 

In the morning -- after I exercise, take the dogs out, have my coffee and check my email --  I'm hungry, but I'm also anxious to start my day. If I have to chop onions, wash and slice mushrooms, and wash and slice bell peppers, this healthy breakfast is not gonna happen. But at another time, if I run an onion through the food processor, slice a load of mushrooms, and dice a whole bell pepper, then put them in separate containers in the refrigerator... in the morning, everything is there when I need it. The actual cooking takes only a few minutes.

Not only does this encourage me to eat the better breakfast, it's also much more efficient, since the onion, shrooms and pepper will stay fresh for around two weeks. In fact, it was while I was throwing some already-chopped onions into the skillet, so pleased with myself for having organized this yummy breakfast, that I thought of writing this post.

[You can create an exception to the Advanced Planning Rule if you can afford to buy salads already prepared, lettuce already washed, or vegetables already washed and cut up. This can be very helpful, but still requires some advance planning, as these won't stay fresh as long as whole vegetables.]

To people who are natural planners, the idea that healthy eating requires advanced planning may seem incredibly obvious. But to people who are not naturally inclined to plan ahead or who are resistant to planning, or both, it can be a major obstacle.

If you're accustomed to a lifestyle where you shop weekly with a list, make dinner at home most nights, bring your lunch to work, then planning ahead is so ingrained in your life, you may barely think about it, even though it's something you do all the time.

If your schedule is erratic, or you're constantly pressed for time, if you generally don't think about food until you're hungry, if you have the means to dine out frequently, or any combination of these, planning ahead may seem impossible or undesirable. But you may not realize how much that spontaneity is preventing you from having healthier eating habits.

For many of us, the movement from no or minimal planning to a greater degree of planning occurred with age. In general, young adults plan less, eat more convenience food, are less concerned with nutrition or economizing. But learning how to plan ahead doesn't necessarily come naturally with age. I know lots of people my own age who find it very difficult. I'll bet many planners, like me, have partners whose response to "What do you want to do for dinner tonight?" is "I don't know, I can't think that far ahead."

So I've learned not to ask, just to plan. I take responsibility for planning dinners for the week, because I don't like what happens when I don't. I like efficiency. Even though I'm not the one doing the shopping, I hate needing multiple trips to the same store that could have been avoided with better planning, or getting takeout not because we want to, but because there's nothing in the house to eat.

Flexibility is important. Sometimes when you have a bad or crazy day, the best thing you can do for yourself is to say, "Let's make this chicken tomorrow night, let's get Chinese food tonight." But on a regular basis, if you "can't think that far ahead" to dinner, chances are good that you'll spend more money, eat more, and eat less healthfully than you would have if you had planned. 

If this is an issue for you, like any new habits, you might try starting small: make one change, live with it a while, let it take root as a habit, before adding in another change. If bringing your lunch to work is a stumbling block that you'd like to get past, maybe aim for bringing lunch one day a week. See how that works, then add a second day. Make one dinner in advance, and see if you like the trade-off.