Meal preparation is one process that can help meet nutritional needs if you are training for some sort of competitive sport (running, basketball, etc.). When you are competing in a sport, time is of the essence. Also, meeting healthy nutritional goals in an affordable manner is essential. That’s where you can consider cheap and easy meal prep. The training process may be made a lot easier when you remove the guess work for your meals.
In this post, we’ll cover some cheap easy meal preps that you may use to get your training strategy and tactics inline to maximize your performance.
Figuring Out Easy Cheap Meal Prep
The best way to figure out a cheap easy meal prep is to gain a full understanding of the types of food you can tolerate on a repetitive basis. Some folks may be heavy on the protein, and they’ll focus on taking in chicken, beef, fish, and other sources. Other will go with a more balanced approach because all protein all the time is not their thing. Either way, here’s an outline for some easy cheap meal prep.
Ingredients:
- Large bag of oat meal
- Stock pile of eggs
- Large container of Greek yogurt
Easy Cheap Meal Preps Outline:
- Boil ½ a cup of oatmeal and add some salt for flavor. It’s best to cook this fresh.
- The eggs can be cooked when needed, or you can boil and peel a large quantity to pull from.
- Have the Greek yogurt at the ready near the eggs and oat meal
- Pair all three for cheap meal prep for the week
These basic ingredients and process can be used as a daily breakfast or a fall back on if other meals run out or become monotonous.
Budget-Friendly Esay Meal Prep Ingredients
Let’s cover the budget process that will allow you to make your meal prep cheap and easy. All meal prep organizing will start with what foods you need. This will depend on your overall lifestyle. If you are an athlete or very active, you need to consider a greater variety of food to meet macro and micro nutrient needs. On the other hand, your macro and micro nutrient needs may be less if your activity levels are more moderate.
The best budget friendly ingredient will be protein based. Chicken and beef will give the most bang for the buck. Also, preparing these protein bases allow for prolonged storage without much sacrifice to the taste they add to a meal.
The next items for the consideration of cheap easy prep meals are fruits and veggies. Fruits such as bananas, strawberries, and apples will go a long way in meeting nutritional needs. Also, veggies such as potatoes, bell peppers, and onions all mix well to complete a meal preparation process.
What’s more, the implementation of dairy products can help meet protein and fat needs while hitting higher calorie intake in smaller quantities. What this means is that dairy products, grass fed variations preferably, help hit those calorie targets to keep you fueled up. The typical items providing the most benefit are eggs and natural cheeses (provolone, Swiss, and similar types).
Saving While Eating Smart
Now, how do you put all this together? Well, it can be quite simple once you’ve run the prepping strategy a few times. If you are new to this, a simple run down will help you get started. A quick outlook of a day’s plan will be a great way to get the ideas flowing. Here’s what it looks like.
Breakfast:
Oat meal and eggs with some Greek yogurt. Take some stored boiled eggs and place in a bowl. Cook up a quick batch of oatmeal. The rolled variety cooks rather quickly. Pour in to the bowl with the boiled eggs. The last items will be the Greek yogurt, from a bulk container, which can be placed with the cold hard-boiled eggs or in a snack sized bowl.
Lunch:
Pull some cooked chicken from storage and place on a microwavable plate. Next, pile on some stored cooked veggies next to the chicken. Heat up the in the microwave for about two minutes, and your lunch is a done deal.
Dinner:
Here is where the versatility kicks in. You can simply repeat the lunch option, and to mix it up add some cheese as meat topper. At this point, you may want to swap out the chicken for beef. Toss in to the microwave, and there you have it, a cheap easy healthy meal prep for dinner.
As you can see with this simple example for just one day, the mix of food items can be quite easy. All you have to do is repeat these mixes four more times, and you’ll have a cheap meal prep for a week.
In Closing on Cheap and Easy Meal Prep
It all comes down to the method that works best for you when meal prepping. If you are an athlete or an everyday joe, these cheap and easy meal prep tips will take you long way. The main objective is to build out your routine with easy meal pepping that you can repeat, and this is best done with foods and prepping formats that are interchangeable.
Now, comes the best part of all. Taking these tips and running with them. You’ll only gain the know how by implementing these cheap and easy meals into your daily life and adjusting them as you see as they best fit.
For more on meal preparation, check out this article on simple meal prep ideas.