Modern life can easily get on top of you, and one of the best ways to keep your head above water is to keep tabs on the little things.
As they say, if you take care of the pennies then the pounds take care of themselves, and it’s an applicable maxim for other areas of your life. The big things in your life – like how to keep your home clean and tidy, how to squeeze exercise into your routine, and how to keep yourself fuelled with nutritious grub – are often easier when you break them into smaller tasks that make the big one less daunting.
When it comes to that latter point, a great way to get control of your eating habits is to engage in meal prep. It can be a little challenging at first, but it’s the kind of habit that, once formed, is hard to imagine living without.
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Dr Heather McKee, speaking to Men’s Health, puts it in the context of brushing your teeth.
“You didn’t lie in bed this morning weighing up the pros and cons of dental hygiene, or deciding if you're motivated enough to go all the way to your back molars – you just did it automatically, because it's a habit that you have now,” she said.
Dr McKee regularly works with a company called MyFitnessPal, which itself recently conducted a survey that found 78% people who reported being at their ideal weight also plan their meals each week.
Of those respondents, 70% of them attributed their dietary success to meal planning.
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“We make an average of over 221 food decisions in a day, and decision fatigue is a very real issue,” explained McKee.
“When we are tired after a long day of work, childcare or studying, making yet more decisions about an evening meal can mean that we reach for something quick, easy, unhealthy or expensive.”
And who hasn’t been there? After a difficult day, sometimes ideating a meal and cooking it can feel like the last thing you want to do. McKee’s got data to back it, too, with 70% of survey respondents agreeing that they feel meal-related decision fatigue on a regular basis.
McKee says that curbing this kind of stress, along with the financial pressures posed by regularly opting for takeaways or ad hoc trips to the local shop for a quick dinner, is very much possible through meal planning.
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“We're constantly in this conversation, this debate, with ourselves about what we should have, and that's draining our mental energy. It’s what we call decision fatigue in science,” she said.
“And actually, when we are at the stage of decision fatigue, we're much more likely to make choices out of emotional reactivity, rather than from a place of ‘this is the healthiest choice or the least expensive choice or the most sustainable choice’.”
She added that, when it comes to following a diet, ‘planning increases follow through by two or three times the amount’.
“Our willpower depletes when we throw everything at the kitchen sink, and that is what we tend to do when we start out with a health kick,” she said.
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“That’s where behavioural science comes in, because it's all about actually creating those systems for change.”
McKee stressed that if you’re struggling to make these kinds of lifestyle changes stick, then ‘the problem isn’t you’.
“The problem is your method,” she explained. “If you can change your method, then change will happen.
“Good planning is self-compassion in advance.”
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Planning, she added, 'isn’t just a tool, it’s a psychological advantage.’
If you’re unfamiliar with meal prepping, there are a couple of ways to go about it.
The first is to batch cook. If you have a particular diet in mind, such as one that involves a lot of chicken, boiled rice, and steamed vegetables, you could opt to cook a week’s worth of meals at once over the weekend. It might take an hour or two, but once it’s done you’ll have a bank of meals ready to whip out and reheat throughout the week.
Alternatively, you can create a bank of meals that you like or want to cook. Using an app like Mob can be a good way to get some inspiration.
Once you have a roster of meals, write out the ingredients lists in a notes app or something similar, and then when it comes to the weekly shop you can use those ingredients lists to build a menu for the week that doubles up as a comprehensive shopping list.
With this method, you’ll still be cooking your meals each night, but you’ll at least have a plan for your options as well as the well-stocked fridge to cobble them all together.
Rachael Davis