MEAL PREP FOR SUCCESS

Date: August 30th, 2023

Read Time: 3 mins 12 seconds

The "7 Ps" is a British Army adage for Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

Prepare to Win
Any great coach or mentor worth their value has utilized this old military adage "Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance" in one form or another. It is the holy grail of properly obtaining your goals in an efficient manner.

Having a plan creates fine focused execution. It eliminates unnecessary distractions that may hinder your ability to be successful in your endeavors. Now this holds true for training plans in the gym, nutrition plans for body composition and peaking for strength goals.

When we look at nutrition during today's education topic of discussion, this is why you see everyone who is on a nutrition plan walking around with their containers of food. This level of preparation ensures that if they are held late in a meeting or if they are deterred from their destination no matter what they are able to control their intake.

Where most people fall apart during their nutrition, is when they are caught out of routine and are left stranded. Now you are left with an abundance of limited decisions to make such as eating out.

The biggest downside of eating out is that even if you were to choose healthier options, there is still no control over the cooking process. This means that what may seem healthier on the menu may be prepared with processed oils, added sugars and potentially boosted with preservatives for shelf life. All of these ingredients will have an inflammatory responses that cause stress to your body as well as dense in calories that can deter the control of your portions more than you think.

How to Apply Meal Prep to Your Life?
This is where Meal Prep can be an advantage for you. I know, this seems like a bastardized action made unpopular by chicken and broccoli toting bodybuilder's BUT it is imperative for you to see the most success in your transformation journey.

You having the ability to control the cooking process, the quality of the food as well as the convenience of availability is what will determine your success when acquiring the results you are looking for. This will make sure you are hitting your nutrient intake requirements for fueling your workouts, controlling portions and keeping you focused on the main priorities in life.

Meal prepping can be easily incorporated into your daily routine. You can prep in bulk during the week on specific days or just cook extra when you are preparing daily meals. This is highly individual and you have to sit and plan out what will work in best with your lifestyle.

The way I setup my meal prepping is I forecast two specific days when I have at least 1 hour completely free to prepare. For me, this is typically Sunday's and Wednesday's. This leave me three days in between bulk meal prep's which I like because I don't like eating food that sits in the fridge for more than a few days. Then Sunday's I am home majority of the day with my wife and kids so cooking is easily controlled.

So for me I will cook each of the breakfast and lunch meals for the following 3 days.

Monday: Breakfast and Lunch
Tuesday: Breakfast and Lunch
Wednesday: Breakfast and Lunch

Now my second day of bulk meal prep will be on Wednesday. I then repeat the process fo cooking breakfast and lunch.

Thursday: Breakfast and Lunch
Friday: Breakfast and Lunch
Saturday: Breakfast and Lunch

This leaves me with just focusing on cooking fresh dinner's each night for my family and I. I have found this routine to be the most efficient way to stay on track with my nutrition and make sure that I am not a slave to the cooking process each day taking away from my main priorities in life.

As I said before, this is a highly individual task but I will say that this routine has helped many of my clients stay on track with their goals all the while at work full time, parenting kids, traveling, etc.

I Want to Extend an Invite to You 
If you have a different way of meal prepping that could be of help for other's in this community I encourage you to reply with your system. It is always helpful for people to know they are not alone in the process of figuring out a solution that works best for them.

Also, I encourage you to watch the video below to help give you some insight on my weekly meal prep principles.