Meal prepping/planning

 Meal prepping is a great way to reduce food intake and stay on a diet consistently. Eating healthy is very important for weight loss, staying fit and even general health care. You have to eat to loss weight. 

It's simply an act of preparing your meal at once either weekly or daily for a healthier food intake. 

Scheduling your meal and planning what to eat next can be tasking but you realize that when you start and continue for a while, you just get used to it. I would have shared a picture but I'm working on mine. You can decide to prepare your food for the whole day at once or for the whole week even. 

         Advantage of meal planning 

1. Reduces intake of food : Meal prepping helps reduce food intake because the portion of food would already be pre determined. Most times we tend to eat more when we feel hunger unknowing that the amount of food we consume is too much, then the after even occurs and we feel bloated and too full but if your food portion has been determined to satisfy the hunger then we won't need to eat as much. 

2. Helps control appetite : we sometimes have switching appetites and as we go through the day our appetite changes and we might eat unhealthy food because it look scrumptious but if we already have our food all planned out it would be a source of motivation to stay away from unhealthy meals. 

3. Reduces excessive consumption due to hunger : A hungry man is an angry man. When we get hungry we can eat anything and any size because at that point we can't control it. When you already have a proportioned food to eat, you would eat less, and be more satisfied and ...the fun part.. Wait for it. Loss weight! Yay. 

4. Reduces eating speed : It all circles around hunger and the massive desperation to fill your empty stomach. I'm sure that I am not the o let person that eats really fast when I'm hungry. When there is already food to eat, first you'll be at ease knowing that you can't be hungry that day which would even keep the hunger away. 

5. Reduces stress of cooking when you're hungry : Imagine getting back from a stressful day and all you want to do is eat and sleep to realize that you have nothing to eat then you have to go to the kitchen to fix something to eat. Personally, I would just go to bed hungry cuz I can't. This is why meal planning is essential. Instead of doing nothing on a boring/lazy day, you can plan your diet for the week and even prepare the meals. 

       Disadvantages of meal planning 

1. Food could spoil or waste : The first time I tried meal prep. Lol. I was so frustrated, it was a disaster because I did not know whether to put the avocado in the refrigerator or not or to dice the carrot down or close the plates etc. lol. Almost everything wasted and I gave up for a while. I advice that you read about it more and particularly on what ingredients you are using to make a particular meal. Lol. This particular subtopic is funny to me. 

2. Appetite might change : This also happened to me when I started but this one is not funny. I battled with this for a while and it got worse when I went to stay with my parent, my mum would make a deliciously looking meal and I would dump my salad and have that. Lol. Okay maybe a little funny because she would laugh at me. This process is inevitable especially if there is someone around you that is not on a diet, the only thing you can do really is exercise self control and focus on your result. 

3. Calories calculations involved : This is probably the hardest step because it involves measuring your food and calculating the amount of calories for the whole meal. If you don't know the amount of calories a particular food contains, you might end up eating more than you think you're eating. 

4. Harder in this region : I believe that it is harder to meal plan here in Nigeria or Africa because most products don't have their calories percent on them so you have to go an extra mile to find out what the calories are in the food. 

How do I keep up with the planning ? 

I would advice we select the meal we want for the week, calculate the appropriate calories count, pick a specific day that is consistent and prepare the meal in large quantity that can be sufficient for the whole week and share it daily. 

The most important ingredient for any diet plan is commitment that's why if anyone tells me they want to go on a diet I ask them if they're ready, because of you are not ready for that kind of commitment and you are not determined you would flunk and it would only make you bigger and sadder. 

              Thanks for reading!