Meal prepping tips for athletes and fitness enthusiasts

If you are an athlete, either recreational or competitive, you probably understand the importance of nutrition for improving your game and getting all your performance and fitness goals. But regardless of knowing the importance of nutrition you might be still wondering how to take it up a notch and boost your efforts with effective meal prepping. Wise decision, we might add.

However, meal prepping can seem a bit daunting and complicated for someone who hasn’t tried it before, or who has a lot of other competing demands in their life, and if you are an athlete chances are you are juggling with work or study as well as intense training sessions. So we put together today a special guide with some of our best tips for making meal prepping easier and having it work for every athlete and fitness enthusiast out there.

How meal prepping helps athletes reach their goals

We have an amazing guide for you with all the reasons why meal prepping is great for you to try and crush all your fitness goals and filled with tips and advice to succeed at meal prepping. So we’ll just go over a short summary of the main advantage of meal prepping for athletes: 

• It saves money and time, as well as decreases food waste.
• It improves the quality of your meals drastically, improving your health and performance.
• It eliminates stress and frees you up to focus on other important things, like your training.
• You regain control over your meals, your nutrition, and thus the results from all the effort you put into your training.

Now let’s see some specific tips to make meal prepping a success for athletes and fitness enthusiasts.

Tips for athletes' nutrition when meal prepping

You’ll need protein, a lot of it: Probably one of the trickiest parts to get right is getting enough protein to recover from your training and build or maintain muscle, strength, and power. So make sure you make this a high priority on your list and follow these tips:

• Add big portions of lean meat cuts like chicken breasts, lean minced meat, lean meat cuts, wild game, tuna, salmon, etc.
• Add other products that have a lot of protein like cottage cheese, eggs, greek yogurt, kefir, etc.
• As much as possible pick carbs that also contain a decent amount of protein like beans, lentils, peas, chickpeas, quinoa, etc.
• Consider adding a protein shake once or twice a day, especially around your training sessions. There are plenty of protein supplements you can choose from whey, casein, peas, bugs, etc.

Don’t be afraid of carbs: Just as you’ll need a lot of protein, you’ll need a lot of fuel for your training sessions and competition so make sure to add a lot of carbs favoring whole foods like whole grains, fruits, tubers, beans, and other carbs containing protein like the ones mentioned above.

Shape your environment: the point of meal prepping is always having something available to eat that is going to boost your performance goals, make you a better athlete, and help you recover for your next training session or competition. So to help your effort you can make sure you don’t buy stuff that is not in line with your goals like junk food, that way it won’t be available to you when hunger strikes, Instead stock up on healthy nutritious foods.

Good enough is better than perfect: don’t aim for perfection as this can lead to frustration and drifting away from the plan. Especially for times when you are on the road, traveling to places where you’ll compete, or at your office doing your day job. In this situation where you’ll most likely be eating out and won’t have a lot of control over what is on the menu, make the best decision you can, and prioritize your protein and vegetables when ordering your food.

You should enjoy your meals: not even the best meal plan will work if you’re not able to maintain it for a long time. If your meals are not something you are looking forward to it will be much easier to skip them or get something else instead that doesn’t have the nutrients you need. A few tips to do this are:

• Make sure to add ingredients that you enjoy like spices, garlic, carbs, nuts, etc.
• Make sure the dishes and foods you plan are ones that you enjoy and taste good to you, you can always find ways to make them better
• From the meals you choose make better options by adding more protein, subbing the carb choices for healthier ones, and adding salads and more veggies.
• You can make healthier versions of other things like desserts and snacks like brownies made of avocado or mashed bananas instead of flour, homemade protein bars with protein powder, etc. you can also order our delicious pizza

You don't need to prep everything: you can just prepare your proteins like meats, chop some things and soak others so you have them ready, and cooking during the weeks takes much less time.

Meal prepping tips for athletes and fitness enthusiasts

If you’re a bit overwhelmed and don’t know how to start here are a few things you can try this coming week to start your meal prep journey

• Cook a large batch of oatmeal for overnight oats for the week and portion it into different flasks for each day, you can add different toppings to add variety like berries, coffee, cacao powder, greek yogurt, and protein powder to get a different flavor each day.
• Soak your beans, chickpeas, and/or lentils in advance for the whole week. If you cook them you can portion them into different containers and leave them in the fridge, or you can make hummus by throwing chickpeas, tahini, and some spices in a blender.
• Have some emergency snacks ready like nuts, low-fat cheese, dark chocolate, homemade protein bars, or sweet fruits like grapes for when cravings appear.
• Use the oven to throw in a lot of nutritious things like seasoned chicken breasts, chopped potatoes, and sweet potatoes
• Add variety by choosing produce that is in season and adding ingredients like avocados, whole grain tortillas, mixed nuts and seeds, and different spices to change flavors and keep you interested.
• Prioritize your pre and post-workout nutrition by following the guidelines on this article. Mainly get a good source of carbs close to your training session to fuel your workout where you can also add some coffee or a pre-workout supplement and then once your session is over get a good amount of protein and carbs to boost your recovery, and grow bigger and stronger.

If you’re still a bit lost and not sure if you’re doing this right for all your sports goals, why not check out our amazing meal delivery service? We guarantee you’ll get delicious and nutritious foods packed with all the nutrients you need to excel at your discipline and reach all your fitness goals, made by experts, and with everything, your body needs to thrive in your sport.