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It was about two years ago when I first tried a meal prep delivery service. There’d been periods where I’d try preparing meals myself for the week ahead but never managed to stick to it, and never really got it right. Typically I’d cook a huge vat of curry on a sunday night, with the plan being to have this every day for my lunch the following week. Hours would be spent at the supermarket, preparing the ingredients, cooking and then the dreaded washing up. Then come Friday (or sometimes Wednesday) I simply couldn’t face the same meal again, so would end up buying lunch and forgetting about my curry.
As much as I tried, it just wasn’t going to be sustainable. I knew I didn’t want to live off depressing supermarket meal deals for lunch, but didn’t have the time to prepare food properly or consistently. So I tried a meal prep delivery service (I’ve actually tried a few over the years), and absolutely loved it.
What I found from using a meal prep delivery service:
1. I was eating healthier
I’d always been a semi-regular gym goer and was in reasonable shape, but I’d never been able to consistently eat healthy. Once I switched to meal prep delivery I began eating healthier than ever done before.
It’s widely accepted now that regular exercise and a well balanced diet can help maintain a healthy weight, reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer, but my mood was also better. I was starting the day with a ‘proper’ breakfast and then eating great throughout the day.
2. I had more free time
Preparing meals is hard work, if you’ve ever tried preparing lunches for the week ahead or cooking regular ‘proper’ meals, you’ll know what I mean. It’s not just the cooking (which can be quite fun), it’s everything that goes with it. It’s going to the supermarket when you could be doing something else, it’s working out what to eat and what you need to buy and then it’s the 2 hours of washing up. Entire evening(s) were being lost to meal prep.
But when I started getting my meals delivered, it saved so much time. I was able to have a healthy meal with the family every night and not just rely on oven food. And I had more time for me, which was probably another reason I seemed to be in a better mood.
3. The amount of food waste I generated was reduced
I’ve always been a sucker for supermarket multi-buys, and just generally buying more food than I need. This meant food was always going off or I found myself having to create meals from whatever was left in my fridge, even though the ingredients didn’t really go together or there were key flavours missing. But once I switched over to meal prep delivery I was no longer wasting food, everything was planned out.
I’m not quite an eco-warrior but I am environmentally conscious, so it was a good feeling to know that I wasn’t contributing to the billions of tonnes of food waste being created.
4. It helped me achieve my personal fitness and health goals
As I’ve said, I’ve always been in reasonable shape but never quite got the diet side of fitness right. However, I started to find I was in much better shape aesthetically and (probably) internally. All the meals are typically categorised by goal, be it weight loss or weight gain etc., so it was easy to make sure I was consistently moving towards my goals without needing lots of research. The meal prep delivery people have already done the categorisation of the meals so there was no need to calculate how many grams of carbs were in each ingredient and weigh them all out.
5. I enjoyed my food more
I’ve always thought it important to eat healthy, but you also need to enjoy your food. Otherwise you end up yoyoing from being super healthy to gorging on McDonalds. Picking different meals regularly meant I was enjoying my food more than ever, as well as eating healthy. This made it much easier to maintain my new healthy lifestyle.
I also enjoyed having more fresh food. Typically you get the meals delivered twice a week so I was having more fresh fish and veg than ever had before, it made such a difference to my enjoyment of food.