The 5 Types of meal preppers
Which one are you?
Type 1: The Yolo
Cost: $$$$
Time: ⏱️
Ease of Hitting Goals: ⭐
Ease of Tracking: 🤬
Who is the YOLOer?
The YOLOer is the person who flies by the seat of their pants when it comes to meal prep and planning. They often don’t decide what they’re having for dinner until it’s 5 pm, and it usually involves takeout.
Pros:
If you have a strategic list of places you can get take out from that ladder up to your protein and calorie goals, this could work.
Cons:
Tracking accuracy will likely be quite low with significant guesstimating.
YOLOing, when it comes to deficits, can be VERY hard and will make targets incredibly hard to hit.
Type 2: The Gourmet Chef
Cost: $$
Time: ⏱️⏱️ ⏱️ ⏱️
Ease of Hitting Goals: ⭐⭐
Ease of Tracking: 😐
Who is the gourmet chef?
The chef loves to make complex recipes most nights of the week with quite a few ingredients.
Pros:
Many diverse meal options!
Cons:
Creating new recipes in your food tracking app frequently can be onerous. And if you forget to grab the final cooked weight (or cannot based on your kitchen food scale, guesstimating a serving can lead to inaccuracy for most meals.
ensuring you have adequate protein may be tough or require changing recipes for carb-forward dishes like lasagna.
Type 3: The batch protein-er
Cost: $
Time: ⏱️⏱️
Ease of Hitting Goals: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ease of Tracking: 🤩
Who is the batch prepper?
The batch prepper makes a few proteins, carbs, and starches throughout the week and mix-and-matches to make meals! For example: they may make up a batch of savory ground beef, BBQ chicken thighs, roasted sweet potatoes, and garlic rice (with veggies on the side) to mix and match throughout the week.
This can also be completed over multiple days by making dinner but cooking multiple days' quantities.
Pros:
This makes it easy to hit your meal blueprint by portioning out each item at mealtime.
Cons:
More “basic” meal compositions.
Type 4: The Gym rat
Cost: $
Time: ⏱️⏱️
Ease of Hitting Goals: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ease of Tracking: 🤩
Who is the gym rat?
The gym rat is the batch prepper on steroids. They take batch-prepped foods and portion multiple breakfasts, lunches, and dinners into specific containers. Having all or most meals planned and tracked at the beginning of the week.
Pros:
It takes the thinking out of planning meals and can be a helpful tool if you work multiple 12-hour shifts in a row.
Cons:
This option offers the least amount of variety, as each meal is already prepared when it comes time for mealtime.
Type 5: The outsourcer
Cost: $$$
Time: ⏱️
Ease of Hitting Goals: ⭐⭐⭐
Ease of Tracking: 🤩
Who is the outsourcer?
The outsourcer engages with local or national meal prep companies to do the work for them. They either purchase specifically portioned meals or pre-cooked family-size options (basically becoming the batch protein-er without having to do the cooking).
Pros:
It saves time by eliminating the planning, shopping, and cooking.
You likely get a little more variety due to rotating menus.
Cons:
You’re spending more money to pay for the convenience of having the food cooked for you.
Conclusion
When it comes to meal prep you need to decide what your buyer values are.
buyer values = what’s most important to you, whether you want to spend money or time to reach the end goal.
Really want to have a variety of complex home cooked meals? You’ll spend time cooking and more time creating recipes in your tracking app.
Dont want to spend time cooking but want solid tracking accuracy? You’ll want to employ a meal prep company.
want to spend the least amount of time and money? You’re about to become a batch prepper and can enjoy a little more monotony on meals.
