Healthy Eating- Lunch Meal Prep for 5 Days

Healthy eating isn't always easy, especially when you're in a rush to prepare food. Lunch is usually one of the hardest meals to keep healthy because you have to either make it before going to work or school, or buy something to eat (which doesn't often give you a variety of healthy options). Making food for yourself or another person in the morning can be stressful. It may seem like you don't have enough healthy options. That's why meal prep helps you so much, you can plan for delicious and exciting healthy meals (and even save money). Want to do better? Follow this adaptable meal prep plan to make lunch less of a hassle. I decided to make this meal plan for my dad. Since I noticed that he was having a hard time finding lunch options in the mornings before work, I wanted to help him out, not just by making him lunches, but showing him how many lunch options were out there.

Supplies

Here are the recipes I chose (based on my dad's prefrences and other factors in healthy eating). I'll explain more on that later.

Step 1: Plan Out Meal Order/Menu

I chose to make five different recipes for the week, but it's completely fine to repeat meals, especially if you had lots of leftovers. When making a personalized meal plan, remember you can always substitute ingredients to fit your needs. The order of these meals depends on a few things- what ingredients you have, how much time you have and what will last longest. I chose my order based on how long the ingredients would last through the week. I planned my meals on Friday so I could spend the weekend shopping and cooking.

My Meal Plan

Monday- Turkey Taco Bowl 

Tuesday- Roasted Veggie Salad with Maple Balsamic Vinaigrette

Wednesday- Cajun Chicken Wrap

Thursday- Portobello Fajita Bowl

Friday- Hearty Vegetable Soup

Step 2: Factors in Meal Plan

When I was planning my meals, I put a lot of thought into what my dad specifically needed to be healthy. You can do this too when planning a meal for yourself or others. Age, weight, height, metabolism, gender and activity level all factor into what makes something healthy for a certain person and should be considered when making any meal plan. When in doubt, look at the Canadian Food Guide which tells you a lot more about what you need to maintain a healthy diet.

Step 3: Get Shopping!

Each recipe has its own list of ingredients (you can adjust to how many people you're serving). I made a shopping list with how many of each ingredient is needed for all recipes calculated for 4 people.

Step 4: Prep to Prepare

Whether you're planning to make all your meals on one day or make them a few days before, it helps to have as many ingredients prepped and ready to go as possible. By this, I mean cutting up vegetables, seasoning meats and creating spice mixes should all be done before you actually have to make the recipe. It helps if you have multiple recipes with some of the same ingredients.

Step 5: Making the Meals

Now the fun part, making the meals (at least it is for me :))! Making the lunches took the longest, so I didn't make all five recipes on one day. I made each recipe the night before (Mondays on Sunday, Tuesdays on Monday etc.) and then packed it for the next day and stored in my fridge.

Step 6: Why Is This Healthy?

Why is this meal plan healthy? Well, to consider a meal healthy you need a balance of nutrients, more of the ones we usually get less of (ex. vitamin A and fiber) and less of the ones we get to much of (ex. sodium and sugars). Just looking at the ingredients of each recipe, you can see that all 13 core nutrients are accounted for and have balanced amounts. Most of my recipes do have a nutrition facts table that include the 13 nutrients, but the ones that don't have a table still inform you of what nutrients are included.

Step 7: Enjoy Your Week of Lunches!

Now you know how to prep a healthy lunch for 5 days! Try to make your own with some new recipes and enjoy!