Meal prep, the bane of every dieter, athlete, gamer, streamer, or person trying to control their caloric intake that is forced to cook their own food. I have seen rhetorical posts like, “Why does it take 7 hours to do meal prep but only 3 minutes to actually eat??????” Herp derp. There are two questions here: 1) why does meal prep take 7 hours to do; 2) why does it only take 3 minutes to eat mah food?
In no specific order, I will list many of the reasons why meal prep takes forever and why we eat our food too fast. In subsequent postings I will address these issues as best as I can.
Meal prep includes the following tasks: planning what you are going to eat, purchasing the groceries and supplies, chopping and prepping the food, cooking the food, packaging the food, cleaning the cookware, cleaning the kitchen.
For the purposes of this discussion, I will limit it only to the prepping, packaging, and cleaning of meal prep, and not all the pre-planning, which is absolutely its own separate and related topic. Culinary prowess includes being prepared and organized to cook and work as much as it is the actual skill of applying technique to raw materials.
With regards to eating, that means the consumption of all foods and liquids. It isn’t to say that the rapid consumption of calories is always, 100% a bad idea. This is a discussion about the times when we shouldn’t be trying to smash down a bunch of calories real fast, which is probably most of the time.
So…
Why does my meal prep take forever (in no specific order)?
- Your knife isn’t sharp
- You kitchen is already messy
- Your dish cleaning system has a bad workflow
- You don’t have a sanitizer (or sanitizing if you care about that sort thing) solution
- You don’t know how to use a knife
- You don’t know how to cook food
- You are overcooking your food
- Your recipes are too intricate for your skill level
- You don’t cook enough
- You don’t have a plan for how to prep
- You don’t have a good prep workflow
- You don’t know how to wash dishes
- You don’t know how to be mindful and work with focus
- You try and do too many tasks in the same day
- You try and cook too many things at once
- You only cook one thing at a time
- You don’t know how to mise
- You don’t know how to properly store food
- Your refrigerator is a mess
- Your pantry is weak
- Your pantry is a mess
- Your work space is too small for your skill level
- You don’t have the right equipment
- Your pans are terrible
- You got too many distractions that you have to deal with
- You are overwhelmed with too many options
That’s a pretty healthy list. There is overlap with some of the topics to be sure, some are re-framing the same statement. This is not exhaustive, but it is a good start. Just thinking about it is… exhausting. As to the second question:
Why do I eat my food so fast?
- You are doing too many things at once instead of enjoying your food
- You didn’t plan ahead so you have to smash food inside you otherwise you will die
- Your schedule doesn’t allow you to sit and eat your food slowly
- You think your schedule doesn’t allow you to sit and eat your food slowly
- You don’t think eating your food quickly is a big deal
- You think it is a big deal, but you don’t know why, or what to do about it.
- You do not have a healthy relationship with food
- You don’t take any pride or care or ownership of the food you are preparing and consuming
That’s a shorter list. It is a lot more challenging because it gets down more to core behaviors than raw skills and physically doing things, though sitting and focusing is a skill. If you are truly interested in answering this questions, I recommend finding a mental healthcare professional like therapist or psychiatrist to receive an evaluation and get some CBT or DBT if it is causing you enough distress or leading to obesity, disordered eating, or an eating disorder.
Look back periodically to this list for any new links or updates as articles get finished on the specific topics. If you have any additional ideas to put on the list, leave then in the comments and I will give them a look.