Meal prep is hard?

Why do I see people saying meal prep is a pain in the ass? I'm newer to it but here's all I do.

>Season frozen chicken + put it in foil lined sheet and into the oven (However many lbs I need)
>Rice cooker 2 cups of rice or more
>Freeze rice and it doesn't turn into shit when microwaved
>Steam potatoes in rice cooker
>Canned green vegetable or frozen

I only prep lunches/dinner since I skip breakfast.

Where does this get harder?

Pic related I do beef chili as well to mix it up or other crock pot foods.

nice blog

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I'll tell you what REALLY gets me about meal prep - I've no fucking clue how far in advance you can prepare shit, or how often you can reheat stuff, etc.

Examples -

You see a lot of guys preparing like a week's worth of rice. They cook it, portion it into tubs with meat, veg, etc. But most advice online seems to suggest reheating cooked rice even after 24 hours is about as safe as swallowing a running chainsaw.

If you buy fresh chicken, freeze it, defrost it, cook it, then put it in tubs, can you then reheat it? I thought you were meant to only chill then heat once? And how long does cooked chicken last for? I thought it was like two days max.

I also thought that if you bought fresh chicken, froze it, then defrosted it, you were supposed to cook and eat it right away?

People always say about safely cooking, storing, and heating rice and chicken, but what about veg? I thought at the very least unless you served and ate your veg right away, it would just be a sloppy horrible mess?

>But most advice online seems to suggest reheating cooked rice even after 24 hours is about as safe as swallowing a running chainsaw.
>tfw I reheat my rice all the fucking time

Living on the edge boys.

i dunno I guess I have an iron immune system because I wip up beef and a whole medly of vegetables and spices into a single pot and reheat portions of it over the week. I've never had any issues really.

Rice does not become radioactive when you put it in the fridge dude.

Meal prepping is for dyels. Seriously. Just cook when you need to eat.

t. dyel

Cooked chicken and rice in a closed container stays good for a week in the fridge easily. Just dont touch them with your bare hands or utensils that have been in your mouth

If you are cooking any meal worth cooking its gonna take at least over an hour from prep to getting it all in your belly. Most of us can't afford to be in the kitchen for 3 hours in a day.

Rice lasts for at least a week if you keep it refrigerated and don't leave it on the counter like a college student degenerate. Chicken, when actually cooked, lasts at least 3-4 days refrigerated. The problem is leaving shit on the counter for 2 or 3 hours then putting it BACK into the fridge.

stop reading shape magazine

Maybe you're mixing cooked and uncooked times. Uncooked chicken is 1-2 days, cooked chicken is 3-4. Cooked veg is 3-4. Rice cooked is 4-6.
Defrosting-cooking-refrigerating is fine, treat that the same as cooked chicken: 3-4. Cooking kills the majority of bacteria. Just avoid leaving it out at room temp.

Oh bullshit. What are you making lasagna from scratch every meal?

In less than 30 minutes you can make a salmon, steamed broccoli, salad meal. More like 15 to 20 minutes.

Eggs for breakfast take what? 5 Minutes?

Prepping is a meme for dyels.

>Dude what did you bring for lunch?
>I prepped brodog,’gotta get my macros for my 1pl8 deadlift later.

>getting and cleaning your stuff every time

It's annoying as fuck.

>dude what'd you bring for lunch?
>oh i didn't bring anything, i never make food in advance it's for retards i'm just gonna hit up this panda express

I ate the same pasta for lunch everyday for the last 2 years of Uni. Prepped 7 meals on Sunday, put 3 in the fridge and 4 in the freezer.

> 2 lbs whole wheat pasta
> 2 lbs ground beef
> 2 jars favorite pasta sauce
> 2 green peppers

You can freeze pasta if you undercooked it slightly. Make all of them, mix together, 7 meals in about an hour. Add different spices to mix it up but same base worked for me.

>I can be in the kitchen at meal time to cook
>I'm not saving time by making multiple portions
>I made a variant of the chicken/broccoli/rice bro diet look at me I'm a chef

Anything which requires you to cut or dice ingredients and cook anything meat wise is gonna take you at least an hour from prep to cooking to cleaning to getting it all in your belly. Of course you can find things to make quick but why would you be so bland when you can dedicate an hour or so and have delicious meals the whole week?

I prep my lunch and dinner for the 5 weekdays on Sunday afternoons. One in the slow cooker and one using the oven/stovetop or something. That way I can do them both at the same time. 10 meals, 90 minutes or so total time spent cooking. I do no cooking at all in the week.

Then I just cook fresh as I need it on the weekends, steaks, omelettes that kind thing.

>skip breakfast

Nice meme. You do realize that is when your glycogen storage is completely depleted from while you were asleep right?

Must be nice to constantly have your body running on your cortisol and adrenaline stress hormones.

Enjoy your long term damage retard.

do people unironically believe this?

>wanting to eat the same fucking thing every single day

An average person has 1500-2000 calories of stored glycogen, good luck burning that while sleeping. Even if you did, your body would already be burning fat stores, and if it's used to doing this it's gonna run fine off of that.

if only you were able to prepare more than one type of meal at a time, what a shame

That would take longer than prepping one meal though, hence it being a pain in the ass. I cook multiple meals worth of food at once too but only 2-3 days worth so I have a variety. I'm not shitting on the idea I'm just not claiming it's fucking easy, cooking's a pain in the ass unless I have a bunch of free time.

That rice shit is bogus. Making fried rice with day-old (cooked) rice is the best method because when it's fresh, it's too sticky to fry properly.

It's really just hard for broke college students who have little money and kitchen utensils. It's brought up a lot because college is the age a lot of guys start lifting, especially since they most likely have a free gym on campus.

1. Lack of pots, skillets, scale, tupperware, measuring cups, spices and oils, instant read thermometers for chicken, etc

2. Lack of knowledge on how to cook.

3. Lack of discipline to always have prepped meals.

4. Lack of knowledge on diet. What should I make my meals of, how many cups of broccoli vs rice? and how much chicken for each meal? There's no golden ratio, it all depends on everyone's macros and goals which they need to spend time setting up. Most newbies don't know what to get at a grocery store when they've been living off frozen oven food and cereal since they were little.

Luckily all these questions can be answered via google, which most normies are too stupid to do so they just get frustrated.

Do you even cook?
15 mins to cook your usual meal...
More like u just tell your mom to cook and she has it half ready already

I usually place cooked chicken, rice and veggies in containers and freeze everything.
Then along the week I put one container in the fridge the day before eating it for defrosting. Am I fucking up somewhere?
All those safety concerns make me paranoid.

no, as long as the chicken was properly cooked initially, all of the potentially "dangerous" bacteria has been killed, and the only bacteria left will be the stuff that gets on it from the air when you are putting it into the containers (or whats in the containers themselves). If they are frozen then there isn't gonna be bacteria growth, if the are in the fridge bacteria is gonna grow really really slowly.

Ultimately the worst you are risking is food poisoning, but that's only gonna happen if you leave your shit in the fridge for weeks, or leave it out of the fridge for too long.

Dubs don't lie, thanks for clearing that up.

I sincerely hope you're joking or that I have just been baited. How can people even contribute to a fitness forum and not know the basics of how the body works?

Watch some videos on food safety. I'm sure there's some good training videos for food service management and stuff. As for the time you can keep stuff before tossing, alot of the guides online are written by part-time blogging soccer moms with shit immune systems from too much antibiotics. Most cooked / safely prepared food you can keep in the fridge for a week provided its stored properly. (5-6 days if you have shit immune system, 7-8 days otherwise)

idk, can you explain to us how you're posting here?

>it's really just hard for broke college students who have littlemoney and kitchen utensils
>i will get a small loan of a hundred thousand dollars for my art degree :DDD
>fugg why cant i afford anything
I get so mad when i see these people wasting so much money for some meme degree and then failing at the most basic interactions

jesus, you guys really will argue about anything. meal prep is great for people who have jobs and live in the real world. you aren't going home to cook in the middle of the work day, so you prep lunches and snacks for the week. prep a couple dinners and a couple breakfasts while your at it for the days you get busy before/after work. cook fresh meals on the days you have time.

if you don't have a job or aren't in college, you're not going to make it.