What "meal prep" is really about

I see so much criticism of meal prepping on this sub, from people who think it's a fixed VERY HIGH CALORIE diet every single day, who say they don't want to eat the same things every day, who don't think they have the time or energy for it, etc. but the truth is we all meal prep at some level.<br><br>If you live alone and don't know how to cook- you buy frozen meals and microwave rice and heat up canned foods. Every meal is the same. You eat the same chicken nuggets and same rice and veggies and same TV dinner every week.<br><br>If you have kids and work and it's just a hassle to cook every night and everyone would rather just eat takeout and junk food- they just eat mac and cheese or pasta or pizza every night. You buy prepackaged meals or rotisserie chickens and fruit cups and cookies. They open boxes or ziplock bags and eat pretty much the same thing every night.<br><br>If you have a busy job but are a great cook- you make a big pot of chili or soup on the weekends and eat it for lunch every day and take it with you. Or you buy prepackaged snacks from Costco and eat them at your desk.<br><br>If you're a health nut or athlete and you want to meal prep- you make sauces or chicken or rice or roasted veggies on the weekends or do it every two weeks and every morning you throw your ingredients together in tupperware and refrigerate or freeze them and every night you reheat.<br><br>It doesn't have to be EVERY SINGLE DAY, it doesn't have to be 7 MEALS A WEEK, it doesn't have to be ALL THE SAME THINGS. <br><br>I personally like variety, so I prep about 3 kinds of meat and 3 kinds of carbs and 3 kinds of veggies, and a sauce or two. I have 5 meals per week and every weekend I go grocery shopping and make a new 5 meals for Monday to Friday, with snacks, and I make a batch of rice or quinoa that I can eat all week. I make a bunch of meat and add it to my rice and pour some sauce on it and add my veggies and I eat it and enjoy it and then I can go home after work and make whatever I want. I don't have to spend an hour making dinner. I don't have to come home and stare in the fridge for 30 minutes. I don't have to tell my fiance that we should just order takeout because I'm tired and don't feel like cooking. I don't have to spend a lot of money on eating out. I don't have to argue with my fiance about what we should eat.<br><br>The difference between my meal prep and other peoples' is that I make a lot of food at once and take it with me every day to work, because I don't have a fridge at work. I have to pack everything in the morning and bring it with me. And if I'm working late and we have to go out to eat afterwards and I'm tired and don't feel like cooking when I get home, I have meal prep. I don't have to eat fast food or junk food when I'm tired. I can still wake up and make myself a meal and take it in my lunch, and take a snack, and not have to worry about whether I'll have enough time and money and whether I'll feel like cooking. No matter what, I still have meals for the rest of the week, and I can still make whatever I want for dinner every night, and then I have leftovers for at least the next 2 nights.<br><br>I think there's a lot of misconceptions about what meal prep really is. Everyone prepares meals. It's not just those of us who make meals in tupperware that meal prep.<br><br>I don't care whether you meal prep or not, or what you eat, or how you cook, everyone is different and I'm not here to judge. But I also don't want to hear you complain about not having time or money or energy to make food and eating fast food every night and then criticize people who meal prep on instagram or blame obesity and diabetes on meal preppers. We're not the problem.