I’m trying to lose a lot weight and gets some rigidness to my form. I got the gym stuff worked out, but the diet stuff seems so hard to figure out in my case.
I live with quite a lot of people at the moment, and a couple of us want to start going to the gym and eating healthy. But I think creating lots of food for everyone is important. I really don’t know how it’s possible to meal prep for all of us, for both lunch and dinner. Also I feel like variety is important. I don’t want to eat grilled chicken breast with rice every single lunch and dinner while still reaching my protein goals. But spending the time to create unique food every other day is too much. What do all of you do/did to lose weight and get in shape? Is it normal to have the same food every day?
Do I only meal prep lunch? Is it every single day, or only a certain number of days a week? I’m a rookie here. I need pointers. I feel like I’m overthinking this.
Ok there is a lot to unpack here. I think you need to be careful not to make too many big lifestyle changes at once or nothing will stick.
If your goal is primarily weight loss, check out /r/CICO - ultimately weight loss is purely physics, it does not matter if you meal prep or not. It does not matter how many grams of protein you eat. It literally only matters how many calories you burn vs consume.
If your goal is physical fitness, then I would focus on getting into the routine of exercising regularly. Worry less about specifically what you’re doing and just focus on being physically active each day. Note to carefully consider before “eating back” your exercise calories if you want to lose weight.
I would do these two things first and then reassess everything else after a month or two.
Only after I was in the habit of tracking / planning meals and exercising regularly would I start to fuss over specific workout plans or macros or whatever.
If you find planning and preparing your meals ahead of time helps keep things convenient for you then great. If not then don’t bother, it’s supposed to be helpful, not a burden you take on because you “have to.”
Something that may help with variety is to prepare a few proteins and vegetables and then decide throughout the week how to combine them instead of trying to make complete meals out of them upfront