Meal Prep Sunday, done in about an hour.

Most meal prep advice fails because it asks you to cook seven full dinners on a Sunday. Nobody keeps that up. This does the opposite: it prepares the parts, not the meals, so the week assembles itself.

The five steps

1. Pick the week before you shop

   Choose three or four dinners, not seven. Leftovers and one easy night cover the rest. Deciding first is the whole trick, because the deciding is what actually drains you on a weeknight.

2. Build one list around the plan

   Write the grocery list straight off those four dinners and sort it by aisle. One list, one trip, no mid-week top-up run.

3. Prep the parts, not the meals

   Cook a batch of protein, a batch of a grain, and chop the vegetables. Keep them separate. Separate parts become four different dinners. Four finished meals become the same dinner four times.

4. Cook only the two that take longest

   Fully cook the slow one, like a chili or a tray bake, and start the marinade for another. The quick dinners do not need prepping now; they will take ten minutes on the night.

5. Store it so you actually eat it

   Containers at eye level, front of the fridge, labelled with the day. The meal you can see is the meal you eat. The one behind the milk becomes next week's waste.

The 30g protein breakfast, without cooking twice

The breakfast that keeps you full to lunch is a formula, not a recipe: one protein base, one fruit, one crunch. Greek yogurt with berries and granola. Eggs with a slice of wholegrain toast. Overnight oats with a scoop of protein powder. Prep two or three jars on the same Sunday and breakfast is handled with zero extra cooking.