Meal Prep Defined

Cooking meals in advance (also called meal prep) is a strategy used by bodybuilders and athletes to make eating healthy easier.

Some fitness fanatics prepare every single meal for the next seven days. However, you don’t have to be that proactive to see results.

Even preparing your main meals for the next day can be a considerable step in diet adherence. And meal prepping for a few days in advance balances efficiency and flexibility.

Does meal prep help you gain weight?

It’s important to understand that meal prep alone doesn’t make you gain weight automatically. To gain weight, the first thing you must do is eat more calories than you burn.

But hitting this calorie surplus can be challenging, especially for active individuals. And meal prep is a valuable tool to ensure you eat enough to gain weight.

Reasons to Meal Prep for Weight Gain

The main benefit of meal prepping is convenience because you don’t have to cook every meal from scratch. It’s so much easier to just grab a pre-cooked meal from the fridge and pop it in the microwave.

Moreover, meal prep takes care of your calories and macros in advance. So you don’t have to worry about counting calories or tracking macros on a daily basis.

This meal structure, in turn, promotes diet adherence and healthy eating habits. Finally, eating the right quantity of healthy foods is the biggest key to building the body you want.

Benefits of Meal Prep for Weight Gain

1. Drastically reduce time spent cooking
2. Makes it easier to eat more calories
3. Ensure you hit your macros each day
4. Reduce the need to count or track foods daily
5. Have nutritious meals you can take to work
6. Promote diet adherence and healthy eating habits

Meal Prep for Weight Gain FAQ

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of meal prep for weight gain, let me answer the most common questions related to this topic.

What is the cheapest way to gain weight?

In some ways, the cheapest way to gain weight is to eat fast food every day. However, that approach will quickly make you fat and destroy your health in no time.

Therefore, the cheapest way to gain weight in a healthy way is by meal prepping. Also, eating healthy isn’t as expensive as you might think.

The reason meal prep saves money is that you can buy foods in bulk. And you can stretch your budget further by buying cheap healthy foods like rice, potatoes, and lean ground meat.

How to Meal Prep for Weight Gain

Meal prepping for building muscle is a process that involves a little bit of math and some thinking ahead. But it doesn’t have to be overly complicated!

I’ve broken weight gain meal prep into seven basic steps to show you how simple it can be.

7 Steps of Weight Gain Meal Prep

1. Estimating calories
2. Calculating macros
3. Planning schedule
4. Getting groceries
5. Cooking food
6. Dividing into meals
7. Eating to grow!

Step 1: Estimating Your Calorie Needs

You need to know three things to estimate how many calories you need to eat to gain weight.

First, how many calories you burn at rest, also called your resting or base metabolic rate (BMR). Second, how many calories you burn from normal daily activities. And third, how many calories you burn through exercise.

When added together, these calories burned are called your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). And to gain weight, you need to eat at least 15% more calories than you burn.

Nowadays, many wearable fitness devices measure your movement and help you estimate your daily energy expenditure. I’ve utilized the Apple Watch, Oura Ring, and Polar heart rate monitor for measuring activity.

Step 2: Calculating Your Macros

Once you know your calorie target, you can easily find your macros as a percentage of calories.

It’s generally a good idea to get around 50% of your calories from carbs when you’re active and trying to gain weight. And a protein target of 30% of your calories is ideal for gaining muscle, which leaves 20% fat.

Weight Gain Macro Ratio: 50% Carbs, 30% Protein, 20% Fat

To illustrate, let’s say you burn 2,500 calories per day. And you are aiming for a 20% calorie surplus to gain weight. So you must eat 2,500 x 1.2 = 3,000 calories per day.

To calculate 50% carbohydrates, we take 3,000 x 0.5 = 1,500 calories. And since there are 4 calories per gram of carbs that is 1,500 ÷ 4 = 375 grams of carbs.

Similarly, 30% protein is 3,000 x 0.3 = 900 calories. Protein also has 4 calories per gram, which is 900 ÷ 4 = 225 grams of protein.

Finally, 20% fat would be 3,000 x 0.2 = 600 calories. But there are 9 calories per gram of fat, so that’s 600 ÷ 9 = 67 grams of fat.

Keep in mind these numbers will vary based on your body size, activity level, and fitness goals.

Try My Free Macro Calculator to Find Your Weight Gain Macros

Step 3: Planning Your Meal Prep Schedule

The last planning step involves thinking about the kinds of healthy meals you want to eat. This will help you in creating your grocery list in the next step.

First, figure out how many meals you will eat daily to hit your macros. This is somewhat up to your personal preference, but generally, 6-8 daily meals is best when bulking up.

In addition, try to spread out your protein with anywhere from 25-50 grams per meal. And include more carbs in the meals around your workout, but try not to exceed 100 grams in any single meal.

I recommend writing down your daily schedule with macros and calories for each meal. This daily meal plan makes it easy to see which foods to include in each meal and how much you’ll need.

Step 4: Getting Groceries

Now it’s time to take action and head to the grocery store to get the foods for your weight gain meal prep.

Choose a couple of different protein sources, such as chicken breast, eggs, yogurt, or lean ground beef. Then select some starchy carbs like rice, oats, or potatoes. Finally, include healthy fats in the form of cooking oil.

I recommend making a list to ensure you don’t forget anything. Click here for a healthy grocery list you can pull up on your phone.

Also, it’s usually better to buy a little more than you think you’ll need so you don’t run out of food. Of course, you can always freeze extra meat or save carbs the following week.

Step 5: Cooking Food

Next is the figurative bread and butter of meal prep; the cooking. Depending on your schedule, you may need to dedicate an hour or two to this step.

However, you don’t need to overwhelm yourself with cooking master chef meals. Instead, focus on a few ingredients with simple preparation.

Before cooking, allocate the quantity of each food using a food scale, measuring cups, or the amounts indicated on the packaging.

For example, you would typically measure dry rice in cups and potatoes in ounces. Meats are generally weighed in ounces before cooking. And veggies by ounces or cups.

Step 7: Eating to Grow

Finally, it’s time to reap the rewards of meal planning and prepping. Pull your meals out of the fridge and heat them up as needed throughout the day.

Remember, though, that meal prepping on its own won’t automatically get you to your fitness goals. And you must follow your meal plan to ensure you hit your daily calorie and macro targets.

That means getting enough calories from ideal macros and eating meals every couple of hours throughout the day.

Weight Gain Meal Prep Tips

The weight gain meal prep process is pretty straightforward. But many small details could trip you up. So here are some additional meal prep tips.

How to Hit Your Macros

Formulating meals that fit your macros is probably the trickiest part of meal prep for weight gain. Not only do you need to hit your daily targets, but each meal should also be optimized.

To keep track of your macros, I recommend using a free calorie-counting app like MyFitnessPal. You can enter foods and verify your meals hit your targets in a few minutes a day.

After you get into a routine, you don’t necessarily have to keep tracking. But I still like to do it to hold myself accountable and ensure continual progress.