Losing weight is all about managing the amount of your calories you eat during the day and the week. Eat above your maintenance calories (about 1500-1800 for sedentary adult men, and about 1200-1500 for women) and you will gain weight. Eat below your maintenance calories and the weight will come off magically, even without any exercise. Exercise can accelerate your weight loss further, but you need to get control of the fuel you are putting into the tank.

Controlling your portion size and eating meals with predictable amounts of calories is key. One of the simplest techniques is meal prepping – or making large batches of food and dividing it up into controlled portions. This article will show you how.

Ingredients

To start, calculate the amount of calories of the entire batch and then divide that across how many portions you want to hit your single serving calorie goals. We’re going to make some delicious turkey and vegetables.

Turkey breast (6 pounds) or ~3000 calories

Onions (2 large) or ~120 calories

Baby carrots (1 lb) or ~180 calories

Lima Beans (3 lbs) or ~1500 calories

Jalapenos (2-4 depending on taste) or ~50 calories

Butter (half-stick) or ~400 calories

Salt, pepper and cumin to taste

Add it all up and the total for the batch is about 5250 calories. Now the key question to ask yourself is “how many calories do I want per meal”? With 10 servings you will get about 525 calories per meal (or 5250 divided by 10). If you are trying to lose weight, 450 is a good target that leaves you extra budget to snack and stay within your calorie goals for the day. With 12 servings we can get our portion size down to 437 calories per serving, perfect.

Preparation

This meal is super easy to prepare, but takes a couple hours to cook in the oven.

Chop the onions and jalapenos Get a large baking pan and dump in the carrots, chopped onions and jalapenos Put the turkey on top of the veggies and season liberally with salt and pepper Wrap in foil and bake at 350 for 2-3 hours until it hits 180 degrees F (get a thermometer) Once the turkey is cooked, broil it for a few minutes on each side for a nice golden crust Boil the lima beans for ~20 minutes until tender and then season with butter, salt, pepper, (cumin also tastes good)

Meal Prepping

Now that cooking is complete, let’s put it all together. The grocery store sells cheap tupperware containers that works great, usually you can get 5 containers for about $5. For this batch we need 12 containers to hit our ~437 target. Lay out the containers and divide up the turkey, veggies, and lima beans into roughly equal portions across the 12. You don’t need to be perfect, just eyeball it.

And you’re done. Pop one in the microwave for 3-4 minutes and you will have a hot and delicious meal. Meals stay good for up to 2 weeks.