Once you reach adulthood, there’s some degree of societal expectation to start a family. You don’t need to do that, though. Some people relish living alone, either because of the freedom it provides or else because they’re antisocial and prefer their own company.

If you’re one of those individuals who choose to live by yourself, there are certain challenges with which you’ll need to deal. For instance, you’ll need to do all household chores, such as cleaning the place up. You can hire a cleaning service if you’re wealthy enough to do that, but that’s not an option for everyone.

You will have to prepare your own meals. You can subsist on pizza deliveries or fast food, but as you get older, that kind of diet isn’t so great for you. Fast food, pizza, and other junk food doesn’t have the nutrition you need, and you’ll also have to exercise harder to avoid significant weight gain.

Let’s talk about some food prep solutions for the individual living alone.

You Can Make Substantial Meals on the Weekends

Part of the downside of living alone is that you have to do all the food shopping and prep unless you hire a delivery service to bring you groceries and you get a cook to prepare your meals. Food delivery services like HelloFresh are prevalent these days, but most people can’t afford to hire a full-time or even a part-time cook.

If you want nutritious meals that you cook yourself, thereby preparing them just the way you prefer them, you can often do that on the weekends. If you work full-time during the week, but usually you have Saturday and Sunday off, you can make a large meal, stick it in the fridge, and then live on that for the next several days.

If you work on the weekends, you can still go about this process. You’ll have to cook on whatever weekday you have off.

You can make things like pots of pasta, more substantial meat dishes like meatloaf, a turkey breast, a couple of pork tenderloins, and so forth. For a side dish, mashed potatoes are easy, or you can go with brown rice and beans if you want something that’s fiber-rich for regularity.

You Can Select the Healthiest TV Dinners Available

Maybe you’re not much of a cook. Still, you can’t keep getting fast food and delivery all the time. It’s not very healthy, but it also gets expensive.

You can go grocery shopping to look for ready-made, frozen meals. You can definitely stock your freezer up with a few of those and have them ready to go if you need a quick, easy lunch or dinner.

The trick is finding some that are as healthy as possible. To keep your weight down, you want ones that are not too calorie-dense. You should also look for ones by Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice that have a low total and saturated fat content.

You can also look for ones with as few preservatives as possible and that have the lowest sodium content. Many prepared foods have lots of salt in them because that keeps them fresh longer. You need to try to keep your salt intake down though, because in time, it can give you high blood pressure.

You Can Freeze Some of the Larger Meals You Make

You might also make something like a pot of curry, stew, chili, soup, etc. You could make a casserole or some other substantial dish. You can eat that for several days in a row, but you can also freeze some of it by popping it in the freezer.

This way, you can defrost a wholesome lunch or dinner option a few weeks down the line and eat that. Some dishes freeze and defrost better than others, so you’ll probably have to experiment a little bit to see what works.

If you do this, you’ll need to put a sticker or write on the package indicating when you made it. It’s easy to forget about some items if you stick them in the back of the freezer, and then you lose track of how old that entree is. If you do this, you might occasionally unearth a meatloaf from two years ago, and there’s no way that’s still safe for you to eat.

You can still eat pizza or other junk food occasionally, but as you get older, you will want to do so sparingly.