Meal prep can honestly feel like the largest pain in the butt, it can feel overwhelming, controlling and half the time you feel like you are so hungry that you could rip someone’s head off, hangry, it’s a thing. I don’t want to be that person that sounds like the miracle, “I always hated meal prepping until I found an easier way to do it,” but honestly, that almost describes it. It wasn’t that I found something easy, something that guided me, I played around with what I knew, to find something that best suits my meal prepping needs. Which so far, keeps me on track, healthy and so much less stressed about food than I was. I would always go off my meal planning, always. I would get home and realize that I already ate everything in my lunch that I was supposed to, but needed sugar and needed sugar now! It felt like I was depriving myself a little, but it was because my meal prepping was veggies and dip, or crackers and cheese. It was never a meal, only the snacks that should go with that meal.
Now a lot of the time we feel the need to eat less to weigh less, but that is not actually the case. Now I am not an expert in the field, but I am experienced in the field, and I have always found that the more food I ate, the more weight I lost, or the more fit I was. It was never when I was chewing on a carrot for an hour that I looked and felt my best, but when I was putting the right foods in my body to fuel my body.
I do follow a lot of fitness experts that helped me understand nutrition along the way. The two that have been the most inspiring to me are: Autumn Calabrese and Cassey Ho, who are both amazing women that make you feel like it is okay to be yourself and follow your own path to nutrition and wellness. With all of what they taught me, plus a little bit of my own organization skills, I was able to come up with a system that relieves stress from meal prepping and planning. It takes me less time than it did before, there is less of a mess in the kitchen and I am able to still have my weekend, without feeling like I took some of that self-care, relaxation time running around in the kitchen like I was on fast forward.
This blog post will give you the guide in how I do my meal prep, in hopes that it helps ease the stress while you do yours, or even inspires you to start.
5 – Thursday Planning and Grocery List
Here is where the feelings of overwhelm get cut in half. When you first start meal prepping you feel the need to plan the meals, make the list, get the groceries and do the cooking all in one day. No wonder you feel so exhausted by the end of it all, and then you don’t feel like cleaning up or looking at another piece of food! I break all my steps up over the week, to help relieve a lot of the stress, because we should not be having stress about food, that is the last thing that we need to be worrying about.
I always take thirty minutes to plan out my meals for the week, lunches, suppers, etc. When I find my recipes, I write down the ingredients that I don’t have in my house. Then I open up the flyers and write down any other produce that is on sale that I can contribute to my snacks or my breakfasts.
This is where my recipes may differ from the books, if a recipe calls for broccoli, but broccoli is not on sale, and I refuse to buy it full price, I pick another vegetables that could work that is on sale, like zucchini. I alter the recipe, but I save a little money and I still get the benefits of the vegetables in my system.
4 – Friday Groceries
I let my grocery list simmer for a day. I don’t run out and do the groceries just yet. I usually grab my grocery bags and after work I make a trip to the supermarket. I try to stick to the list, so I usually have a snack before I walk in, that way my stomach doesn’t try to convince me otherwise.
After I do my groceries, I bring them home, put them away and I don’t worry about meal prepping until the weekend.
3 – Saturday Veggie Prep
Saturday is usually the day that I do all the chopping of vegetables. We all know that that is the longest part of meal prep, and the part that we dread the most. I make it it’s own category, I spend maybe an hour of my Saturday chopping all the veggies that need to be chopped and then wash up my knife and cutting board. If you plan on cutting your cucumber for the week, I advise you not to, wait until the night before or the morning of, cucumbers don’t last very long once they have been chopped.
2 – Break up the Cooking
For a while I used to do all the cooking on Sunday, which seemed great because everything was done and I didn’t have to worry about a thing. However, I would get annoyed because my fridge was full, with no extra space and I spent my whole day cooking, I ended going out to eat because I couldn’t stand to make something else.
Now, what I have found works well for me, is breaking up my cooking during the week. On Sunday I will make any snacks that seem of interest, like healthy granola bars or muffins. I will also make four days worth of lunches. I have the same lunch on Monday and Wednesday, and the same lunch on Tuesday and Thursday; so, in reality, I am just making two meals, popping them into mason jars and putting those four jars in the fridge. Fridays lunch, I make Thursday evening and pop it in the fridge, this process takes up a lot less space.
When Monday evening comes around the corner I make supper. I have already chosen what I am making, all the veggies are chopped, so it is just a matter of whipping it together. I always double my recipe because my supper lasts for two days, Monday and Tuesday (so no cooking on Tuesday). On Wednesday, I do the same thing with another recipe, which lasts until Thursday. And Friday, another. It breaks up all the cooking, but still takes away from the stress of having to cook a meal every night.
1 – Grab and Go from the Snack Bin
Lastly, I put the focus on the snacks. I have made a few muffins, granola bars, etc., on Sunday. So those are in the snack bin, ready to grab in the morning to put in our lunch bags. The veggies are cut, so I just throw some in a reusable ziploc, and that goes in the lunch bag. Lastly, I usually make a little fruit salad the night before, to give my lunch some pizazz.
Mornings are quick and easy. I grab my fruit, my veggies, my snacks from the snack bin, and my lunch. Everything is ready, I don’t have to worry about being late for work (at least not because of food) and I am on track with my healthy eating, it’s a win-win.
The best part about snacks being at hand, is that if I do get home from work and am feeling snacky, I don’t have to worry about grabbing the wrong type of snack, because I have loaded my snack bin with some positive fuel.
Happy Meal Planning TeaGals!