Step 3: Meal Prepping Made Easy!

The top concerns with starting a healthier lifestyle are usually:

Not enough convenienceNot enough money
Not enough time

I've found a way to improve all 3 of these things while incorporating healthier foods into your lifestyle! 

Meal Prepping. 
A little bit of planning ahead of time will save your life, and make it that much easier to incorporate new healthy habits, I promise. 

The top 3 benefits of meal planning that I've found are: 

Convenience

Money Saving

Time Saving

As you can tell by now if you've read my previous posts, I am a planner!! Planning helps me organize out my week, and be prepared for what's to come. That way I am sure prepared to make healthier choices over last minute, quick and easy, not as healthy choices.

Make the healthy choices for yourself ahead of time, so when it comes to the time that you're ravishingly hungry after a long day at work, you don't have to think twice about eating healthy because you've already made that decision earlier. A convenient grab and go lunch in your refrigerator made in your kitchen is more likely to be healthy than a convenient grab and go lunch from a restaurant. 

Added bonus: you can pre-portion your lunch for the next day, preventing over-eating before it even happens!! 

Planning ahead of time makes these healthy choices more convenient, and easier to make. 

Meal prep and portioning out my meals not only helps me be prepared to grab and go lunches and snacks before going to school, it also helps save money! By portioning out the food ahead of time into ready to go meals, I'm more likely to eat that whole $8.00 package of 1lb of turkey, instead of throwing away the leftovers. Also, by preparing my vegetables and fruit ahead of time by having them ready to eat, I'm more likely to eat them while they're still fresh instead of having to throw them away if they get too ripe. 

Every time I throw away food it makes me feel like I'm throwing away money (thank you to my grandparents who survived the Great Depression by saving everything they had, even wrapping paper). 

Not only is food waste a concern, but without having meals prepared at home that are ready to take you are more likely to eat out. Eating out is not only costly for the waist line, but it's costly for your pocket book! Meal prepping leads to less than $2 per meal usually, while eating out is at least $5 or more depending on where you go. 

Make the most of your money spent at the grocery store by being sure you consume all the goodies you've bought before you go grab something "quicker and easier"!

Leftovers and food cooked ahead of time are sometimes the most important part of a meal for making the most of your time as well. It means that you get to cook once, and get more than one meal out of it! How much easier is that?! I love to cook, but it is time consuming. And let's face it, most of the time we are just out of time! So I try to make the most of my days by planning ahead, and making one meal into two, or sometimes 3 or 4. 

Time spent meal prepping is like killing two birds with one stone, you only have to cook once for 30 minutes, instead of twice for 30 minutes. Saving precious time for other priorities!

Never meal prepped before? I understand that it's not always easy to jump right in. 

My suggestion would be to start with prepping your next meal, while cooking your current meal. That way it doesn't feel like so much planning ahead of time all at once.

Example: 

Cook your lunch for the next day while cooking dinner the night before. 

The other night, we made tacos (I made mine into a taco salad, for a lighter option that still keeps the flavor!) 

Recipe:

1.25lbs of lean beef

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp Mrs. Dash Fiesta Mix Seasoning

1 tsp minced garlic

2 cup spring mix

1/2 each red bell pepper

1/2 each cucumber

10 each cherry tomatoes

1 each carrot

1 each avocado

Optional: dressing- HEB Salsa Ranch Yogurt Dressing (1 tbsp)

Instructions:

1. Cook beef in skillet over medium heat, with 1 tbsp olive oil. 

2. Add minced garlic and Mrs. Dash seasoning

3. Chop all remaining vegetables and split amount in two, one onto a salad plate and the other into tupperware containers to save for the next day. 

4. Save 4oz of beef into container for the next day, let it cool during dinner and place in refrigerator afterwards for Food Safety.

4. Add dressing of choice to dinner salad plate, and fill container with dressing for lunch the next day. 

5. Enjoy your dinner, place containers in the refrigerator for the next day for an easy grab and go lunch!! 

This was my lunch the next day. I also added a side of raspberries/blackberries to go along with it! Ready to go, and I didn't even have to plan out my lunch the day of, because I had already planned it for myself!

If you're not doing the 21 Day Fix, and you don't have these color coded containers, don't worry! You can portion your food out the same way. 

Container Measurements: 

1 cup Vegetables 

(feel free to go over this!! You can never have enough vegetables ;) I definitely did this with my salad, 1 cup of spring mix and 1 cup of red and orange veggies to go on top!

1 cup Fruit 

(equivalents can be 1 whole medium apple, 1 whole medium banana, 1 whole medium peach)

3/4 cup Protein

(or 3-4oz of lean meat. equivalents can be greek yogurt, or 1 egg with 2 egg whites)

1/2 cup Starch

(Whole Grains are the best Grains!!)

1/3 cup Fats- avocado, low fat cheese, nuts

2 tbsp Dressings/Seeds 

(feel free to use the last two interchangeably, that way you can get extra nutrients by eating avocados, nuts, and seeds!) 

Extreme Meal Prepping

Meal prepping for the week is a little more extreme, but totally worth it! When I had class during the summer Tuesdays-Thursdays all day, I would meal prep on Mondays.

Now I know I use lunch a lot as an example, but that is my easiest go to meal prep meal. Breakfast and Dinner can also be done! 

Here's what meal prepping for 3 days looks like:

1. Start cooking your meats and grains first. That way while you give them time to boil and cook, you can get together your various other ingredients and sides. 

Things like quinoa, frozen broccoli, boiling eggs, and cooking meat such as chicken, turkey or fish can all be done while you get ready to fix your vegetables and fruit. 

I like to also boil chicken breast in a sauce pain with a little bit of olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic. It keeps the chicken breast juicy so it's less likely to dry out when you reheat it. 

Ground turkey also works well for meal prepping! 1lb can be split into 4 days, giving 4-4oz portions of each.

2. Pick Veggies and Fruit of choice and chop them up. I like to get cucumbers and tomatoes, then split them into containers for the week.

(Not shown: I usually chop up strawberries or apples here while I'm cutting up veggies. Grapes and bananas however make easier grab and go side item additions)

3. Add something fancy! 

I like to add flavors that I usually use when seasoning meat, that way they compliment each other. I usually split cucumbers and tomatoes into two flavorings, since they are common ones I use; Mexican Style and Greek Style

Mexican style includes cilantro, Mrs. Dash Fiesta seasoning, and lime juice (to keep the veggies fresher longer)

Greek style includes basil and oregano, basalmic vinegarette (to keep the veggies fresh) and sometimes onions or feta cheese. 

My other secret fancy addition includes the magic Salad Kit. Salad kit's have made Grad school life so easy. I usually use these with added vegetables for lunches or side salads because they have all the fixings along with them. It makes for an easy main entree that I can easily add protein to. 

They're also really appealing and eye catching with more colors and flavors added, this will help spice up your meals and keep you interested in them!

Just be careful with the dressings that come with them, they're not always low fat! Use them sparingly or spread them out into smaller portion side salads ;)

 4. Mix in containers and save for later!

The above are containers from Snap Kitchen and one-meal sized Ziploc containers. These are really easy to portion out meals, and keep for one day uses. 

And the end result: Ready to Grab and Go Lunches for the next few days! 

Now I realize that it may seem pretty time consuming, but it will save you a whole lot of time during the week! Pick a day like Sunday, the day before the week starts, that way you have more time and you can concentrate on planning and preparing for the week. It'll make your Mondays a lot less stressful, and carry on until Friday!

It takes some getting used to but Rome wasn't built in a day. 

And they say that it takes 21 Days to form a habit!! 

Reform some habits or gain some new ones. 

It's your life and you should live it to the fullest, and feel your healthiest!

If you remember nothing else, just remember the famous words of Ryan Gosling:

Over and out, 

Lauren