MEAL PREP

People hate meal prepping and the beauty of flexible dieting is that you don’t necessarily have to meal prep. For me, though, meal prepping is what helps me stay on track to getting my fuel for each day. I literally open the fridge in the morning, throw my pre-packed, pre-measured containers of food into my lunch bag and I am golden for the whole day until I come home for dinner. If you’ve never meal prepped before, this can seem like a daunting task at first- the planning, the cooking, the food packing, (SCREAM!)… but it’s not as bad as you think, and it totally gets easier over time.

Here’s what I do every Sunday: COSTCO. I stock up on the the essentials and then get to work. It takes me 3-4 hours on Sunday to meal prep, which sounds like a lot of time, but it actually saves me time in the long run. 3-4 hours on Sunday totally beats 1 hour to make dinner when I get home and then another hour to prepare for the next day. That would be like 10 hours of meal prep if I waited to do it each day! Here’s an example of what my meal prep looks like:

BREAKFAST PREP:

• Oatmeal – Make 5 servings and put it into 5 containers
• Bacon – Put a ton of strips on a cookie sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes. This saves me SO much time. Cooking it in my skillet takes too much time and only cooks like 5 strips at a time. I put 4 strips on top of the oatmeal in their containers.
• Granola – Place a serving in 5 containers
• Milk – Place a serving into 5 mason jars

LUNCH PREP: 

• Steam a ton of broccoli- put 5 oz in 5 containers
• Pan cook a ton of cod (lemon, grass fed butter, and garlic)- put 5 oz in with the broccoli

SNACK PREP:

• 1.5 oz of dried mango in 5 ziplock baggies
• 1 cup plain greek yogurt (sometimes I add honey if I need carbs. If i want to save my carbs, but want sweetener, I actually add in some Splenda) into 5 containers
• Protein powder into 5 baggies
• 1 avocado

DINNER PREP:

• Bake 6-8 chicken thighs and store in a large container
• Bake 4-6 sweet potatoes and store in a large container
• When I get home during the week, I can just make a plate of food with these items that will balance what I have left to eat from the day. It also allows me to fit in a dessert if I need to also!

So obviously since I’m meal prepping for the week, I pretty much set myself up for eating the same thing everyday. For me, this works. I make things that I know I’ll eat. For others, this might be hard to do because imagining having to eat the same thing every day just sucks.  You’ve got to find something that works for you and makes tracking your macros as easy as possible.

Feel free to leave a comment and let others know what works for you!