A year ago, I knew I needed to get healthier, but I was a busy professional and on a budget, so I knew I needed a plan that worked for me. As someone who likes to work out, I started with a gym membership, yet I knew I needed to focus on my nutrition.
I love food and I knew I needed some easy ideas to make home cooking more fun and encourage me to stay on track.
First, I started batch cooking dinners and quickly I was meal prepping 5 meals a day and 7 days a week. If I was going to do this, I was going to be all in!
Soon enough, some of my friends and colleagues were asking me about meal prepping, batch cooking tips and recipes. They saw all the spare time I now had and how delicious my meals were. I wasn’t ever hungry and I was starting to lose some of the weight I had gained before. I was so happy to show them how simple it can be!
[ctt template=”4″ link=”3ei4u” via=”yes” ]Meal prepping can be fun and easy it just takes some time and planning. @TheHolisticates[/ctt]
As a health coach, I teach my clients the following simple, easy steps for fun meal prepping:
1.Get Inspired.
Get on Pinterest and check out your favorite blogs and healthy cookbooks for inspiration. Start to create boards of your favorites and soon you’ll find yourself making them weekly. Save your favorites so they’re easy to find each week. I’ve found a lot of the ideas on Pinterest are easy to make and can be really healthy. Look for simple, clean ingredients at first and then you can start to get creative with foods you’ve never cooked with.
2.Make A Food Schedule.
I don’t know about you, but I get bored with my food fast. I can’t just have the same thing every day all week. So I switch it up. I’ll create a Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday meal plan and then change it up on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Once you have your ideas of your favorite, creative meals, I suggest including the following types of foods:
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2 types of breakfasts: Example: different types of overnight oats
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4 types of snacks (AM & PM)- Examples: AM (apples & nut butter with trail mix)/PM (hummus and veggies)
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2 kinds of lunches – Examples: salad and chicken and maybe a stir-fry
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2 types of dinners – Examples: BBQ chicken/salmon with veggies and quinoa and ground turkey or lean beef chili
Depending on the food choices of the week, you might want to look into getting mason jars (for the overnight oats, for example) and other tupperware or ziplock bags for portioning out your meals to make it easy to grab and go.
