Meal Planning: The Breakdown

Get excited! Meal prepping will enhance your results, increase you confidence, & I promise after time it'll even become a habit! :)

It doesn't matter if you use pen & paper OR if you type it up - just take the time and get it done.

This leads me to STEP 1... Make a PLAN!

1. Keep it simple.

Think about meals you already create if you are already eating clean OR if you're a clean eater in progress think of individual foods you KNOW you like and you won't get tired of. If you keep it simple, you're more likely to keep it up. Don't stress about finding a bunch of different recipes and planning meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the entire week... put your own schedule into consideration and make your plan based off that. 

2. Use the same ingredients - but switch it up.

Write down a list of meals you eat often and see which of those meals have the same protein that you could make in a large batch and use in different meals all week. For example, we go to Sam's club and get a BIG bag of frozen salmon and the big packs of chicken. We grill the chicken which can be used on salads for lunches all week, but can also be thrown into a veggie stir fry, or served alone with some roasted veggies and a sweet potato. The salmon is SUPER easy to make in bulk and freeze so we already have a ton of meals stored in the freezer for "fast meals". 

3. Plan Ahead

When you sit down to make your meal plan, think about what your up coming week looks like. If you already know mornings are CRAZY, snacks are hard to come by, and lunch is convenient to go grab from a nearby restaurant (or worse... drive thru) then obviously those are meals you want to make. If you're working long hours and know you wont want to come home and fix dinner, do like we do and prep some meals that are easy to put in the freezer and thaw out. Snacks can be as simple as portioning out fruit (apples cut and soaked in water with lemon for about 15 minutes then sprinkled with cinnamon make AWESOME snacks for the week!), cutting up raw veggies and portioning them out, or fixing little baggies with raw nuts portioned out so all you have to do is grab & go - no thought process required!

4. Be Flexible

We all know even if we plan our day, week, or month to the very last second - it ALWAYS changes. If you get invited to dinner one night, don't feel like you can't go because you have a meal plan to stick to. The whole idea of making meal plans and prepping ahead is to keep you on track, not keep you anti-social. My advice? Choose something at the restaurant that still aligns with your nutrition goals. Don't be afraid to ask for veggies with no butter, chicken with no butter, and a sweet potato dry (with a dash of cinnamon of course)! Then you stay on track, but still get your time to socialize!

I found this meal planner from another blog and i've now been using it for months. It's simple and makes it easy to plan.

View meal planner HERE

Now that you have everything PLANNED, we're ready for step 2... SHOP!

1. Make a grocery list & stick to it.

Review your meal plan and make a grocery list with everything you will need to make your meals. Once you have that list made, head to the grocery store. DO NOT buy anything that is not on your list! If it's not apart of your plan, you do not need it in your house... aka TEMPTATION.

2. Stay out of the aisles. 

You're probably thinking, ummm what?? Think about it, the aisles contain all of your processed, nutritional deprived food. We don't want that in our homes because we don't want that tempting us to EAT IT. I love eating clean but i'll be the first to tell you if there's cookies in my pantry or ice cream in my freezer, chances are I won't be able to resist. We only have so much willpower & by nighttime, that willpower is usually completely used up!

3. Eat BEFORE you go shopping

Seriously, this is huge! Have you ever gone to the grocery store staving & by the time you come home and unload your groceries you think to yourself "why in the world did I buy all this CRAP"??? Our brains don't work logically when our tummies are growling and all we can think about is eating. It tricks us into thinking buying those oreos or bag of flammin' hot Cheetos isn't a big deal, I mean everything else in the cart is clean right?? WRONG. As soon a you bring it in the house, it haunts you until it gets eaten or thrown away - and lets get real, who's going to throw away a brand new package of oreos without trying a few (or all) of them first?

Guess what??!! The hard part is DONE! It's time to get cookin'!

It may seem dreadful looking at all your food and the thought of cooking and prepping it all in one day, but having your meals readily available to grab and go is essential to your success, trust me, it's worth it!

I don't know about you, but my days are BUSY and i'm constantly on the go. So anything to make my meals a little easier, is a must!

1. Plan an order of cooking.

What I mean by this is look at all of your food and decide what can be baked together, what can be on the stove cooking while the chicken is grilling, etc. I like to bake my salmon (or whatever fish i'm having) at the same time im roasting my vegetables. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone, catch my drift? Then when that's baking, I can cook my quinoa or brown rice on the stove or throw my sweet potatos in the microwave to soften up. I can also go ahead and boil my eggs.

2. Wash and cut all produce.

This may seem like a hassle, but it's WAY more of a hassle to have to wash and cut it every time you go to grab something! Remember, we're making clean eating EASIER.

3. EAT.

Go ahead and store whatever meals you plan to freeze and then organize your fridge where it's easy to grab and go. I like to go ahead and get my meals/snacks together the night before so as i'm heading out the door I can just throw them in my lunch box and go for the day!

I hope this helps in your attempt to start a meal prepping habit! If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below & i'll answer them as quickly as possible!

Be on the lookout for my upcoming blog post "freezer meals" with all the meals i've already tested by freezing and thawing out & which meals made the cut!

Have a crazy awesome day! 

XOXO,

Brianna