Meal Prep 101
I get a lot of questions about my meal prep. What do you prep every week? How much do you prep? How do you do it? And the list goes on and on. So I thought I'd use this post to talk about my meal prep.
For the next 3 weeks, I'll be doing the 21 Day Fix. It is a beachbody program that uses color coded portion control containers to portion out your food. There are 4 calorie brackets and you find out which one you fall under by doing a simple equation. There is no counting calories, and no guessing. You eat whole, clean foods for 3 weeks and follow the daily workouts to get amazing results. You can find more information by clicking the link above. I did this program when it first came out last year. I lost 4lbs and 7.5 inches! I didn't follow it 100% but this time, I am fully dedicated.
With that said, I prep my meals every Sunday regardless of what "plan" I'm following. If I don't prep, I'm just setting myself up for failure. I know that I will grab those chips at the gas station, or fast food because there's nothing for dinner. So instead, I PLAN ahead!! Every Thursday my husband and I sit down and plan out our menu for the following week. I do all my grocery shopping on Saturday morning, and prep on Sunday afternoon while my daughter takes a nap. I buy everything for the entire week. Some say it's easier to get groceries twice a week and prep for only half the week. As a working mom, that's not really a possibility for me. So a full week it is.
What I do is take out everything I've bought that can be prepped and have my menu in front of me. I start with ONE THING AT A TIME! Say I'm going to have raw peppers every day for a snack. I will take out my peppers and my GREEN container, chop them up to fit in the container, place in a sandwich bag (or tupperware container, that's completely up to you). I will label the bag with what it is, the day of the week I'll be eating it and the time of day (am snack, lunch, pm snack, etc). Then I move on to the next thing. Certain things you can't prep or don't really need to and that's ok. I don't prep dinners because I actually like to cook in the evenings. I know, I'm weird.
If you need to mix anything, like make overnight oats or mason jar salads, then you can make them first or last, that's up to you. And VOILA! It takes me about 1-2 hours. If you are actually going to cook and prep your dinners, then it may take much longer. There are several other tutorials but I like to keep it simple.
Video:
Before and After:
