On Sundays We Meal Prep

There is the old saying "those who fail to prepare -- prepare to fail" and with healthy eating, this could not be more true. For us specifically, it's crucial. We work full-time jobs, we have a child and we both like to work out 4-6 days a week, so for us, if we want to eat healthy we prep and we do it right.

We started doing big-time meal prep about two years ago. I had entered a body transformation contest for BodyBuilding.com and my husband frankly appreciated the prepardness. To be honest, who feels like making lunch the night before after working a full day? No one does. So we started making huge salads on Sunday's. And sometimes they felt like they took forever. Lettuce, carrots, peppers, cucumbers, edamames etc... We did this for a while and then at some point we got sick of it -- we also felt like there wasn't a great variety to what we could do. After I found out I was pregnant, everything went out the window - except, we continued to make chicken for him (which we continued until a few months ago).

When I switched to Paleo back in April, we both took a hard look at our foods and snacks and decided to make a change. We have done a number of different foods and preps but right now, we've landed on a pretty good system.

So what do our Sunday's look like? First, here are our meal plans:

Sara:
Breakfast daily: 2 hard-boiled eggs, handful of blackberries, Tazo black tea
Mid-morning snack: Larabar (apple pie)  currently 20% off at Target
Lunch: chicken salad with homemade mayo
Mid-afternoon snack: carrots and Trader Joe's Almond butter

                          

Jason:
Breakfast daily: 4 scrambled eggs, oatmeal with blueberries
Mid-morning snack: plain yogurt with blueberries, almonds
Lunch: ground turkey chili with brown rice
Mid-afternoon snack: Cliff bar, banana and/or apple

Misc Needs:
Coconut Oil 
Trader Joe's Everyday Seasoning 

Weeknight dinners: handful of green peppers and carrots and either ground turkey, chicken or steak as the protein

Plan of Attack 
The week before:
- Find a recipe
- Create grocery list for AmazonFresh & BJ's
- Order AmazonFresh food

Friday night or Saturday:
- Grocery shop at BJ's
- Get rest of groceries delivered
- Keep chicken and ground turkey in fridge for easy cooking access on Sunday

Sunday morning:
- Hardboil 10 eggs
- Scramble 20 eggs (yes, we have a giant sauce pan)
- Chop up
     -1 lb of celery
     -2 packs of carrots
    - 4 or 5 green peppers
    - 2 zucchini
- Make the turkey chili 
- Boil and shred the chicken
- Cook the rice

We work with a lot of containers to keep it easy. We have a giant tin for the veggies for the dinner and then we use two other big bowls for the veggies for each of our respective lunches.

Once everything is cooked and prepped we put the lunches into containers for the week. Which makes it SO MUCH EASIER to put all the lunches into containers on Sunday instead of during the week after a long day of work.

             


Sure you can look at our list and what takes about 2 hours in total on a Sunday, but you can't argue with the ease and results of a healthy lifestyle.  It starts with one step at a time. When we started, we just did lunches - and then quickly realized we would prefer to prep both breakfast and lunch.

As this blogger points out...

There is no right or wrong way to food prep.The options are endless when in comes to prepping food ahead of time so there really is no right or wrong way to do it. Basically, it comes down to just making time and getting it done. However, just like any weight loss strategy, to be sustainable it needs to fit into your lifestyle. Basically this means do what works for you. If the only thing you want to prep each week are hardboiled eggs then that’s fine. Or maybe you find it helpful to make mason jar salads, buffalo shredded chicken, and a couple slow cooker kits. Whatever will meets YOUR needs. Don’t get bogged down in thinking it has to be done a certain way. Also, it is very important to remember that I have been doing this for 4 years. I have lots of practice and made my fair share of mistakes. What works for me might not work for you. I share the strategies and tips I have learned along the way in hopes that you will take and adapt them to fit into your lifestyle.

It's always hard, and a little scary to start a new diet or for us, lifestyle change. But every journey started with one-step and changing the way you eat can change your life!

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