“If you fail to plan you plan to fail” you’ve heard that saying before right?
It can sound cliché but it is actually a very accurate saying especially when it comes to your nutrition for weight loss.
Waking up each day and winging it or just saying “I’ll try to make good choices” is leading you down a path that takes you nowhere near results!
But I know that it can seem so daunting and time consuming to prep for an entire week. But it’s really not and the more you do it the quicker you will become at it.
I decided to share my personal menu and prep time line with you all so you can see how easy it can really be.
It takes me about 3 hours every Sunday and with the exception of a quick mid-week trip to the store to grab fresh fruit or veggies I am done thinking about what I will eat for the next 5-6 days. Plus I stay right on track with my eating to reach my goals.
Now this is NOT meant to be your menu but the point is to give you ideas and to help you take the leap and prep for your own success.
So here is what my husband and I will be eating this week, but a couple of things: I increase his serving sizes to accommodate his caloric needs, I often add a fresh side salad to my meals and flax or chia to my oatmeal.
Meal #1: Crock Pot Pumpkin Steel Cut Oats and Prograde Fusion protein shake (link to the oatmeal recipe http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=428956)
Meal #2: (1) Low-fat cheese stick, (1) Hardboiled egg, 1 Cup grapes
Meal #3: Shredded Beef Lo Mein (recipe from a book, Soba noodles instead of Lo mien noodles),
Meal #4: 8oz unsweetened almond milk, ½ serving Prograde Lean Meal Replacement shake
Meal #5: Chicken lettuce wraps http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Chicken-Lettuce-Wraps
Meal #6: Prograde protein in almond milk or Plain Greek yogurt w/ fruit blended in if I get a sweet tooth.
Time line:
During the week I jot quick notes in my phone about what I think I want to make the next week based on what I have on hand at home and what we’ve been eating the last few weeks so my actual menu planning time is low these days.
During my mid-week almond milk and fruit refill run I grabbed the beef that I needed for this week.
Ok so here is how Sunday went:
10:30am – I took about 10 minutes to put my beef in the crock pot, turned it on to cook for the required 8 hours. I didn’t have to spend another minute on it until I got to my real prep for the week later on.
Around 2pm –I assembled my crock pot oatmeal (I do have 3 crockpots) so that it could cook for the required 4 hours. This took about 5 minutes. Again I’ve been doing this for several weeks so staples like oatmeal and pumpkin are usually always in my house before I go shopping. Then I went back to whatever I was doing at this point. It still wasn’t prep time.
3:15-3:35 Made my shopping list and shopped my kitchen first so that I didn’t buy things I already had.
3:40 -4:15 Went shopping. It’s a pretty quick trip because a) I live very close to the store b) It’s a short list since I keep everything simple c) I don’t dilly dally around. If it’s not on my list I don’t need it so I don’t even bother stopping. That helps prevent unauthorized goodies from hitching a ride home too!
Got distracted by other things for a bit then got back to preppring after 5. From then on I went straight through until completion.
5:15 –Starts the real prep I don’t have a detailed timeline for each step but this is the order that everything happened in:
-Started boiling eggs
-Divided protein powder and Lean so my husband can just grab the containers and go.
-Rinsed the fruit and vegetables and left to drain/dry.
-Started chicken wraps (tip: I spend the extra .50 or so to buy my ingredient already prepped so there is no shredding and chopping needed).
-Sometime in the chicken wrap prep the eggs finished and I starting the cooling process on those.
-Let chicken wrap mixture cool while I worked on other stuff
-Divided grapes (our fruit this week), spun the lettuce one more time to make sure it dries off before I put back in the fridge
-Turned off the oatmeal so that it can cool before I separate (may have been less than 4hrs but it was done).
-Started the noodles and completed my Lo Mein dish. Let it cool a bit before I divide.
-In medium storage containers I assembled the #2 meals so that we can just grab one container and go (so each container has grapes, hardboiled egg, and a cheese stick)
-Divided the lettuce wrap mix into individual containers
-Started to clean up everything that I was done with. Before finishing all the way……
-Divided oatmeal into individual containers
-Assembled “Lo Mein” dish in individual containers.
-Stacked everything in my refrigerator finished cleaning up and started the dish washer.
End time 7:20pm. Total hands on time about 3 hours!
Now every night I sack one of everything on a shelf (except for meals #5 & 6) for my husband to grab in the morning and I fill a protein shaker with almond milk so it’s ready to grab too. I also throw a Prograde fusion pack in a shaker so that my husband doesn’t forget it or a shaker.
Since I am home or in and out of home most of the day I just grab each meal as I need it.
And that’s it! It is so much easier to stay on track when what you need next is already totally prepped and ready to grab and go. And I truly only have to spend about 5 minutes a day total thinkingabout my food.
Prepping doesn’t have to be hard. And the results are so worth the planning and effort. Get to it!
P.S. If you find this helpful and would like to see more, let me know.