MASTERING MEAL PREP - 6 EASY STEPS FOR BUSY MOMS
Cooking dinner every night can seem a bit daunting. Plus, getting the hubby’s lunch ready each night and the kid’s lunch… Enter meal prepping. I’m going to take you through this meal prepping guide to give you some relief in the food preparation department.
I’ll tell ya… Things have been so crazy around here lately that the last thing I want to do is cook dinner every night. I truly don’t mind cooking and I’m 99% sure you feel the same way, but every night is just a buzz kill, ya know?
Enter this meal prepping guide to make your life easier. Do I sound like a commercial yet? I mean really. That’s ridiculous. Oh well, let’s move ahead.
THERE ARE THREE THINGS THAT YOU WILL NEED TO GET STARTED:
- A cheap planner
- A food scale
- And something to put your meals in
You can grab all of these on Amazon!
Why a food scale you ask? Well, to be honest, it’s really a good idea to know how much food you are taking in. Especially if you're wanting to lose weight.
Because to lose weight, you have to be in a calorie deficit… But let’s not get derailed here. We’re talking about meal prepping.
The scale helps you know how much you’re eating. Believe me. You will want to get one. That doesn't even mention how expensive protein and food is right now. Having that scale also helps you get an idea of how much meat your family is eating per week.
OKAY! LET’S GET STARTED.
MEAL PREPPING GUIDE STEP #1 – PLAN OUT WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO EAT
Trying to prepare a meal for a family is hard. Believe me. I get it. The biggest thing here is making healthy meals that your entire family will love and then portioning them up into their respected containers.
For our family, we will meal prep several dinners for the week (because we still like to cook some evenings) and then 5 lunches.
Our breakfast consists of protein bars and/or protein shakes. Joshua has his own little breakfast routine as well. He loves Kodiak Cakes which are protein pancakes. He’ll eat them with natural peanut butter on them and a small bit of 100% maple syrup. Easy. Done.
See where I’m going with this? Plan out what you’re going to eat and how it works with your schedule
If you need ideas for healthy recipes- you can check out The Quick 'N Easy Eats eCookbook in the shop. It has over 100 recipes for all meals plus rubs and has the macro breakdown hand-figured for each recipe!
MEAL PREPPING GUIDE STEP #2 – CLEAN OUT THE FRIDGE
The next thing you’ll do isn’t necessarily all that pleasant. Have you ever opened the fridge and a stench hits you in the face that is this horrendous fog of nastiness?
Yeah, here we’re trying avoid that.
If you’re anything like me, you make this awesome dinner, and then life happens and it gets shoved to the back of the fridge and you forget about it for leftovers. I truly don’t know how I forget about it. It must be a gift.
ANYWAY!
Clean out your fridge so that you know exactly how much room you have to deal with and if you have any food already made that can be used for leftovers.
This may sound a bit dumb, but believe me, it’s not. When you’re meal prepping for, heck 2 people, let alone a family – those meal boxes are going to take up some space.
Which means that you need to know exactly how much space you have.
MEAL PREPPING GUIDE STEP #3 – CARVE OUT A TIME TO PREP
One of the biggest push backs I get in regards to meal prepping is “I don’t have time to meal prep”. When, in actuality, if you’re a working mama, you don’t have time NOT to meal prep.
After the first 2-3 times, the meal prep session will take you no time at all. Around two hours is what you can expect to make dinners and lunches for the week.
If you don’t have time on that calendar of yours – then you need to make time.
Because here’s the deal, your family needs healthy and balanced meals and let’s face it; there’s no way that between you and your hubs you can cook a full healthy and balanced meal every night.
