Meal prepping tips

Morning! Happy Monday :)

If you follow me on snapchat you know I had a very busy Sunday meal prepping last night.

Meal prepping is something I used to be very good and disciplined with, and somewhere between the last few crazy months, it fell off on my list of priorities. I traveled a TON in 2016, but since I’m home for a while this month, I’m really excited to get back into it.

You might have seen on Instagram, but to start 2017 off, I’m partaking in the Barre3 #B3ALLIN challenge which starts TODAY! The challenge is motivating me to get back on that #mealplanninglife so this past week and weekend I took some time to break down the breakfasts, lunch + dinners and snacks from their yummy selections of recipes. All of these recipes will be my meals/snacks for the next week.

I wanted to share my process with you guys in case you need a little push or haven’t tried meal planning before. If you want to meal plan, you can do the same with any healthy cookbooks you have at home or simply use Google or IG for inspiration. I promise once you do it a few weeks in a row, it feels really good and gets a lot easier, too.

Here are some of my general tips I use while meal planning.

Schedule a time in your calendar to PLAN. This takes time, so be realistic and block off a couple of hours. I personally like to use calendar print outs and write out the meals and ingredients I’ll need for each recipe. I LOVE being organized like this especially since I like to physically SEE + WRITE things out. (Ex. Wednesday Jan 4, Meal Prep plan from 2-4 pm)
Schedule a time in your calendar to do a GROCERY RUN. I like to do this Sunday morning after I work out to feel extra productive. Tip, go early on during the day when it's less crowded and bring your ingredient list with you! (Ex. Sunday Jan 8, Grocery run from 9-11am)
Schedule a time in your calendar to MEAL PREP. This takes a while (I like to give myself 5+ hours). I know it sounds like a lot, but this will be ALL the time you spend all week on making food; so really it balances out AND you’re eating healthy AND you're saving money. Between my bf and I for 7 days... it comes out to $14 a person per day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Amazing. (Ex. Sunday Jan 8, Meal prep from 12-5pm)
During the planning session, I like to come up with 3 breakfast recipes, 3-5 recipes for lunch and dinner and 3 snack recipes that I want to have all week. I usually mix and match the lunch and dinner recipes. (see below for the exact meals)

Chop up everything! If you seal everything well, cut fruits and veggies will last 3-5 days. Squeezing a little lemon on it will help preserve it well, too. In the photo above, I cut up ingredients I wanted in my salad (fennel, radish, cherry tomato, cucumber slices, and beets) to top over a bed of endive and butter lettuce when I'm ready for lunch- but you can choose any greens your heart desires!
Once everything is cut or cooked, pack everything into tupperware. I suggest buying glass ones in mostly small and medium sizes and 1 or 2 large ones for stews etc.
Make a batch of quinoa and/or rice and store that in a tupperware too. This is just handy to have so you don't have to worry about making it when it comes time.
Clean as you cook. This is so important to me to keep my flow going. I can't work in a dirty kitchen especially if the pots and pans are piling up in the sink. Instead make your life easier by cleaning and rinsing as you go. Trust me you don't want to be stuck with hours of dishes after meal prepping for 5 : P

Organize your fridge in sections. I like to stack the ingredients for each recipe together and then label it with a sticky note like "DIY Salad" or " DIY Dressing" for example. I don't know why, but opening up my fridge and seeing the labels makes it easier for me to see what foods I have in the fridge without thinking. I even have a chalkboard on the wall saying what the "menu" for the week is :)

I do everything on Sundays because that’s usually when I have the most time and it sets me up for a great week. Also, I'll usually listen to my health coach courses while I cook and cut- so you can multitask and listen to podcasts or music! It’s an extra treat while you're meal planning.

Below are the recipes I meal-prepped for this week- courtesy of Barre3.

Breakfasts:

Golden milk smoothie

Cacao coconut maca shake

Green detox smoothie

Chai spiced chia seed parfait

Kale, onion, egg scramble with chicken sausage

Asparagus + egg skillet

Lunch + Dinner: 5 recipes below

Sweet Potato + Black Bean Turkey chilli

Root veggie tacos with cilantro salsa verde

Southwest quinoa superbowl

Slow cooker moroccan stew

DIY salad with cilantro balsalmic vin

Snacks:

Dark choc donut holes

Veggies + hummus

Apples + almond butter

Hard boiled eggs

Stay tuned on my snapchat (username: rrayyme) for all the behind the scenes and my Instagram (@rrayyme) because I'll be sharing a few of these yummy recipes I eat this week!~

Hope you enjoyed this post! Talk soon