First Attempt- Meal Prep

The idea of meal prep sounds pretty dang good during the week. Busy mornings turn into “whatever” kind of food days and that’s definitely not helping me towards my food goals. I get a little overwhelmed at the whole “prep” part though, don’t you?

I know that this trend has been around forever now, but I wanted to figure out a way for un-motivated people (like moi) to get some prep done and be happy about it during the week. I decided to start with 3 meals each day- breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack. I like to cook dinner each night for my hubby and I, so that didn’t seem like a super relevant meal for prepping in advance. I usually plan out each dinner for the entire week and do my grocery shopping on Saturdays; Skylor likes to eat the leftovers for lunch throughout the week, and that usually works out great for us. Here are my go-to healthy cookbooks for dinners: Betty Crocker 300 calories, Cooking Light & Betty Crocker Heart Healthy.

Here’s the simplest meal prep schedule I could come up with that was still balanced and would keep me full. By simple, I kept it to the same meal each day. If you get bored with food easily, you may want to swap some things out each day. I’m generally okay with the same foods for a few days, but I might alter this week over week. I made all of my breakfasts, lunches and snacks on Sunday and stacked them all in the fridge (cooking  in one large batch honestly made it feel so much easier than having to do a little bit each day). It took about an hour and half but it was my first time, so I am assuming that my prep time will go down in the future once I get the hang of things.
Right now I am more focused on building good eating habits so I am not counting calories. I find that when I try to do too much at one time, I get super overwhelmed. Once I get the hang of this (and my 4-12 rule… I’ll post about that soon!) then I might start keeping better track of the exact calories. For now, I am working to avoid junk food and cut out snacking/grazing throughout the day.

Here’s a little grocery list in case anyone else wants to try it out this week:

For breakfast I made cake batter overnight oats- I found the recipe here and I altered it just a little bit. I didn’t use the protein power but added more oats instead. Note that the recipe makes 2 servings- so split it in half to make one mason jar worth. I would also suggest to add the ingredients in the order listed and not to mix it until you are ready to eat (it will keep it from getting soggy).
For lunch, I just sauteed the zucchini in a little bit of olive oil, browned the ground turkey and put some seasoning on it & broiled the tomatoes.
To make the broiled tomatoes just mix bread crumbs (I used 1/4 cup for all 10 halves), about 1 tablespoon of garlic, salt & pepper and drizzled with olive oil. Put under the broiler for a few minutes (keep an eye on them, you don’t want them to burn!)

I’d love to get some meal ideas from any of you meal-prep-pros! I need to switch it up a little bit and would love some advice.