Since food prep tips are always something my PNP private clients want, I’ve got another prep lesson from my own session this week. This is key to my weight loss success and maintenance. Let’s build on past food prep tips…shall we?
Food Prep Tips: Don’t Get Overwhelmed
The chief complaint is y’all get lost making a whole week’s menu because you feel like there should be lots of variety. Let me tell you this: I look at 100′s of food journals every week from private clients to private group training. When y’all are OFF PLAN you eat the same thing all the time! Why is it when you eat healthy there must be a Julia Child’s meal every night and God-forbid one night repeat?
That’s BULL CRAP! Food prep tips would be useless without saying you are trying to snow me and you. A lot of you like pizza, cereal, ice cream, and chips and salsa. If I said you could eat that every day of the week and lose weight how many of you would complain that I made a BORING menu? Not too many.
Food Prep Tips SOLUTION is to find a meal you like for breakfast, lunch, and your two snacks during the day that you LIKE and fits in your calories (notice I NEVER SAID IT HAS TO BEEN SQUEAKY CLEAN). On Sunday, hit the store, go home, and make six servings of this stuff. Yes. Make six. A bonus for you looking for food prep tips is I always make a week’s worth of food and for five years I haven’t had one problem with it. When you eat healthy and quit eating doo-doo you amazingly don’t FEEL LIKE DOO DOO anymore.
And why six? Because Saturday is notorious to be the donkey day in your fat loss plan so have food ready.
Food Prep Tips: One Meal Might Be Crafty
For dinner, this is where you might get more creative or you might not. I actually make most of our dinners ahead of time. Our dinners are delicious but demand quickness. Like all of you we are a busy family and it must be on the table pronto.
This week I made crockpot Italian soup like Olive Garden’s that can be heated up with some fruit on the side. EASY and since fall is here I and my girl, Emily, are inspired this week. Check her blog, too, for some good stuff. We also do pasta a lot. I brown the meat on Sunday so that all I have to do is boil up some noodles for the boys, steam some veggies for me, and open a jar of good red or pesto sauce. If we don’t have meat a can of beans does the job. I also make chicken thighs in my Pampered Chef Ridged Baker. Throw down the chicken, sprinkle with spice of choice, cover with wax paper and cook on high 4-5 minutes per side. While that is going I make a salad for us, wash some fruit, and toast some bread.
Here’s my menu this week: breakfast is a Shakeology or oatmeal and egg whites, lunch is Mason Jar Mexican Salad with piece of Ezekial Toast, dinner is a hamburger patty covered in peppers and onions with buffalo roasted cauliflower and a sweet potato. My snacks are Shakeology, a protein shake post-workout, apples, and yogurt with pumpkin seeds.
Layered in order from bottom: salsa, cabbage slaw mix, shredded carrots, diced yellow and green peppers, chic peas, ground beef with taco seasoning, green onions, black olives, lettuce, cilantro.
Food Prep Tips: If you are short on time make ahead shakes, freeze, and let thaw in cooler through the day for when you are ready.
Food Prep Tips: Use small containers to store your portions.
I made Chris five lunches and afternoon snacks. He does Shakeology for breakfast daily, Thai Peanut Swai with asian flavored qunioa and roasted green beans for lunch, chicken thighs with buffalo cauliflower for afternoon snack, and then he wanted Mason Jar Mexican Salad for his dinner this week.
Logan does oatmeal every morning before school (old fashioned oats cooked in almond milk, a banana, flax seed, and one sheet of graham cracker crumbled up after cooking), two protein and flax pancake muffins, lunch is leftover dinner with fruit and an oatmeal cookie, snacks are fruit and dinner is what I make quick, delicious, and enough for some lunches.
These muffins are so easy to make!
2 cups of whole grain Bisquick pancake mix
1 cup of egg whites (I use the carton)
Enough unsweetened almond milk to make a thick batter
1/4 cup of sugar in the raw (sweetens so you don’t have to use syrup)
1/4 cup of flax seed
2 tbsp of vanilla extract
Frozen berries of choice
Mix all ingredients except the berries. Pour into large muffin tins (mine makes 12) sprayed with non-stick or lightly oiled with coconut oil. Drop berries on top (I use one cherry and a few blueberries). Bake for 15-18 minutes at 350F.
The beauty of these muffins is that they don’t CRUMBLE. They have a sweetened pancake texture so they hold for kids to eat in the car as breakfast or as a mid-morning snack. I bag two for Logan and keep in fridge.