Meal prepping for success!
All the learnings in my blogs about digestive health 101, what to eat for brain clarity or how to nourish your gut…it’s all great but if you don’t put it into practice…then it’s all just words.
But, I hear you say, my days are crammed with meetings, deadlines, and countless demands on my time. And I then have a family, with their demands of after school sports, events and basically managing their lives!
Amidst this chaos, maintaining a healthy diet can often feel like an insurmountable challenge. Sometimes it actually feels like success If you find something that resembles food and you eat it!!
But fear not, for meal prepping is here to save the day! It certainly saved mine with busy leadership roles and a family of between 5 and 7 to feed depending on the weeks.
Meal prepping might sound easy…prep your meals…yeah what’s so hard about that??
Nothing really, but I’ve learnt quite a few tips and tricks over the years that will make this process even easier for you.
So let me give you 20 years of learning in 7 tips - bargain!
Meal Prepping Strategies for Busy Leaders:
Plan Ahead:
My Saturdays are my planning days. I really embrace this part of the process and get out cook books and salivate at the great ideas that I could cook during the week. Yes those books on the shelves that look good and that you probably haven’t opened in ages. Dig them out, take a look! Or better still, visit my easy, healthy and delicious recipes here! I’ve done all the searching for you.
Once you have your recipes, you need to be able to plan your week out. Some use paper and pen, a whiteboard or electronic version.
My go to planning tool is Realplans. I’m sure there are many out there but this is an amazing tool that has the ability to portion control, only give you recipes that fit your diet (Paleo, vegetarian, Keto, Low FODMAP, Whole30 and more), automatically collate your shopping list and have this across all devices. So I plan using my computer, then I use my phone and go around my kitchen to tick off what I already have. That way I only shop for what I don’t have. No waste. No buying things I don’t need.
2. Theme Nights:
As part of your planning, it makes it even easier to sort out recipes for the week if you assign a theme to each day.
You can use the main ingredient, for example Meatless Monday, Chicken Tuesday, Fishy Fridays.
Or you can use the style of meal like Stir-Fry Wednesday, Roast Sunday etc..
3. Embrace Online:
If you live in a town or city where you can online shop and either pick it up or better still, get it delivered. Do it!
Once I finish my planning and my checking off in the kitchen, I sit with my computer and list (which is on my phone) and just order each product and tick it off the list. No battling trolleys or queuing to pay. Saves so much time. Simple. Delivery next day!
4. Batch Cooking:
Sundays are my batch cooking or meal prepping days.
I cook up homemade muesli or coconut chia pudding for breakfasts. For lunch it might be a tray bake or prepping for a salad bar (see below).
Sometimes I will even cook a couple of dinners, like a big soup or casserole and portion them out.
5. Salad (or soup) Bar Prep:
This is a game changer. Create a DIY salad bar in your refrigerator by washing, chopping, and prepping a variety of salad ingredients such as mixed greens, chopped vegetables, cooked grains, cubed roasted veges (kumera, carrots, parsnip) and protein options (chicken, hard-boiled eggs, beans).
Store the prepared ingredients in separate containers and assemble customised salads throughout the week for quick and nutritious meals.
In winter, I do the same prep but throw it all into a miso broth or chicken broth base.
6. Portion Control and storage:
Invest in a set of meal prep containers to portion out your meals in advance. This not only saves time but also helps prevent overeating and promotes portion control.
Divide your meals into individual servings for easy grab-and-go convenience during hectic weekdays.
Don’t forget to label the containers because I promise you, if you freeze these, you won’t what’s in there from the look of it…as I found out quite a few times! Yes I invested in a label maker.
Put some in the fridge and some in the freezer so you never run out of healthy, well prepared meals!
7. Get great tools
A Slow Cooker - I LOVED my slow cooker. After dinner, when the children where in bed, I’d sometimes prep the next evenings’ meal. Chopping up vegetables, getting the stock ready and protein. Put it all in the slow cooker dish and into the fridge overnight. Then in the morning, whip it out and into the slow cooker for the day. Boom! The smell when you walk in through your door after a long hard day with hungry kids was like some angel had been home cooking for you…oh wait, that angel was you! Nice work!
I have now upgraded to a pressure cooker (which also does slow cooking) AMAZING!
Get tools that will support your prepping and make life even easier for you. They are so worth the investment. Just think about how you are saving money on not buying take aways at lunch!
I hope these tips have helped you in making sure you always have healthy and nutritious meals at the ready so you don’t run out and buy the first thing you see, which usually isn’t healthy for you at all!
Put the mask on you first, prep your meals for the week and thrive again!
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