Fail to prepare, prepare to fail #mealprep

I am a big fan of meal prepping. In my less healthy days, I would prepare my lunches for the office not to be healthy but because it saved me time, money and also having to choose from a canteen menu that consisted of chips, chips and more chips. I also really hate wasting food, it’s one of my pet peeves. It must have been from growing up in a household were if we didn’t finish our dinner there was nothing else for us for the rest of the evening! Now, if I don’t finish my dinner it turns into my lunch the next day, but this is rare………… as I always finish my dinner :)

When it comes to healthy meal prepping my advice would be to keep it really simple and realistic. I like to prep twice a week. Once on a Sunday and then again on a Wednesday evening. I have this time blocked out. This suits my schedule but figure out what suits you . Choose what fits in with your routine and is realistic.

Here are 5 tips on how to be as efficient and effective as possible when it comes to meal prepping;

1) Keep it simple - if you are like me and not a fan of cooking for hours then keep it simple with simple meal ideas. e.g Breakfast, protein oats with chia, Lunch brown rice, egg veggies, Dinner chicken, sweet potato, quinoa, veggies etc.. you get the idea. If I over-complicate the meal planning then I am totally turned off the whole process Keep it simple and quick. Calculate your macros for the week and from there prep your meals (try www.myfitnesspal.com for macro tracking)

2) Block out Prep Time - Time is the biggest obstacle for people on their health & fitness journey. Jobs are hectic and often run-over the scheduled hours so block out the prep time on a Saturday/ Sunday/ Monday and get it done. You could even create a 45 minute window in the morning for yourself by rising earlier, so you can prepare extra healthy food for the day ahead. According to Forbes most successful people rise early in order to prepare for the day ahead. You should try it!

3) Stock up on Tupperware to store all your lean meals. You can buy Tupperware in Aldi, Lidl, Ikea for a couple of euro.

4) Buy a scale to weigh your food - I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t losing weight about 2 years ago but when I purchased a food scale and realized I was eating about 600 kcal of oats in the morning it all made sense. Be careful when it comes to portions. Here is a link to the scale I use and it's only €15.00 -

5) Keep it fit & fun!! Buy some nice healthy spices and herbs to season the food with and make sure you enjoy what you’re eating. There is nothing worse than dreading a meal or eating something that is horribly dry and not satisfying.

Here is my 3 day meal prep for this week. It took me 90 mins in total;

Breakfast: Small chopped Banana, half a chopped apple, half a kiwi, walnuts, chia seed, blueberries and 0% greek yoghurt. I like to drizzle some honey on top.

Lunch: Boiled Egg, sweet potato, red kidney beans, quinoa rice and peppers.

Dinner: Turkey Burger, chicken breast, sweet potato, long stem broccoli, courgettes, few kidney beans.

Snacks: Walnuts, goji berries.

Other: It is not in the pic but I usually workout in the morning and will have a scoop of protein and about 30g of oats

post workout for recovery.

Any questions let me know!!

Laura

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