One of the most important factors in nutritional success is meal planning and prepping.

But meal prep doesn’t have to be in the way most people think about it. Many people think of “meal prepping” as being highly repetitive and rigid. They picture 4-6oz of the same meat, rice, and veggies FOR EVERY SINGLE MEAL, day in and day out.

No no no, don’t do that. You’ll end up resenting your food and likely engage in unhealthy overindulgence behaviors.

So, what to do instead? Follow a few simple tips!

Start with your most “problematic” meal of your day and pick that meal to prep for!

• Find yourself skipping breakfast or lunch? Ordering take out for dinner several times per week?

• Start with the meal that gives you the most stress or where you want more consistency. When that meal gets dialed in, add another! You may find that fixing that one meal solves more than one nutrition challenge.

Make basic ingredients for mixing and matching throughout the week!

• Think of a few proteins first: chicken breast, ground turkey, pork loin, tri-tip, etc.

• Then prep a few starches: rice, potatoes, pasta

• Make sure you have plenty of veggies, fruits and grains on hand

• Chop veggies you bought to make it easier to incorporate into meals.

• Cook them ahead if you can

• You can take these basic ingredients and mix and match to make tacos, “bowls,” salads, scrambles, stir fry, etc.

Additional meal prep tips:

• Buy frozen!

• Frozen veggies, fruits and meats are JUST AS HEALTHY as fresh and most times, much faster to your plate than cooking “fresh”

• Check the deli section for premade meals. The supermarket industry has seriously stepped up their game to make high protein, healthy, heat and serve meal options easy to find.

• Nothing wrong into looking for a meal prep company either (reach out if you want a referral or help ordering)

• Please don’t prep food you hate in the name of “being healthy” either. You’ll just wind up throwing it away and wasting valuable money, time and energy.