Meal Prep Hack | How To Plan A Week Of Really Simple Healthy Lunches
This may sound controversial, but as a coach, I think meal plans are a waste of money for people wanting to lose weight.
In fact, I think it’s even more important to share that coaches CANNOT legally give you a prescribed meal plan - unless they are a registered dietitian. It’s out of our scope and shouldn’t be happening - but, of course, it happens anyway, unfortunately.
These generic plans are advertised as “simplifying” your life when they’re actually making things harder for you in the long run. I’m a huge believer that weight-loss meal plans are a band-aid solution - where they cover up the issue but don’t really teach you future prevention.
Much of the time, when you start a new meal plan, you’re excited to be doing something new, so you’re more likely to stay on track. But, looking long-term, as life happens and you get bored of the same ol’ foods in rotation - most people drop in consistency, gain the weight back, and think the meal plan is the only answer. Or even worse, they “stay on plan” but then completely deconstruct when they’re put at a crossroad between enjoying life or enjoying “progress”.
What do you do when it’s your son’s 3rd birthday and cake isn’t “part of the plan”?
What do you do when it’s date night with your Hubby and it’s his turn to pick a restaurant, but Buffalo Wild Wings isn’t “part of the plan”?
What do you do when you wake up on Sunday to your kiddos making you breakfast, but peanut butter and banana toast with extra whipped cream isn’t “part of the plan”?
What do you do when you’re traveling, but the local food isn’t “part of the plan”?
What do you do? Start again tomorrow? Take a “break” from your diet?
You don’t have to fall “off-plan” and start this cycle over and over again.
I think planning is essential to success in any area of your life but, when it comes to sustainable weight loss nutrition, it is so much more valuable to learn how to create your own meal plan and how to flexibly adapt it on the spot - so you can enjoy the foods you love, change things up as often as you’d like, and have a strategy when “life happens”.
So in today’s post, I’m going to teach you a simple strategy I use with my clients to plan & flexibly adapt their meals throughout the week.
The Mindful Meal Prep Method
The truth is, conventional meal prep does not work for everyone. I’ve worked with many clients who get bored of eating the same thing every day. While choosing 2-3 recipes and prepping them in individualized containers to be kept in the fridge throughout the week works for some people - it does not work for everyone. By Wednesday, they’d tell me how sick they were of eating chicken, sweet potatoes, and broccoli, leading them to just opt not to eat it at all and order take-out instead.
It’s one strategy, but not your only strategy.
When I began studying nutrition, I was fascinated by the idea that you could, realistically, create a balanced and wholesome meal simply by bringing together foods from each macronutrient profile. Thus, my Mindful Meal Prep Method was born.
The Mindful Meal Prep Method is a simple strategy (almost like a checklist) to create a generally balanced meal. It focuses less on recipe-following (which takes a lot of brain-power - that not many Moms have the energy or capacity for) and focuses more on bringing together bits and pieces to create a meal on the fly.
As simple as the format sounds, you’d be surprised how caught up we get sometimes with wanting meals to make sense. Remember: meal prep can be as complicated or as simple as you make it. Foods don’t always have to fall into a category - sandwiches, quesadilla, rice bowl, salad, etc. Foods can just exist with one another without a real name for the plate.
Here are some examples of how to keep meals fun and simple:
Cheese Pizza (Carbs + Fats) with a chicken salad (protein + veg) and apple cider vinegarette dressing (sauces & spices).
Canned Tuna (protein) in a sriracha mayo (sauce + fats) with white rice (carbs), and cucumber + sliced radish (veg).
Five Guys Little Cheese Burger (protein, carbs + fats) loaded with lettuce, tomato, onions, and green peppers (veg), and mustard + ketchup (sauce).
Air Fried Crispy Tofu (protein), stir-fried bell peppers and onions (veg), white rice (carb), and avocado (fats) with sweet chili sauce (sauces & spices).
Scrambled Egg Whites (Protein), sauteed veggies in olive oil (veg + fats), a slice of rye toast (carbs), and ketchup (sauce).
Whether you’re cooking from home or out on-the-go, you have a general idea in your mind how to create a balanced meal almost instantly!
Now that you’ve been introduced to my mindful meal prep method, let me share with you 4-tips for using this system to create a week’s worth of meal prep lunches!
How To Plan A Week’s Worth Of Healthy Meal Prep Lunches:
Step 1: Fill your kitchen with a variety of foods!
First and foremost, it’s important to set yourself up for success by preparing ahead of time. Create a grocery list with the Mindful Meal Prep Method in mind.
What proteins can you rotate between?
What veggies do you enjoy and can prepare in multiple ways?
What staple carbs can you always keep on hand?
Will you limit your dietary fats to just cooking oil or will you stem into others?
What sauces and seasoning are kitchen-staples?
Consider these questions when building your grocery list and stock up your kitchen with 1-2 from each food group to keep things flexible throughout the week. The more variety from each group, the more variety possible for your meals during the week.
Step 2: Write A List Of Potential Food Combos Using The Mindful Meal Prep Method
This doesn’t have to be an extremely specific or thorough list, but coming up with some meal ideas you could make will make your week extremely easy! When you’re not sure what you’d like to eat for lunch, you can simply refer back to this list and decide what sounds the most delicious.
I like to call this my Mindful Meal Prep Menu - where I can just take a look and decide “okay, today, I’m going to order __________ from my menu” lol.
Step 3: Prep your foods to your liking and store them separately in your fridge, freezer, or pantry.
This is where my meal prep method differentiates from traditional meal prep. On your meal prep day, you DO NOT have to spend hours cooking in the kitchen making huge batches of food!
Instead, you can spend half the time preparing individual ingredients for the week ahead. Some examples may include:
Cleaning and chopping your fruits + vegetables
Cooking your protein with basic seasonings (salt/pepper/garlic powder)
Cooking a batch of rice to last you 2-3 days
Opening cans of beans, rinse them and storing them in a container
Pre-cook a batch of pasta to keep in the fridge
Lightly saute some vegetables for quick stir fry or quesadilla fillings
Soft-boiling a few eggs
Pre-shredding some cheese
Creating any homemade sauces to store in the fridge/freezer
This is a nice in-between. Most ingredients are prepped but there is still room for flexibility and creativity for when you just want something different.
Step 4: Prep your meal the night before or the morning of using the Mindful Meal Prep Method
Depending on what works best for you, you can prep an actual meal in a container the night before or the morning of. This is solely up to you and your schedule. If you are a busy-body who has very little time to cook in the morning simply because your schedule is so crazy (kids, work, gym, etc.) then putting together something quickly the night before maybe in your best interest.
On the other hand, if you work from home (like many are right now with the pandemic) you could simply put together your meal the morning of or even on the spot.
Simply refer back to the Mindful Meal Prep Method or your pre-made list of potential food combos and enjoy!
[BONUS TIP]: If you’re extremely busy and you’d like to make your meals ahead of time, you can create your food combos on your meal-prep day, but save the sauce for eating day.
This way, you still have control over variety, but most of the work has been done for you.
For example, you could create the same rice, chicken, and mixed veggie bowl, but on Monday you may choose to use salsa, on Tuesday you may choose to use Butter Chicken Sauce, on Wednesday you may choose soy sauce to make fried rice, on Thursday you may choose to omit the rice and add your chicken and veg into a wrap with salsa, and on Friday you may choose to make another butter chicken bowl.
This is just one example, but I’m sure that while using the Mindful Meal Prep Method you’ll be able to create a variety of delicious meals for your weekly lunches!
