While visiting with my daughter, Nik, in Chicago, she was sharing with me how challenging it was juggling work and trying to eat healthy when you’re too tired to cook.
I consider myself a bit of an old pro at meal prepping since I traveled extensively when I was working in Corporate America. The last 4 years before I retired I was on the road every other week. However, when you’re first starting out, I think it’s important to keep it simple.
So, on behalf of my daughter, Nicole, I give you the four easy steps you need to meal prep.
Step One – Create a Schedule
I can’t emphasize this enough! If you don’t create a regular time to create your meal plan, it likely won’t happen. How much time you need will depend on you. You can spend as little as 30 minutes or as long as you want. Just choose a consistent time to do your meal planning and stick to it.
For me, I did most of my meal planning on Saturday as I was in the kitchen cooking. Since I primarily shop through Instacart, it’s a convenient way to save time for me. Using the Instacart app as an ongoing grocery list is a great convenience too.
However and whenever you do it, create your schedule and stick to it.
Step Two – Make a Meal Plan
By making a meal plan for the week, you’ll know what you need and when. Start by asking yourself what meals you need to plan for. Do you want a plan for 3 meals or just one? If just one, do you have a plan for the other meals? What about snacks? If you’re a snacker, what do you usually snack on and where do you get it? Are you looking to change any of your eating habits? If so, identify the foods you need to support that new habit and add them to your list.
I highly encourage you to write out your meal plan and post it somewhere you frequently look, like the front of your refrigerator. It will serve as a visual reminder of the meals you’ve already planned. That will serve two purposes. One is it can free up space in your brain so what you’re going to eat is one less thing you have to keep worrying about all week. The other purpose is to help keep you on track with your plan. Out of site, out of mind. It will be easy to stray from your plan if you can’t see it.
Step Three – Make a Shopping List
Being a planner and a shopper, I always enjoyed both steps. I love finding creative things to cook but it’s always disappointing if you don’t have the right ingredients. Since I am a big believer in control the controllables, planning the food and creating the shopping lists helps keep it fun for me. Planning it out also gives me the freedom to think about experimenting with a recipe. So I may add in an extra ingredient or two to my shopping list to try a twist on a recipe.
Back in the days before Instacart and when I had to go to the grocery store, it was a whole big ordeal. I was shopping for 5 kids and I used coupons. I’m so thankful that now, all I have to do is to press some buttons and some wonderful people will select and bring me my groceries. Now that’s what I call progress!
On to the last step.
Step Four – Reward Yourself!
I worked in HR for 32 years, more than 25 of those years were in leadership. One of my favorite sayings was, “That that gets rewarded, gets repeated”. Time and time again, I could get my teams to perform in extraordinary ways, smashing goals and objectives. I honestly believe one of the reasons is because I believed in giving them great rewards for great performance.
So apply that same standard to yourself. What will motivate you to do the first three steps? For me, I considered it a pleasure to spend Sunday afternoons in my kitchen with a glass of wine, cooking Sunday dinner and meal prepping for the week. All I needed was a good Reisling, some good tv, a little alone time to do my thing in the kitchen. That was my reward. That and having peace of mind not stressing about what I’m cooking after work.
So, give these 4 easy steps a try and let me know how they work for you.
Namaste
