How We Meal Prep for the Week
I received compensation for this post. All thoughts are my own.
TGIF, amiright?! Was this the longest week ever for anyone else?! I’ve never been more thankful for the weekend! We still have a bunch going on, but at least we can look forward to not waking up at 6am!
I’ve received a TON of messages on Instagram about our meal prepping posts, so I thought I’d share a bit about our meal prepping process today! John and I are on this semi-complicated diet/meal plan/way of eating thing, so the prepping makes meal time infinitely easier!
Planning
We start on Friday evenings, by choosing two or three meals that we’d like for lunch the following week. John and I are following Renaissance Periodization templates, which give you a breakdown of what types of foods and how much you should be eating at each meal. For lunch, I get 40g lean protein, 35g healthy carbs, 2 small handfuls of vegetables, and 5g healthy fat.
With that, we put together meal ideas. Typically it’s something like grilled chicken or steak with some rice or sweet potatoes, and whatever veggies we’re feeling. Green beans, spinach, squash, and onions have been on heavy rotation lately.
Shopping
Saturday is shopping day! Buying in bulk works best for us, as we seem to go through a TON of food! I’ll easily use an entire 6.5 bag of Kirkland Signature frozen chicken breasts from Costco between all of our lunches and dinner for the week!
Costco also has bags of frozen fruit that are perfect for prepping my smoothies in the morning! I just toss them in a plastic baggie with spinach and freeze. Their 24-pack of Kirkland Signature eggs is perfect for John getting his protein in the morning.
Prepping
We’ve been prepping on Sundays for 5 weeks now, and have improved the process tremendously! This last week it only took us about 3 hours to get everything done. The tricky part, has been figuring out when to do which food items, so that everything gets done around the same time.
John and I work together, to make it all go as smoothly as possible. He mostly chops and grills, while I do the cooking that happens in the kitchen.
This past weekend, it went something like this:
- John chopping vegetables, while I made my smoothie packs
- Me getting vegetables into the oven, while John started the grill
- Steaks grilling outside while I start chicken in the Instant Pot and rice in the rice cooker
- Eggs boiling while stove-top vegetables get cooked
- Bring everything together, and start portioning it all out
We use plastic bento boxes with 3 compartments that can be microwaved. That way he just takes his boxes to work and can heat and eat.
Tips
Breaking the whole process down into three days makes the prepping thing a whole lot less overwhelming, especially when we were just starting out.
Keep it simple. I considered making the same meal for the entire week, but John gets two lunches daily, and our friends assured us that we’d be sick of eating the same thing. They’re right. Even with 2-3 different meals, we don’t vary too much and it makes prep much easier.
Calculate how much food you’ll need ahead of time, so you don’t have to interrupt your cooking to go shopping! We literally break it down by how many grams of steak or squash we’ll need. Kind of a pain, but it makes shopping easy!
Bulk shopping is convenient and usually cheaper! If you’ve considered getting a Costco membership, they have a fantastic offer right now for military, which includes huge savings! Plus, coming up on March 24, they’ll have their Military Shopping Hour, from 8-9:30am, open only to the military community and featuring samples, product demos, and snacks! RSVP: here!
