food prepping!

I like to have alot of produce cleaned, cut up and readily available. That way I can throw together a stir fry, make salads, whip up a veggie egg bake or at least have healthy options ready to go when I open the fridge. We try and make a large dinner on Sunday evening to get us through a day or two (roast or steaks) and then just have to make salads or a veggie after work to finish the meal. I wouldn't enjoy a whole afternoon of prepping or cooking because I agree with the other poster who said eating the same thing for days can get annoying. Maybe start small and just have a tentative menu planned for the week and have a bunch of produce ready to go?

I sort of prep my food for the week. I do bulk cooking on the weekends so that I always have something I can grab from the freezer that is pre-portioned with calorie count. I log (and pull together) all of my food the day before so that I don't come up against a time crunch and end up with junk instead of a meal. This works for me because I work 10 hour days and don't have time to cook AND exercise after work (if I still want a life....).

Edit: I don't eat the same thing day after day because I have multiple types of foods frozen that I can grab and I mix them up. I could walk to my freezer right now and pull out a different entree for a full week and never have the same thing twice.

I always prep my lunches and suppers. That way it's constistant (which I like). And if you are ravenous after a workout or whatever you have something you can eat instantly without worrying about grabbing a piece of cake or whatever else is in sight.

Plus, food prep (for me anyways) is fun. I do it on Sundays, it really doesnt take that long as I eat LCHF - so I'm making meat and veggie dishes.

It's by no means a necessity, but it's a tool that many people (including myself) have found extremely useful. Every Sunday afternoon I spend about an hour, usually right after I get home from the grocery, doing things like making a pot of beans, making a big batch of some sort of whole grain (quinoa, brown rice, farro, etc.), hard cooking some eggs, cutting up fruit (canteloupe, pineapple, whatever I'm in the mood for that week) and portioning into one-cup servings, cutting up carrot or celery sticks and storing in cold water so they don't dry out, grilling some chicken breasts or browning some ground turkey or baking some salmon fillets, measuring out the dry ingredients for my overnight oats so that all I have to do is add the liquid items each evening, pre-portioning one-ounce baggies of almonds or pistachios or walnuts, roasting a few sweet potatos, etc. Sometimes I get more ambitious and make an actual recipe or two, but usually it's just ingredients that I'm getting ready. It sounds like a lot, but once I got the hang of it and developed a rhythm, it went really quickly. It's a wonderful feeling to open the fridge on Monday morning and see so many healthy options staring me in the face, and it makes it very hard for me to claim that I don't have anything I feel like eating, especially when I come home late at night and exhausted. No matter what, I can toss something together in a matter of minutes because I've already done all the base work. Now, I always feel "off" on the weeks when I haven't taken the time to set myself up for success. Best wishes figuring out what works best for you!

I am a big fan of meal planning. Every 5-7 days, I make a meal plan for the week that takes into account my schedule and how much time I will have to prepare for dinner. With my meal plan I create a grocery list. When shopping I stick to the grocery list, I don't buy anything extra. I don't do all my meal prep for the week at one time, but my plan might have me doing extra prep a few days ahead because I am busy. It also relies on leftovers. For example, I made some honey sesame chicken in the crockpot for dinner last night, but I made a double batch so we can have leftovers tomorrow night since I have plans after work and won't have time to cook.

Meal planning might sound like a lot of work, but I have found that it really takes away a lot of stress:

- I like knowing exactly what to buy versus wandering around the grocery store thinking "what sounds good for dinner this week?" (That is what my mom does and how I was raised).

- Before I got in the meal planning habit, I would come home from work and spend too much time looking in the pantry and fridge trying to decide what to make. Now I come home, know what I am having for dinner and don't stress about it.

- Meal planning has also really cutback on the amount of food waste I have. In the past, I would buy food with the intention of cooking it but never getting around to it before it spoiled. Some weeks were horrible in terms of generating food waste (especially when I was in a CSA)!

I always include 1-2 meals on my plan that uses mostly pantry items and ingredients that can be kept in the freezer for a while. Things come up and I have to shift my meal plan around.

So if prepping all of your food on one day for the whole week works for you, do it! I at least recommend planning ahead.

Works great for my family!! Highly recommend!