Third Step: Grocery Store List & Trip
After you’ve made up a plan for your meals for the week, it’s much easier to make a grocery list. The first week you are transitioning into preparing all your meals like this, I encourage you to keep it simple. One breakfast for your busiest days, one lunch for your busiest days.
For example:
- Overnight oats with protein powder and fruit
- Grilled lemon garlic chicken with frozen vegetables
Before you head out to shop you need to ask a few more questions:
- Do you have the containers to store all the pre-made breakfasts and lunches?
- How much protein will you be eating at each lunch?
- How many oats do you eat per breakfast?
- How much fruit and veggies do you need for each meal?
This way you make sure the grocery shopping trip is once in the week and you have all you need to prepare. If you’re planning on eating about 6 ounces of chicken per lunch x 5 days that’s 30 ounces. Which is roughly 2lbs of meat. I also encourage you to pick foods that will make your prep easy. Frozen fruit and veggies are GREAT for this. I’ll explain more in the meal prep section.
Similar to the calendar in your kitchen there are more secondary benefits to having a shopping list. You usually shop faster, because you have a dedicated list, with amounts of what you will need. You also are less likely to browse the entire store and put more things in your cart that don’t fit with the meal prep plan and your overall goals to eat healthier. Less decision fatigue, less money spent on items that are outside of the plan, which can also lead to less food waste.
Fourth Step: Meal Prep!
Now you’ve reached the day. Set up all your containers, put on some of your favorite music and make it fun. I like to marinade my proteins ahead of time so that I’m ready to cook or grill. Maybe you picked up something pre-marinated that’s ready to cook. I encourage you to weigh or rough measure your protein and veggies so you’re consistently getting the same amount in each meal. This is where I love frozen vegetables, I will fill my container with my protein and then add in the frozen veggies, shut the container and put it in the fridge. Once you take it out later in the week the veggies will have defrosted and you can pop the entire container into the microwave to reheat. If you’re making the overnight oats you can make one large batch for all five days and distribute evenly into your containers. I like to top these with frozen fruit, similar to the frozen vegetables, they will defrost in the fridge and be ready to eat.
Fifth Step: Review the Week
It’s important to pause after a long week and observe what went right and what didn’t go as well as you hoped. What foods were super tasty to you and you’re excited to have again? What foods did you find you didn’t really enjoy? Were you hungry after a particular meal and felt like maybe you needed more food? Everyone’s food preferences are different, but you can continue to adjust and change the weekly plan to make it more to your liking. Just because green beans are healthy, doesn’t mean you’re going to want them in your plan every week. You need to pick foods that are things you enjoy AND fit into your food related goals.
Lastly, I cannot stress this enough: if you do not 100% follow the plan you made for the week, it’s ok. Maybe everyone in the house wanted to go out and get tacos on Thursday instead of your original plan to grill some fish. That is FINE. In fact it’s good to be flexible in all of this. Life happens. The purpose of your meal calendar and prep is to reduce the stress of meeting your food goals and setting yourself up for success. There is a common misconception when you meal prep, you have to adhere to the plan 100% of the time or you’re a complete failure. That you must follow the rules all the time or the entire process is a waste. There could be nothing further from the truth. Planning ahead in this manner is showing up for yourself and your goals. But equally as important is being flexible when changes happen, being kind to yourself if you ate something that didn’t fit the plan. Negative self talk cycles are common triggers for many people to feel ashamed, which often leads to emotional eating. If anxiety rises in you when the plan wasn’t followed perfectly, make sure to check in with yourself and remind YOU that you showed up that week and you’re doing good. Tomorrow is a new day and you’ll set out after your goals again.
Coach Sarah, FNP-BC, MSN