Master your Master Food Prep

OKAY, I'll admit... the first time I heard about someone doing a once per week "Master Food Prep", I thought to myself... "those damn over achievers"! The past few weeks I have been grabbing unhealthy items for lunches, snacking on things I shouldn't be all due to not having the time to prepare anything healthy. THIS is one of people's biggest barriers when it comes to hitting their health goal.... time!

I came to the realization that if I dedicate 1 hour per week for food prep, in the long run it is going to save me a ton of time, hassle, reduce my stress, etc. The thought of prepping however, stressed me out!!!

I decided to do the dreaded task and see if it'd be helpful, and to see how difficult it actually was. I wrote down a couple ideas for lunches/ dinners/ breakfast & snacks. This is what I decided on: Healthy Egg Salad, Avocado Mix (for wraps), Turkey Spaghetti with whole wheat pasta, Cucumbers, and fresh cut veggies (green peppers, etc), and Steel Cut Oats (Cinnamon Apple recipe for the Crock Put from He & She Eat Clean). Snacks: Chick Pea Chips, and Oatmeal Cookies.

Now, this will not be the entire week... I also have some "on - hand" items that are easy like: 100 calorie pack almonds, Kashi Frozen Waffles, and a Protein Cereal from Aldis that I consider to be a great / cheap staple in the pantry: Millville Get Balance Cereal. In addition, another great item from Aldi's Fit & Active Chicken (frozen).

I also have spinach, and supplies for quick salads, as well as my Shakeology and Protein Shake Supply (which is another quick/ easy item).

I started my prep at 4:30pm, and was done by 5:30pm. I even ate a portion of the Spaghetti for dinner tonight, and put the left overs in the containers for this week.

Try to get a few things started together. For example: I boiled my eggs for the egg salad, and had the sauce going for the spaghetti at the same time.

While those were boiling/ simmering I chopped the celery and onion for the egg salad, and chopped some cucumbers for the week. I also had time to do the avocado mixture for the wraps.

Here are some key items that make prep fast and easier:

1)  A nice chopping knife
2) Pampered Chef (or any other brand) food chopper.
3) Crock Pot
4) Cheap re-usable containers (the ones I got were like 4 for $2 at wal-mart)
5) Full stocked spice rack
6) Dry Erase markers to label the containers and put the date on them
7) Baggies (snack size and sandwich size)