In today’s 2 Minute Q&A, we’re dedicating this video to meal prep. On Sundays, I love sharing my weekly dinner menu and which items I’ll be making for meal prep. You know me, I am a full-time mom and entrepreneur, this doesn’t leave me with a lot of time or energy at the end of the day. If I had to cook during the weekday I probably would order uber eats and go over budget every week. This isn’t sustainable from a financial or health standpoint so meal prep helps me create a system and balance for my family. Here are a few tips you can use to help you create a meal plan and prep for your family.
Bigger than Weight Loss & Saving Money
A lot of people have been introduced to meal prep through fitness trainers to help you lose weight. That’s actually how we ran into meal prepping as well, but we didn’t use it for fitness purposes. In actuality, we started meal prepping to stop wasting food and money. Little did I realize that meal prepping is so much more than that.
For me, once I entered motherhood I didn’t have time for anything. Setting some time on Sunday mornings to cook my meals allowed me to free up my weekday nights. This helped to reduce my stress and arguments with my husband about not knowing what we were going to eat that night. I know it might sound small, but anything that can reduce your stress during the toughest days of the week is a win for me.
Avoid Meal Prep Burn Out
Before you start meal prepping, I highly recommend creating an easy routine for the type of meals you’re going to make. One-pot meals, instant pot meals, and one-bake dishes are my favorite due to the simplicity. I personally create meals that I can make in one pot or make extra sides to use on multiple dishes. For example, if I make 3 cups of rice, I will use half of the rice for one meal and the other to make fried rice. This small hack allows you to have multiple purposes for your sides and even entrees. I do the same for my flatbreads, I take some chicken from another meal to add as a topping. Once you start seeing multiple ways to maximize your foods into different meals you’re on a whole nother level to meal prepping.
The 3 Day Meal Prep
One of the biggest problems I found with meal prep is how exhausted I was when trying to meal prep for the whole week. On top of questioning the food, if it’s still good to eat or not, I was burned out after cooking a few meals. I had to figure out what my number of meals was to feel confident in the food’s freshness and not exhaust myself along the way. For me, it’s meal prepping only for 3 days of the week. Here is my most recent schedule that’s been working for me:
Sunday: Meal prep for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
Thursday: Order out or cook a frozen meal from Trader Joes
Friday: Appetizer Friday
Saturday: Big family meal that lasts until Sunday
To My Mamas
This easy meal prep routine allows me to save time, money, food, and stress during the week. For me, this is a big deal that outweighs a lot of the initial reasons why I started meal prepping. As a mom, we need to make sure we create routines that will help us do our job and not kill us in the process. If you know any mamas who are struggling to do it all, please share this content with them. Small tricks and hacks can help so many of us ladies who are secretly struggling on multiple levels.
Related Content
- 6 Ways to Avoid Meal Prep Burnout
- How I Balance Motherhood and Entrepreneurship
- Our Love/Hate Relationship with Meal Prep
