Guest Post: Meal Planning for Busy Girls
Good morning and Happy Presidents Day! I hope you all had a great Valentine’s Weekend. We sure did! In fact, Scott and I are currently enjoying our final morning in Houston after an awesome weekend celebrating the nuptials of friends.
I’ll be sure to share some of the fun from our time in Texas on the blog tomorrow, but until then, I hope you enjoy reading these helpful tips on meal prepping from Shannon. I know I could certainly step up my meal planning!
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Hi everyone! I’m Shannon from Skinny Sometimes and I KNOW it can be challenging to eat healthy when you’re short on time. And if you’re a busy person, you’re most likely short on time… all of the time.
When I started working my first real job, it wasn’t uncommon for me to work 80 hours a week. I quickly became unhappy. I learned the importance of prepping meals for myself and found lots of tips and tricks along the way. I used these tips and tricks in my new ebook, A Busy Girl’s Guide to Happy Eating.
The great part about meal planning is after you get into the swing of things, you’ll learn what works best for you. It’s important to remember that there’s no right way to do it. The objective is to make it as easy as possible to eat healthy food during a busy week to ultimately reduce stress so you can find time in your busy days to enjoy yourself.
Here are some of my favorite tips:
Plan & Prioritize
Of course, the first and most important step to meal planning is the actual plan. That means getting it on your schedule. Make time to go grocery shopping and and prep the food. Put it on your schedule and make it a priority. If you’re a girl on-the-go, don’t wing it. You simply won’t have time. This means to try and plan full meals instead of just healthy food components. Instead of cooking up some chicken, some broccoli and rice to keep in the fridge, spice it up with a healthy casserole that’s both delicious, nutritious and easy to toss in a container and heat up at the office. Take the guesswork out for yourself and make this as stress-free as possible.
Allow For Flexibility
Plans and events are likely to come up during the week so don’t be afraid to leave a few holes in your schedule. Keep homemade meals in the freezer (make a little extra one week and store it in the freezer) or keep store-bought organic frozen meals on hand as a backup.
I also love frozen white fish fillets or shrimp, frozen vegetables and brown rice for a quick meal. You can thaw the vegetables and fish in a matter of minutes and the brown rice cooks up quickly too. Add a little spices and you’re good to go. On my blog, I call this “The Easiest Healthy Dinner.”
These ingredients last a long time, are easy to have on hand and give you a last minute healthy option if plans don’t pan out.
It’s also important to allow for flexibility because sticking to a strict plan causes unneeded stress. Embrace the unexpected. Plus, having too much food prepped can be a bad thing if it’s left to go to waste.
Plan Meals You Love
Just because you think you should eat salads every day doesn’t mean you have to. If you like salads, go for it. However, there’s plenty of other healthy options out there. I only have one salad in the ebook and it’s loaded with roasted vegetables and turkey. I don’t love eating salads all the time and you can’t freeze them. I make them far and few in-between at home especially in the winter!
Remember to have food available that you want to eat, not things you think you should eat. You’ll be more likely to eat what you have on hand instead of deciding to dine out last minute. The advantage of cooking your own food is that you know what goes in it. That means you can make foods you love with healthy substitutes.
The great thing about cooking your own food instead of dining out is that suddenly things become much healthier. Homemade meatballs can be made with lean mean, extra vegetables and baked. Then smothered in a naturally low in sugar marinara sauce and served over whole wheat pasta or zucchini noodles. Restaurants tend to load meals with salt and sugar because it’s a cheap and easy way to make food taste better.
Keep these things in mind and you’ll be sure to have a successful busy week full of healthy eats. Being busy IS an excuse, but there’s no reason why it needs to keep you from eating healthy.
If all this still seems undoable for you, be sure to check out my ebook, A Busy Girl’s Guide to Happy Eating (<- affiliate link). It’s a step-by-step, 6-week guide filled with menus, shopping lists and prep instructions. And because there’s more to happy eating besides food, you’ll also get a daily self-care activity.
Happy food prep and meal planning!
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Today is also the last day to enter in Round 2 of LIL Giveaway Week!
Up for grabs:
Be sure to enter if you haven’t done so already. See you later this afternoon!
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