Our friend Shannon of Cali Girl Gets Fit is an expert at meal prepping and she’s here to help us achieve a nutritious week of meals in honor of Nutrition Month. In addition to meal prepping, Shannon is the co-founder of a Bay Area fitness meet-up group called Sweat SF and loves educating others on the importance of a healthy lifestyle. Take it away, Shannon!
Meal prep is one of those buzzwords floating around the fitness community, and if you’re someone constantly on the go, it is a great way to eat healthy, wholesome home-cooked meals every day. Meal prepping isn’t just for extreme bodybuilders or for moms packing lunches for their kids anymore. More and more people are looking to meal prep as a way to keep track of the foods they consume, help save time, and reach their fitness goals.
When meal prepping, I cook and pack my food for the entire week so that it’s a no-brainer to grab a container of delicious food to heat up, and know that it’s within my dietary goals of having a balance of protein, carbs, and healthy fat. Here’s a behind-the-scenes of how I prep my meals. Since I tend to buy food in bulk, I always make sure to have enough for the entire week. For my lunch prep below, I’ve chosen a meal that has a healthy balance of macronutrients: Carbs (potatoes, brussel sprouts, and asparagus), protein (chicken), and healthy fat (olive oil is used in the recipes).
Before cooking, each serving is weighed, so that I make sure I am eating the right portion size for my fitness goals. If you are like me, and you have target macronutrients (macros) that you are trying to achieve, weighing your food allows you to create accurate calculations for each of your meals. The food/weight can be entered into a variety of fitness apps (like MyFitnessPal for example), which will then tell you the dietary breakdown and total calories of the food! I use this process to calculate the macros and calories for each of my meals.
One of my favorite meal prep tips is to multi-task, multi-task, multi-task! For example, if I am planning to use the oven, I try to cook everything simultaneously in batches at the same time. I allocate approximately 3 hours on Sunday to prep meals, ultimately saving me time during the busy work week!
Another tip is to get quality stackable containers. Once the meals are done, I seal them up, stack them in my fridge, and they are ready to go!
Since March is National Nutrition Month, I hope you try meal prepping, and have a delicious and nutritious week ahead!
For more fitness and nutrition advice from Shannon, visit her at Cali Girl Gets Fit.