This article was so graciously written for the LadyCoats blog by Mrs. Stacie Chavez! She is a highly sought after personal trainer at a gym called Redmond Athletic Club in Washington. There is a common "fear" or "confusion" regarding food prepping, so I asked this babe to give us the deets! Enjoy!!
It's true- spectacular preparation precedes spectacular performance." ~ Zig Ziglar
What’s your excuse?
We all have them…Excuses! They loom everywhere in the nooks and
crannies of our subconscious mind. They
are just waiting for that perfect opportunity to make their entrance into
consciousness and wreak havoc on your best laid plans. Whether it’s to make it to the gym on a
regular schedule, eat healthy and clean, or just be productive in whatever it
is you love to do. You must prepare and
plan to succeed. Take it from a serial procrastinator:
me!
When it comes to the wacky world of fitness and nutrition a lean
body simply cannot have one without the other.
The two principles are married to each other. There is a saying that I use often with my
clients. The only time you can outwork a bad diet is
when you’re 16. And you’re not 16! And who’s kidding who here, I have had to use
this tough love statement on myself a few times!
Today I’m talking about planning and prepping food for the week,
but you can apply some of these basic principles to anything you need help
following through on.
First Things First: Picking a Day
Picking a day to plan and prepare is just as important as the
prepping itself. For me it’s
Sunday. It’s my day off. It’s also a day that my family and I
typically have nothing planned outside of normal routine & chores. I spend the morning going through the paper
for sales on meat, poultry, fish, fruits and vegetables. This is also the time that I go online and
look at some of my favorite healthy websites or favorite fitness guru’s to see if
they have something new that I’d like to try.
Making a List, Keeping it Simple
I am a creature of habit. I
eat relatively the same thing day in and day out. My shopping list is simple. I NEED it to be simple. I have 9 and 12 year old kids that keep me
busy beyond belief, I have a busy personal training practice in which I tend to
schedule myself back to back with little to no breaks. Somewhere in there I need to work out, get
dinner made, give my amazing husband some attention, oh and maybe schedule in
some quiet reflective time for? I KNOW
this sounds familiar. So getting my
nutrition on a simple list has helped me keep focused.
You should dissect your list by store. I have my list separated in a typed out sheet
by what I need at Costco, what I need from a grocery store, and what I may need
from a specialty store. My list is
filled with everything that I EAT.
That’s right I said it, I have two kids, a husband, two in-laws and a
dog living with me. They do not eat like
me nor do I expect them to. If my food
is not prepped then I will eat whatever they are eating and that’s not going to
work for me.
My list has all the fruits and vegetables that are important to me
on it, I have included the meats and fishes that I tend to eat and then I add
in the one-off’s. I look to see if I
need egg whites, or Almond Milk. Do I
need more oat bran, protein powder or green tea? I make sure I am NEVER without green tea,
dark chocolate (85%) or BCAA-g. These
three tools are my pre-emptive strikes to fight off cravings I may have at any
given time.
You’ve Got the Goodies: Now what?
Unpack your groceries and before you
start putting everything away. Start cleaning your fruits and veggies and then
get to chopping and dicing. If you wash
and prep the food you are more likely to use it since it’s all set to go. No sense in even buying the food if it will
just go bad. After you wash the fruits
and veggies start chopping! I chop up onions,
celery, spinach (I don’t like to think I am eating a leaf so I finely chop my
spinach), broccoli, brussel sprouts, etc.
I love Mexican food so I tend to buy a
lot of lean ground beef/bison and ground turkey. I cook up my ground meat for a whole week so
my nearly daily taco salads are ready to go.
For variance, I cook up at least one fillet and at least 2 chicken
breasts. Inevitably, at some point mid
week I will have to prep another protein food item. However, usually its steak and I let my
husband take care of steak night J
In addition to prepping the meats for
the week it’s also a good idea to hard boil eggs, package up protein powder
servings and almonds for each day of the week.
Some people do enjoy a good protein bar as a snack item during the
day. I like to cut mine in half and put
each one in a separate zip lock bag. My
personal preference is to get as much nutrition from whole organic food options. It is good to pair ½ the protein bar with an
apple or some fresh cut vegetables. Having
the easy to grab snacks already in individual zip lock not only keeps them
fresh for the week, but only having the serving size amount on hand allows you
to manage portions.
The Good and the Bad
Planning and prepping meals ahead of time will allow you to take
your fitness goals to the next level.
You will still have good days and bad.
You won’t always get it right, but the nice thing is the next good meal
is ready to go. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Hey, if nothing
else, you know what doesn’t work. Failure is a judgment or evaluation of
behavior. Think of failure as a learning experience. What did you learn from
the experience that will help you in the future? A good friend of mine Co
Creator/Founder and Best Selling author of The Metabolic Effect, Jade Teta
says: Don’t be a dieter, be a detective.
Don’t sweat it,
prep it!
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