Meal Prep- Simplify Your Prep Game...

If the idea of meal prepping is daunting to you, you are not alone. It can feel impossible and even overwhelming to figure out a way to fit in meal prep among all of your other to-dos. I want to help you remove the overwhelm from your meal prepping game. Meal planning doesn’t have to be hard or even time-consuming. With a little planning and knowledge, you can up level your meal prep game, make it FUN and completely stress free! If you can nail your meal prep game, you can nail your goals once and for all! Let’s dig in…

Tip #1. Get Excited about your meals & Search Delicious Recipes

It is essential that you must LOVE what you are eating otherwise meal prep will be no fun! Who wants to prepare food that you aren’t excited to eat- nobody! If you aren’t loving your food, that is one BIG reason your meal prep is either lacking or non existent. The first step is to discover your recipe favorites. Spend a little bit of time browsing the G-Fit App Recipe Section and see what looks good and excites you. Better yet, once you find your favorites, hit the STAR on the right hand corner to SAVE your favorites to SAVE you time!

If you are following one of the G-Fit Programs, you will see where it fits into your meal plan at the bottom of the recipe. 🙂

If this step is too overwhelming and you want to keep it simple, that’s PERFECT too. The key is getting excited about the meals you will be eating throughout the week. Browsing the recipes can serve as a great reminder that dieting does not have to be bland and boring!

Once you dig in you will see how the G-Fit recipes are what we call Simple Creative and don’t take up a ton of time or use a ton of ingredients!

Tip #2. Pick your Meal Prep Days

Set aside a day for your prepping. Put it in your calendar just as you schedule your appointments. Typically 2 days a week like Sunday and mid week- Wednesday are great days. Especially if you are living the G-Fit lifestyle, Sundays are unplug days so you have more time to prep and cook and Wednesday is our flow day where we slow down and you can dedicate some of your time to prepping.

You can get away with ONLY 1 day of meal prepping if you freeze your meals, which is a fantastic way to prep! Plan your days and honor them the same as you honor your workouts or massages.

Tip #3. Keep it simple!

Incase you don’t have time, sometimes you need to start by keeping it super simple. It takes time to level up your prep game, I get it. Even with all of these tips, you may still feel a bit overwhelmed and it is OKAY! We have to start somewhere. The biggest piece of advice I can offer is Keep it SIMPLE with your basics on hand. Here are some examples of SIMPLE basics to satisfy our macros.

Complex Carb Simple Staples

90 second brown rice- simply put bag in microwave, turn on for 90 seconds and done!
rice cakes- still don’t have 90 seconds, rice cakes for the WIN!
Oatmeal- add water, mix and serve. If this is still too much for you, did you know that raw oats added to a salad are simply delicious?!

Veggie Simple Staples

pre-chopped packages of greens and cabbage. If you don’t have time to chop, get pre-chopped and make no excuses.
Frozen over fresh! No time to chop, frozen veggies for the win! Simply plate and heat, put in pot to steam or boil or place on baking sheet with a little no-stick spray and broil. Easy peasy food prep WIN!
Love cauliflower rice or zoodles but no time to rice it or zoodle it? Now you can find pre-packed zoodles or frozen cauliflower rice. These will be huge time savors to your meal prep game!

Simple Fat Staples

Almonds are great for grab and go
2 oz avocado containers are perfect for a grab and go 1 serving fat swap
hard boiled whole eggs serve as a great quick fat option too…

Simple Protein Staples

Hard boiled eggs are great to prep and have on hand
canned tuna (in water) are great when you need to grab and go
pick your protein and cook in bulk- which takes us to our next tip.

Tip #4. Bulk Cook

Depending on how many portions you need for the week, if you are already preparing your lean protein, double or triple the serving. Why not add an entire bag of chicken to the grill or a few pounds of turkey to a crockpot? Why not, you are already preparing for one meal, may as well bulk cook and portion out for future meals! This works great especially if you are okay with the same protein multiple times throughout the week. You can always freeze cooked protein too so you really can’t over prepare!

Step #5. Repurpose Recipes

When it comes to meal planning with a busy schedule, it’s also about finding ways to repurpose some of your already prepped foods. You can mix and match some prepped ingredients and turn them into a completely different meal with very little prep work.

This is what we refer to as simple creative. You have your staples ready to go and now you change up how you prepare them depending on your mood and meal.

This ALONE makes meal prep easy since you can cook ONE thing and prepare it different ways so you never get bored!

Here are some yummy options:

Use prepped ground turkey to make a stir-fry with prepped veggies, over zoodles, in wraps or tossed in a salad or even made into our Gina Approved Turkey Lasagna! You can go from a Mexican dish to an Italian dish with a few simple changes.
Add prepped veggies to your morning omelets for an added nutritional boost or simply much on them while you are preparing dinner or mid day when you have the munchies.
Use your cooked chicken to toss in a salad, stirfry, soup, lettuce wraps, nori wraps, it’s endless…
Have leftover cauliflower rice? Turn it into sushi, add it to a stirfry, toss it in a BAS (big ass salad) or for a sweet treat, add it to your rice pudding for your nighttime craving crusher.

As you see one main ingredient can be made multiple ways to keep you excited about your meals and prep game so easy!

Step #6. Keep The Base, Add Some Spice

In addition to repurposing your recipes, if you find yourself getting bored of the staples you’ve prepped throughout the week, try switching up the spices or the multiple versions of the Gina Approved Signature Dijon Dressings…

Turn that prepped quinoa you have on hand into a yummy cinnamon quinoa breakfast bowl or add some herbs and spices to your prepped brown rice and pair it with whatever protein you have prepared.

Getting bored of the same salad, add a different version of the Gina Approved Signature Dijon dressing and you are eating like a queen!

Tip #7. Make Meal Prep FUN!

Turn on the music, get some cute containers, label your meals with fun colors. It sounds silly but the more FUN and COLORFUL we can make our meal prep the more we will look forward to prepping vs. meal prep being something you dread!

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If you have a super busy schedule and are feeling stressed out about when to find time to meal prep or where to start, these tips are about to completely change how you think about meal prep day.

Before you know it, you will be prepping like a pro! Checkout some of the G-FIT Ladies who have taken these tips and are OWNING their Meal Prep.