Meal Prep - Saving myself from eating badly

Sunday Meal Prep

Taking a few hours on Sunday afternoons, to do my meal planning and prep for the week ahead, is really critical in staying on track with eating healthy and clean. Without it, who knows what I'd reach for! (probably something chocolaty or salty or both - and my taste buds would love me for about a minute, but my butt, thighs, and hands - yup, hands - because I always feel the sodium overload in my bloated fingers first - would hate me for days to come).

So it starts of something like this: Thursday or Friday, I start thinking about what I want to make for the week. I cook one "hot meal" - in quantity - so I can portion it out in serving size containers and not have to worry about cooking much, throughout the rest of the week. Look, I'm a busy girl - Full time day job, part time nights and weekends teaching horseback riding lessons and helping out with barn chores, and a fitness and nutrition coach - and once in a while I even try to have a social life, so at the end of a full day - who has time to cook at night? I sure don't.

I pick out a "clean" recipe - from one of my cookbooks, or pinterest, or sometimes I just visit my own website, find a favorite, and either make it exactly the same way or tweak it a little for some variety. This week's recipe was Spaghetti Squash Skillet. It was fantastic, and I promise I'll share the ingredients below. 

Most weeks, everything else is pretty standard - egg white and veggie frittata with some berries on the side, for breakfast; hard boiled egg and a handful of almonds for a snack; spinach or kale salad topped with sunburst tomatoes, cukes, avocado, tuna and clean dressing for lunch; baby carrots or zucchini spears and hummus for an afternoon snack; and on my way to my night job, my favorite meal of the day - vanilla Shakeology blended with unsweetened cashew milk, crushed ice, and ground flax meal. What's Shakeology, you ask? Only the healthiest and most delicious meal of the day. And then at night when I get home, I'll have my hot meal.

So once I have my recipe picked out, I make a shopping list, doing a quick (usually mental) inventory - and I always shop on Friday nights. I don't want to fight the weekend warriors at the grocery store, and I also don't want to use my precious weekend time, fighting those crowds and waiting in those lines.

Then on Sunday afternoon, when I get home from shoveling horse sh!t, teaching lessons, and playing with our awesome German Shepard, J-Dawg, I can come home, put on some music, or a personal development podcast, and start prepping. I love doing it that way, especially in the winter, because I'm usually chilled to the bone from the farm, and nothing heats up my condo like having the burners on the stove, and the oven, cranking.

Everything gets sliced, diced, measured, packaged in containers or zip lock baggies, and perfectly portioned out in my fridge so I can *almost* guarantee myself a successful week without much risk if cheating.

Oh, and I did promise a recipe for the Spaghetti Squash Skillet, didn't I?

Cut one medium spaghetti squash in half, remove "guts", and place face down/skin up on a cookie sheet - bake approx 40 mins at 350. I do this part in advance so it can cool a bit before I have to touch it.

Brown 16-20 oz lean ground turkey (I use 93/7). Add a large can of organic diced tomatoes, a bag of frozen spinach, sliced baby portobella mushrooms, about a cup of low sodium chicken broth, Italian seasoning to taste, and scrape out the insides of the spaghetti squash and add that too. Mix it all up, and allow it to simmer for about 15-20 mins to blend all flavors.

I also added some dehydrated onion flakes and garlic powder - I was being lazy but if you want you can mince some fresh garlic, and dice an onion, and saute those first and add them in too.

Either way, really good and really easy and it made like 7-8 servings.

Interested in checking out my recipes? Visit my website or check me out on Facebook. While you're there, be sure to give my page a "like" - that way you'll get to see my healthy tips and recipes as I share them :-)