Today, I’m sharing the exact steps I teach my paid clients for easy meal prep, helping them build out 3 months of meal ideas in just 30 minutes. I’m also going to explain a super simple framework for creating tons of ideas and new recipes without having to change your weekly shopping list.
If fat loss is a primary goal for you at the moment, food is where you need to focus and the number issue I see derail clients results is not having quality food ready after a busy day at work.
Unfortunately, many people give up on easy meal prep because it does take time. However, this system will actually help you save time and energy as you work toward your fat loss goals.
If you don’t have food available you’ll default to junk food
Here are the top 5 reasons I see people struggle with fat loss:
- No plan with their weekly food
- Too many convenience meals
- Stuck in a cycle of fatigue and craving sugar
- Bored of “healthy meals”
- Challenge to make healthy eating work with a family
But don’t worry, this system based on easy meal prep has worked well for my clients in Limerick and worldwide, even ones with busy work and family lives.
Here’s how, step by step:
Step 1: Theme your days each week with a cuisine & protein source
These are examples, you can pick whatever proteins and cuisines you like. You can also choose less if you want. You might just have beef, vegetarian, and fish options and cycle through these easy meal prep each week.
Step 2: Now pick a recipe for each day
Now it’s time to find recipes you would like to each. Just google the cuisine and protein to find a recipe. You can also add “5 ingredient recipe for beef tacos” as an example.
Step 3: Now map this easy meal prep out for the month
Now you can see what four weeks of beef mince recipes might looks like
Step 4: Same ingredients, different spice & herbs (most important point!)
Using the above example of beef mince recipes. You can buy the same base ingredients each week:
- Beef mince, onions, garlic, red peppers.
- But for the tacos, you will use a taco spice mix along with corn flour tortilla or ice berg lettuce for you carb/low carb option.
- For bolognese you will use, chopped tomatoes, stock and parsley or oregano. You will use spaghetti or zucchini noodles as your carb option.
- For thai pad krapao you will use oyster sauce, soy sauce and thai holy basil. You will use rice or cauliflower rice.
- For meat balls, it will be the same as bolognese except the meat will be in balls!
Step 5: Always cook extra
The final tip is to always cook extra food and then freeze it. If you freeze an extra 1-2 portions for your household every time you cook, after a few weeks, you’ll have a freezer full of meals you can grab. This will ensure you always have food available for you when life gets busy.
I hope this gives you ideas on how you can keep things super simple through an easy meal prep but allow you to build out tons of different recipes each month without making massive shifts in your weekly shopping list.
The main changes will be buying the spice and herb ingredients and then swapping each week based on what you feel like.