Meal Planning and Prep

The busy life of a mom, much less a working mom, can easily get in the way of clean eating efforts. Today, we are often on the go from here to there, from sun up to sun down. It's nearly impossible to stay on track with your nutrition without proper planning ahead of time.

My best, cleanest eating weeks are those where I set aside a little time after the boys have gone to bed, usually on a Sunday evening before the work week begins, to prep and package my food to be easily thrown in my lunch bag every day of the week. You will also find, you might save a lot of money this way, as you hopefully will spend a lot less on meals out.

Here's a peek of how I do it:

This week, my plan was to have a leafy spinach salad with cucumbers and grape tomatoes for lunch each day. {Some may prefer more variety, but I absolutely love this salad, so I have no issue eating it every day.}

I often make the salad in a very large Tupperware container I own:

And I spoon some into a smaller Tupperware dish to take with my in my lunch bag the next day.

I then make sure to have a small dish with my current favorite salad dressing in it. This is Newman's Own Lite Sesame Ginger...it is sooooooo good...and only 15 calories per serving. I make sure to take just a serving's worth.

Additionally, I like to have some good protein to go with, so I hard-boil some eggs to get me through the week {and a few extra for Tanner's lunches}.

As far as snack foods to get me through my long work days, I pack things such as string cheese, raw almonds, carrots, apples, grapes...just anything that is naturally low-cal and nutritious.

As soon as I'm done with prep, I pop a day's worth of snack and lunch into this super-cute lunch bag I found at Marshall's for $9.99:

Isn't it cute? I just love it. And it's the perfect size, like a purse. I plan on getting it monogrammed eventually. So everything goes in here when I'm done, and into the fridge. The next morning before work, I take it out, pop a freezer-pak in it and go.

As far as breakfast, I usually carve out a few extra minutes in the morning to scramble up some egg whites, top them with avocado and drizzle with hot sauce {to get that metabolism going!} If I don't have time for that, I make a whey protein smoothie...I'll have my personal recipe for you here on the blog soon.

How do you plan for a healthy week?