Weekly Meal Planning: Part II

Now that we’ve had the chance to prepare for our week with pre-planning and actual Meal Planning, it’s time to do some Shopping & Chopping! This shouldn’t take very long and it gets easier over time. You definitely do need to master the habit and once you do, you’ll be surprised how quickly you can accomplish this and save yourself so much time during the week!

Shopping & Chopping

With Pre-Planning and Planning complete, it's now time to grocery shop and come home and chop/prepare the food!

Taking my Google Keep grocery list and my reusable grocery bags, I'll head to the store and begin to shop. TIP: If you bucket your grocery list by area of the store, it saves major time. For example, I put all of the dairy items in one place on my list so that if I'm getting milk, eggs and butter, they're all in the same place on my list and it saves me from having to run from one side of the store to the other.

Here's where you can get really lazy, though. Once you grocery shop and bring your food home and put it away, it's so easy to wipe your hands and say, "Ok, that's done. I've planned my week." However, you've only gone half-way! You've done a lot of the heavy lifting, but if you don't cross the finish line, believe me, you'll get derailed throughout the week.

You have to follow through! And that means chopping and prepping comes next...

At this point, you might feel a bit overwhelmed because you’ll see that you have so much food and so much to do with that food. Never fear! I only prep for breakfast and lunch, and leave dinner for day-of prepping. Any recipe I choose for dinner should take no more than 30-35 minutes to prepare and since I find chopping and cooking enjoyable and meditative, I don’t mind having to do that on the day of.

So, think about what you need for your breakfasts and lunches. Have you planned for hard-boiled eggs during the week? How many are you eating per day? Multiply that by the number of days you'll be eating them and begin to boil water to cook your eggs.

Did you include a complex carb for your lunch? What is it -- brown rice? sweet potatoes? If so, prep that in bulk so that you can just scoop and go throughout the week.

What about veggies for salads? Veggies are more likely to be eaten if they are pre-chopped and washed. Go ahead and do that, too.

At the beginning of your prep, you should have a pile that looks like this:

At the end of your prep, you should have a pile that looks like this:

And if you’re super ambitious and organized, you can even make your own salads, to look like this, so that they are truly grab and go! (I'll create another post dedicated to grab-and-go salads. Easy!

I’d love to hear how you plan your meals and how you prep and any other tips that make your life easier during the week! Please add them below!