Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail

It's been a ridiculous amount of time since my last blog!  The 2 readers I have are either relieved or pissed!  I've been super busy with work, my training, and my coaching... But yadda yadda, that's all just BS excuses.  Last week I was down in Austin, Texas for Paleo f(x) 2014, and man was it a big time.  One of the many things I returned with, is a renewed passion for writing.  As such, I'm going to make a much more concerted effort to keep consistent with this blog.

This week I want to touch on meal planning and preparation.  Most of us lead busy lives, and when I talk with folks about lifestyle change I so often hear "I don't have time for that".  To put it bluntly I think that's bullshit!  If I can find a way to only eat out once or twice a week, and prepare most of my meals, then anyone can do it!  To be less blunt, and hopefully more helpful, I wanted to lay out for you how we go about planning meals in our house.  What follows is an account of what a typical week of shopping and meal prep looks like...

A Week of Meals:

Breakfast: 

I do an intermittent fasting approach, and don't eat until lunch time, so I don't need food for breakfast.  Jackie on the other hand eats breakfast, and likes to prepare it ahead of time.  She is on the meat and nuts breakfast so her breakfasts usually consist of 3-4oz of ground meat and 2 eggs.  Therefore she needs a little over a pound of ground meat and 10 eggs (minimum) for a weeks worth of breakfasts.

Lunch:

Jackie eats lunch out at least once or twice a week, but I on the other hand do not.  For me lunch in almost always left-overs from dinner the night before (or some other night).  This brings up a good point about implementing life changes and planning meals...  It's super simple and doesn't really take any extra time to cook extra food at dinner time, so that you have those left-overs available for lunches.  So, for lunches we typically don't need to purchase any food ahead of time, though I try to always keep some canned tuna in the cupboard just in case I need a quick lunch in a pinch.  2 cans of tuna, with some mustard, and a small side salad with fill up even the heartiest of appetites and provide everything you need in terms of micro and macro nutrients.

Dinner:

Our schedules tend to be pretty ridiculous.  I'm a the the gym 5 nights a week between training and coaching, and I almost never get out of there before 8pm.  Jackie plays in a basketball league on Monday nights now, and trains 3 nights a week, so she's rarely home before 8pm either.  Like I said if we can cook our meals, anyone can!  Because we get home so late we utilize the crockpot, and we utilize a handful of quick recipes that we make often.  On the weekend we try to plan and shop for at least 3 of our dinners for the upcoming week.  We will often have one night a week where we pick up dinner on the way home from the gym, but the more planning and prep we get done on the weekend the more we can limit that.  In the particular week that I'm laying out for you we planned to have a chicken crockpot recipe Monday, steak on Tuesday, and pork chops on Thursday.  On Wednesday we hit the hot food bar at New Seasons on the way home from the gym, and on Friday we went out to eat after our big Friday night training session.  As such our weekend shopping list included all the stuff for the Monday-Wednesday dinners.

The Week's Plan:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Breakfast	J- Gr. Chix+2 eggs	J- Gr. Chix+2 eggs	J- Gr. Chix+2 eggs	J- Gr. Chix+2 eggs	J- Gr. Chix+2 eggs
	T- NA	T- NA	T- NA	T- NA	T- NA
Lunch	J- Salad bar @ office	Both- Leftover Lemongrass chix	J- Salad bar @ office	Both- Leftover Lemongrass chix	Both- Pork chops + Cabbage apple saute
	T- Leftover fish + green beans		T- Steak + Broccoli
Snack	J- Jimmy Johns unwhich	J- Berries + Nuts	J- Berries + Nuts	J- NA	J- Berries + Nuts
	T- Cottage Cheese+Nuts	T- Cottage Cheese + Caul.	T- Cottage Cheese + nuts	T- Cottage Cheese + Broccoli	T- Cottage Cheese + nuts
Dinner	Both- Lemongrass Chicken+ Fried Rice + Cauliflower	J- Steak + Hash + Broccoli	J- Chix bacon lettuce wrap	Both- Pork chops + Cabbage apple saute	Both- Sushi
		T- Steak + Broccoli	T- Stir fry

Shop your local farmer's market if/when possible!

 Shopping List:

Produce:

Carrot (fried rice)
Celery (fried rice)
Onion (fried rice, hash, cabbage saute)
Broccoli (steak side)
Lemongrass (lemongrass chix)
Sweet potato (steak side)
Cabbage (pork chop side)
Apple (cabbage saute)
Cauliflower (lemongrass chix side)
Berries (snacks)
Spinach

Meat:

Eggs (breakfast, fried rice)
Chicken thigh (lemongrass chix)
Chicken breast tender (lemongrass chix)
Steak
Pork chops
Ground Chicken (breakfast)

Isle:

White vinegar (for cupboard)
Coffee
Coconut milk (lemongrass chix)
Almond milk (morning coffee)
Cottage Cheese

In addition to this stuff we also picked up some stuff for dinner on Sunday night.  We didn't have a plan for that before going to the store, but once there we saw some fresh fish that looked good and we planned a meal around that.

Sunday Afternoon Prep Work

Sunday afternoon we completed a handful of tasks in preparation for the week.  Below is a list of the tasks completed, and the time each one took.  In total we only spent 2 hours to prep our entire week!

• Plan meals/Make shopping list (20 minutes)
• Shopping (1 hour)
• Breakfast prep (30 minutes)
• Lemongrass Chix prep (10 minutes)

Jackie's breakfasts for the week

So, for an investment of 2 hours out of our weekend we were able to set ourselves up for a week of solid eating.  It seems a small investment when the payoff is your health!  For me when we don't get this work done on the weekend it's super easy to fall into the habit of eating out too much, and in general even your healthiest options from a restaurant are going to be inferior to what you can make in your own kitchen.  So get on it already!  Spend a little time this weekend to set yourself up for a week of healthy eating!