Episode 334: Healthy Fall Prep: Planning Your Meal Calendar

Intro:

Welcome to The Healthy Catholic moms podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting. I’m going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good and your skin full of energy, and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals, and how to get them on the table make food that kids will actually want to eat. Mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies well, in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy you’re here. Let’s dive in

Main Episode:

Hi, beautiful people. Welcome to The Healthy Catholic moms podcast. Thank you so much for being here and for joining me today. And I cannot wait to continue on in this healthy fall prep. If you caught the last episode, we started with just your overall schedule. And now today we’re gonna dive into meal planning. So in this kind of little series, we’re gonna go through all the different elements to set you up for a really successful change of season and get you organized because that is half the battle. That’s why we’re bothering to talk about this. It’s not because I’m an organizing guru. I love organization. I love being organized and all of these things. And it’s something I love talking about and reading about and listening to about myself. Because, you know, I think efficiency is a good thing. It’s not the end all be all. But a well ordered life is something worth pursuing, in my opinion, and helps us to have more time for the more important things and for relationships and, and in the service aspect. I didn’t talk about that at all, you know, in the last episode, but we can’t serve others very well when we feel like we’re drowning ourselves. And there’s different seasons that that’s just more typical. And that like, yes, we need to adjust and we’re the person that maybe needs a helping hand and all of that. But if we’re all living there, like needing a life preserver thrown to us, then we’re we can’t throw it to anybody else. So if we are able to have a semblance of order to feel like our average day, you know, barring any craziness, like runs pretty smoothly and we have systems and routines and things in place, then we just have more time for just time in general more time to serve, more time for fun, more time for enjoyment and recreation, all this stuff.

So today we’re going to delve into planning our meal calendar before I do two business items number one, podcast review giveaway. If you’ve listened to all my August episodes, I’m sorry because I’ve talked about it every single time. I’ll be brief. I’m doing a podcast review giveaway alright but it’s almost done you only have until the end of August. So if you’re listening to this on one of the last days do it quickly you have till August 31 Please wherever you listen to the healthy habit mom’s podcast if you would write a review and give it a star rating just screenshot it. Email to me Britney at healthy Catholic moms.com And you are entered that is all it takes. And that prize is a $25 amazon gift card. So hopefully I have more than five but if I have five, you have a one in five chance of winning 25 bucks on Amazon. So it’s definitely worth doing and I thank you so much for in advance. The second item is if you are newer with me, you have never done an eight week program an eight week challenge eight week Fat Loss Challenge. This is your last chance of 2023 and this is by foundational program that I highly recommend people who have not worked with me before to do not even beginners because a lot of people come into it thinking like I already do work out and are already pretty healthy. Great it is for you because this is the challenge and the program is really an eight week program where I just teach you all of my basics. It’s a lot of what we talked about on the podcast but kind of wrapped up bundled and really focused, you get that direct hand holding for me, I personally am working with you, I don’t have anyone else that I entrust this with or have reviewing your food logs or anything I don’t hire out for it. It’s just me and I limited to 20 spots, because every other week, I’m looking at your personal food logs and making recommendations to you, we’re talking about the obstacles that come up for you personally. And for just figuring out the right balance of carbs, fat and protein that’s going to help you to drop fat. And they give you some strength training workouts with full videos and PDFs and all that to get you started there. And it’s all slow, and really sustainable, you are able to it’s called Simple, sustainable fat loss for a reason, because we just focus on one thing a week like hydration. And then there’s weekly prizes to go with that. So if you hit your water targets, most days, that week, you get entered in a drawing to win a really cute water bottle or whatever the prize is that week. And then we do do before and after photos, and the person with the most evident change wins their entry fee back. So there’s also that extra motivation there, which is very exciting for the competitive ones of us. Not so exciting for those who are not motivated by that. But it kicks off September 18 than I do limit it and I gave first crack at it to my email list. So go sign up on my website on the work with me page if you are interested in that. All right, ladies, everybody else or everybody who is interested anyways, we’re gonna hop into this meal planning. So last episode, I told you to get out and have a blank calendar, just like a month view or week view even or just get a blank piece of paper. This is what I do. I just get out that blank piece of paper. And I write Monday through Sunday at the top. And then I write those, I make lines going down vertically. And that’s what I’m working on. Right.

So that is just step one. We’re just gonna get some kind of week view out there. Okay, step two, put that aside. Okay, step two, grab another piece of scrap paper, use notes on your phone or something.

Write down 10 meals off the top of your head that your family loves. Okay, I probably could have done that as step one, but either way, just write down 10 meals. So we all have like we know, my family loves tacos. They love burgers. They love spaghetti and meatballs. You think what else I know kids are picky. So it’s hard. There’s like a lot more than my husband. I love that. Now let’s say like, I love homemade pizza. Like these are all the big wins, easy wins. Maybe your family loves making cheese buying don’t but maybe you’re still. Maybe there’s some kind of chicken dishes make like just get 10 meals down. Okay, your podcasts and go out just trying to give me a second pause me if you need to.

Step three. So you’ve got your calendar, and then you’ve got your list. Consider what makes sense for your lifestyle. We just talked about schedule last episode, maybe pull that schedule out or look at your overall Scott schedule. What nights do you need to have dinner premade ready to go? What nights? Would it make sense to use a crock pot or what I like to call a bail out dinner which is like very easy foods that are just already in the freezer like pretty much pre made not like not talking Lean Cuisine but like Aldi has this general Sour Chicken, that’s the gluten free brand, which we’re not gluten free. I just think it’s tastier than the other one. So I keep a bag of that in the freezer even though it’s not the absolute healthiest. It has seed oils and stuff. But it’s better than us grabbing KFC so and you can obviously have the healthiest bill of food that you want to you might have just really good clean foods as that bale of food but what nights do you need to use that? Or could you use that? What makes you a little more time and you could prep some food staples for upcoming meals so that it frees up a little bit of your day to day. That’s the things those are the things rather than I want you to consider before we move on to the next step. So for me, we’re coming out of this season by the time of this airing, but right now it’s July and we’re in the middle of like, one night a week. My three year old has soccer and we have a weird little gap and then we go my husband I play volleyball my parents watch the kids because it’s at their house like they have a sand volleyball court so they are gracious enough to hang out with the children while we play. We’ve never done this before we usually trade on and off other years but they my dad has put himself in retirement and he said temporarily like he said he’s gonna Tom Brady and come back but we’ll see. So when soccer started because we already had volleyball going but then soccer started and it was like okay, I need to now have on Mondays. We can’t just eat before volleyball I have to have dinner pre made way earlier. So that we can eat in between we have enough time to eat in between but not enough time to like come home, make dinner, whatever. So that kind of thing or the time where there is no option besides a crock pot, Insta pot, something like that. So think about that, because those are not like that shouldn’t surprise you week after week that oh my gosh, we need to have something. And we’re hitting the drive thru every single Tuesday like because of running kids around or whatever. So consider that when you’re planning this first and foremost, because you could have the most wonderful microbalance nutritional meal planned. You could buy the stuff for it, and when it comes to it, if it does not fit your schedule, it’s not gonna work. Okay. Now, step four. Utilize themes to help you brainstorm recipes. So I know you have those 10 meals right now in your back pocket. I like to do this lot and I will switch it up. I do this if you’re in the chasing greatness group. We I give out a monthly meal. I just call like a meal inspiration calendar because they don’t do recipes and things with it. There are so many recipes that I have as a resource in the teachable website inside the chasing greatness group. And even in that eight week program, I give you recipes as inspiration. It’s also just so many recipes online that if I say chicken parm, you can look up healthy chicken parm recipe and take your pick of a bunch of different I would say million but probably 1000s of healthy chicken parm recipes. So, but what I do give in the chasing greenest group is every single month just a meal inspiration calendar. And I tend to put I think every single month, maybe one month, I haven’t done it. I put themes at the top like salad night, crock pot night,
Asian cuisine night or whatever, to kind of help structure, different ideas. And then you can obviously if your family does not like any Asian cuisine, maybe it’s Italian night, maybe we had some Mexican food night. And so then, like everyone’s say Tuesday, is it fits with the deck goes, say every Tuesday is Mexican food night, on weekends tacos, when we present a lot is when we get fajitas. So you get these different ideas through the themes and you’re not just racking your brain, like we all get in that like, what the heck do I make thing? It helps me if I know Okay, Monday night sail and night. That’s what we’re doing for a while we’ve been doing pretty much all summer. Because it’s something light for us to eat before volleyball was kind of actually the method behind that. But okay, so then we’ve got a cod sale in one week, we’ve had a Greek salad one week, we’ve got whatever, and this is going to change seasonally, I don’t do a sale a day, through the winter, I change it to a soup night or a chili like soup slash chili night and I’ll make homemade bread and do a super chili. So themes can be really helpful. It’s optional, but it can help you just to come up with ideas. Okay, step five, plot out the next month using those 10 meals combined with your themes if you’re going to use them, combined with leftover nights, bailout foods and takeout. So you might hear me like Bernie, there’s like about 30 days in a month. And I only came up with 10 meals while I plan in a leftover meal every single week. For us. I do that on Thursday nights. And that’s what I put for my tasting greenness ladies just because that’s what I do. Because we do meatless Fridays. So if I have meat in the house, that we want to use up, that’s just like a good catch up on whatever was leftover. If it’s a rare week where we don’t happen have leftovers, then, you know, I’ve got to rework some things and I’ll do a last minute breakfast dinner or pull a bailout food out or just rework that somehow, you know, things come up like that. But that’s another thing in your planning, like, you can just plan to always make more so that you have enough for leftover nights and things like that are about for lunches and stuff. We’ll talk about that. But
10 meals can get you really far. I mean, with leftover nights in there, and with Bill foods, you’re just having things you know, a couple of times and it’s all foods that you guys really like like I said my kids would be thrilled if we had burgers once a week and sometimes we do like grass fed beef Sure, or you know, high quality meats. That’s that is something I prioritize. So yeah, we can have burgers on these high quality things. Don’t think of it as you know, a junk food, whatever. We’re not having McDonald’s, we’re having beautiful holding foods. So sweet potato fries, you know, we can do that once a week. You can. You are, you know, you’ve got to take people’s ideas into consideration your home but you get to curate this. Usually, if you’re the one meal planning and if you’re listening to this, you probably are. So make it fun. Make it things you guys like, I do that when I’m like in a huge rut. Like okay, what would I go get? If I could order out at a restaurant right now? Like, Oh, I love getting souvlaki out. I will make Slovakia I will buy the pitas, like all that stuff because sometimes we just need to kind of think outside the box. Alright, next up step six, because we’re talking about meal planning, okay, we just talked a lot about dinners. Now is where I want you to think about breakfasts and lunches. Maybe make a list of those to maybe on the side, you write down a bunch of things that you like to prep or you like to enjoy that your kids like to or maybe you’re leaving them out of this, maybe they do their own breakfast and, you know, whatever on that end like that is what we do here. My kids pretty much eat energy balls. Every single morning for breakfast with very little variety, my energy balls, our oats, peanut butter, protein powder, honey, flaxseed, mini chocolate chips. I think that’s everything. And so it’s complete carb fat protein, I should find a way to work with greens powder and get greens in there too. But I think they’re definitely taste that at this point. So I’ll see about that cinnamon I do put cinnamon there. But they pretty much do that for breakfast every day. But then my breakfast switch up. And this is helpful to think about because you want to shop for it. If I’m on a Greek yogurt, and like protein granola kick, I want to make sure I buy Greek yogurt. If I’m doing shakes every morning, I want to be sure buying a frozen spinach or a fresh spinach to freeze it. Make sure I’m gonna have protein powder on hand. Those kinds of things. So think about and maybe write down just like five different breakfasts you like. And maybe you have this stuff for all of it as much as you can enhance you can switch it up. Same thing with lunches lunches, figure out what works best for you, but I tend to do for this is just rely on leftovers. Other times I grab a couple staples. So I can play around with things during the week like I’ll grab, there’s some things we just pretty much always have, I always have some kind of cheese. I always have hot sauce, and whatever. So if I grill up a bunch of trick a bunch of chicken on Sunday or Monday or something as our meal, I always do it as part of our meal, I will plan to have grilled chicken. This is like another tip within a tip. I shared this in the chasing greatness group, like Sunday or Monday, whatever I’m planning for dinner, I make sure it’s something that’s a big staple that then I can repurpose for other things. So I don’t do a separate meal prep, I just do a lot of something might be roasting a whole chicken, it might be grilled chicken, it might be whatever, all different stuff. So say I grilled a bunch of chicken and we them for dinner that night. Prepared however way sometimes I’ll make like a lemon caper sauce jiggle on it. Or I’ll take that and I’ll put in a salad or wrap whatever. I will then have some staples, like I mentioned cheese and like hot sauce and stuff. And then I’ll have to buffalo chicken wrap someday for lunch or another day, I have some fat on Greek dressing, I’ll do a Greek salad, like, I’ll just mix and match that. Or I will do leftovers like it just really fluctuates this week. We’ve had enough leftover every night. I don’t know whoever making four. But I’ve just seen leftovers every day for lunch. And the week before that though, I did grill up a bunch of chicken. And I was switching it up every day with all different kinds of salads and wraps. So see what works best for you come up with some specific things you like that you want specifically, you know, for lunch or whatever, like something I did a lot when I was working full time was I would always get pumped, I really didn’t get sick of it. And if I had a big taco salad for lunch, so I didn’t do it every single day. But I would do that like for a week like okay, this week, I’m gonna prep taco salads. So I’ll make a bunch of ground turkey, or ground beef, I will buy like the little mini block cups, I will make sure I have everything to do that for lunches this week. And the next week, I’m going to do like Southwest salads, all by all little things for that. So you know, see what works. But don’t forget about breakfast and lunches. Because a lot of times we think, oh, we’ll just wing it, you’ve got to have the staples around to be able to do that. Okay, and lastly, continue on Step seven, is just continue on consistency is truly the hardest thing. So when you find what works for you, you’ve got to repeat it, you’ve got to make it a system. Right? That’s what we’re talking about getting these systems in place so that things are smoother. That is a problem with like, 99% of us My hand is totally in the air for this I’m really good at starting new things. And I’m not great at keeping up with them being consistent in with them. If it’s working, keep working it and you know, there’s gonna be some trial and error and figuring out what works for you. That was really helmet one year I was just going through all my documents trying to clean up some things on my desktop and in my Dropbox and whatever. And I was laughing at some of these things. I had like meal plan calendar for 2018. And I was like, did I really plan out the entire year? And yes, yes, in fact, I did. Because I probably was going into it thinking this was gonna be the best year ever. I’m gonna plan every single dinners and you know, December of 2017 like I can foresee everything to happen in 2018 and I guarantee I abandoned it and never did I remember like having the printout and being like wants I’m not making them for dinner away months later. So for me what is currently working is roughly a month at a time, but more more likely that it’s weekly that when I clear off my whiteboard that’s on the side of the fridge. I assess what’s in the house. I grocery shop before that, like there’s got to be some kind of chicken or the egg here. Some people like to do grocery shops, see what’s on sale, and then they come up with their dinners from there. Others like to come up with their meal plan, go shop for all that stuff. I’m kind Have in between and a mix, like I usually have a pretty decent stack in our freezer. But then I would just kind of shop the extra. So I do go in, I guess with a little bit of a plan of like, okay, I know I want to make soup lackeys for lunch or that’s gonna be one dinner this week. So I have to make sure I get picked up and right on the end. And some things you might not always have stuff to make to Ziqi sauce, that kind of stuff. So weekly before you grocery shop seems to make sense. But do what works for you some people to like, do a lot of big bulk shopping and do it monthly. And that’s why I kind of just put out that meal calendar, like I said, as inspiration so that you can tweak it and adjust it. And you know, I do use that as inspiration for myself, I then just look at what I actually have in the house and how it fits our week. So as always, you can join us in the chasing greatness group too. If that is a good fit for you if the eight week program was not a good fit. The chasing greatness group is a monthly workout group with some other added perks like meal calendar, and like different trainings and a Facebook group and all that good stuff that you can check that out to over on my website and or work with me if you are interested in that. But alright, I hope this gave you a good direction to take and to get organized for your meals. Next episode we are going to continue this conversation. And we’re going to talk about healthy fall prep planning your workouts All right. So whether you are in one of my programs or whether you’re doing it on your own, I think you will still find some benefit in it. And I will talk to you then. So have a great rest of your day. Go sign up for the challenge. If that fits you right now. Please leave a podcast review if you haven’t done it yet. Just a couple days left, and I’ll talk to you

Time stamps:

Welcome to The Healthy Catholic moms podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting. I’m going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good and your skin full of energy, and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals, and how to get them on the table make food that kids will actually want to eat. Mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies well, in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy you’re here. Let’s dive in
Hi, beautiful people. Welcome to The Healthy habit moms podcast. Thank you so much for being here and for joining me today. And I cannot wait to continue on in this healthy fall prep. If you caught the last episode, we started with just your overall schedule. And now today we’re gonna dive into meal planning. So in this kind of little series, we’re gonna go through all the different elements to set you up for a really successful change of season and get you organized because that is half the battle. That’s why we’re bothering to talk about this. It’s not because I’m an organizing guru. I love organization. I love being organized and all of these things. And it’s something I love talking about and reading about and listening to about myself. Because, you know, I think efficiency is a good thing. It’s not the end all be all. But a well ordered life is something worth pursuing, in my opinion, and helps us to have more time for the more important things and for relationships and, and in the service aspect. I didn’t talk about that at all, you know, in the last episode, but we can’t serve others very well when we feel like we’re drowning ourselves. And there’s different seasons that that’s just more typical. And that like, yes, we need to adjust and we’re the person that maybe needs a helping hand and all of that. But if we’re all living there, like needing a life preserver thrown to us, then we’re we can’t throw it to anybody else. So if we are able to have a semblance of order to feel like our average day, you know, barring any craziness, like runs pretty smoothly and we have systems and routines and things in place, then we just have more time for just time in general more time to serve, more time for fun, more time for enjoyment and recreation, all this stuff. So today we’re going to delve into planning our meal calendar before I do two business items number one, podcast review giveaway. If you’ve listened to all my August episodes, I’m sorry because I’ve talked about it every single time. I’ll be brief. I’m doing a podcast review giveaway alright but it’s almost done you only have until the end of August. So if you’re listening to this on one of the last days do it quickly you have till August 31 Please wherever you listen to the healthy habit mom’s podcast if you would write a review and give it a star rating just screenshot it. Email to me Britney at healthy Catholic moms.com And you are entered that is all it takes. And that prize is a $25 amazon gift card. So hopefully I have more than five but if I have five, you have a one in five chance of winning 25 bucks on Amazon. So it’s definitely worth doing and I thank you so much for in advance. The second item is if you are newer with me, you have never done an eight week program an eight week challenge eight week Fat Loss Challenge. This is your last chance of 2023 and this is by foundational program that I highly recommend people who have not worked with me before to do not even beginners because a lot of people come into it thinking like I already do work out and are already pretty healthy. Great it is for you because this is the challenge and the program is really an eight week program where I just teach you all of my basics. It’s a lot of what we talked about on the podcast but kind of wrapped up bundled and really focused, you get that direct hand holding for me, I personally am working with you, I don’t have anyone else that I entrust this with or have reviewing your food logs or anything I don’t hire out for it. It’s just me and I limited to 20 spots, because every other week, I’m looking at your personal food logs and making recommendations to you, we’re talking about the obstacles that come up for you personally. And for just figuring out the right balance of carbs, fat and protein that’s going to help you to drop fat. And they give you some strength training workouts with full videos and PDFs and all that to get you started there. And it’s all slow, and really sustainable, you are able to it’s called Simple, sustainable fat loss for a reason, because we just focus on one thing a week like hydration. And then there’s weekly prizes to go with that. So if you hit your water targets, most days, that week, you get entered in a drawing to win a really cute water bottle or whatever the prize is that week. And then we do do before and after photos, and the person with the most evident change wins their entry fee back. So there’s also that extra motivation there, which is very exciting for the competitive ones of us. Not so exciting for those who are not motivated by that. But it kicks off September 18 than I do limit it and I gave first crack at it to my email list. So go sign up on my website on the work with me page if you are interested in that. All right, ladies, everybody else or everybody who is interested anyways, we’re gonna hop into this meal planning. So last episode, I told you to get out and have a blank calendar, just like a month view or week view even or just get a blank piece of paper. This is what I do. I just get out that blank piece of paper. And I write Monday through Sunday at the top. And then I write those, I make lines going down vertically. And that’s what I’m working on. Right. So that is just step one. We’re just gonna get some kind of weak view out there. Okay, step two, put that aside. Okay, step two, grab another piece of scrap paper, use notes on your phone or something. Write down 10 meals off the top of your head that your family loves. Okay, I probably could have done that as step one, but either way, just write down 10 meals. So we all have like we know, my family loves tacos. They love burgers. They love spaghetti and meatballs. You think what else I know kids are picky. So it’s hard. There’s like a lot more than my husband. I love that. Now let’s say like, I love homemade pizza. Like these are all the big wins, easy wins. Maybe your family loves making cheese buying don’t but maybe you’re still. Maybe there’s some kind of chicken dishes make like just get 10 meals down. Okay, your podcasts and go out just trying to give me a second pause me if you need to. Step three. So you’ve got your calendar, and then you’ve got your list. Consider what makes sense for your lifestyle. We just talked about schedule last episode, maybe pull that schedule out or look at your overall Scott schedule. What nights do you need to have dinner premade ready to go? What nights? Would it make sense to use a crock pot or what I like to call a bail out dinner which is like very easy foods that are just already in the freezer like pretty much pre made not like not talking Lean Cuisine but like Aldi has this general Sour Chicken, that’s the gluten free brand, which we’re not gluten free. I just think it’s tastier than the other one. So I keep a bag of that in the freezer even though it’s not the absolute healthiest. It has seed oils and stuff. But it’s better than us grabbing KFC so and you can obviously have the healthiest bill of food that you want to you might have just really good clean foods as that bale of food but what nights do you need to use that? Or could you use that? What makes you a little more time and you could prep some food staples for upcoming meals so that it frees up a little bit of your day to day. That’s the things those are the things rather than I want you to consider before we move on to the next step. So for me, we’re coming out of this season by the time of this airing, but right now it’s July and we’re in the middle of like, one night a week. My three year old has soccer and we have a weird little gap and then we go my husband I play volleyball my parents watch the kids because it’s at their house like they have a sand volleyball court so they are gracious enough to hang out with the children while we play. We’ve never done this before we usually trade on and off other years but they my dad has put himself in retirement and he said temporarily like he said he’s gonna Tom Brady and come back but we’ll see. So when soccer started because we already had volleyball going but then soccer started and it was like okay, I need to now have on Mondays. We can’t just eat before volleyball I have to have dinner pre made way earlier. So that we can eat in between we have enough time to eat in between but not enough time to like come home, make dinner, whatever. So that kind of thing or the time where there is no option besides a crock pot, Insta pot, something like that. So think about that, because those are not like that shouldn’t surprise you week after week that oh my gosh, we need to have something. And we’re hitting the drive thru every single Tuesday like because of running kids around or whatever. So consider that when you’re planning this first and foremost, because you could have the most wonderful microbalance nutritional meal planned. You could buy the stuff for it, and when it comes to it, if it does not fit your schedule, it’s not gonna work. Okay. Now, step four. Utilize themes to help you brainstorm recipes. So I know you have those 10 meals right now in your back pocket. I like to do this lot and I will switch it up. I do this if you’re in the chasing greatness group. We I give out a monthly meal. I just call like a meal inspiration calendar because they don’t do recipes and things with it. There are so many recipes that I have as a resource in the teachable website inside the chasing greatness group. And even in that eight week program, I give you recipes as inspiration. It’s also just so many recipes online that if I say chicken parm, you can look up healthy chicken parm recipe and take your pick of a bunch of different I would say million but probably 1000s of healthy chicken parm recipes. So, but what I do give in the chasing greenest group is every single month just a meal inspiration calendar. And I tend to put I think every single month, maybe one month, I haven’t done it. I put themes at the top like salad night, crock pot night,
Asian cuisine night or whatever, to kind of help structure, different ideas. And then you can obviously if your family does not like any Asian cuisine, maybe it’s Italian night, maybe we had some Mexican food night. And so then, like everyone’s say Tuesday, is it fits with the deck goes, say every Tuesday is Mexican food night, on weekends tacos, when we present a lot is when we get fajitas. So you get these different ideas through the themes and you’re not just racking your brain, like we all get in that like, what the heck do I make thing? It helps me if I know Okay, Monday night sail and night. That’s what we’re doing for a while we’ve been doing pretty much all summer. Because it’s something light for us to eat before volleyball was kind of actually the method behind that. But okay, so then we’ve got a cod sale in one week, we’ve had a Greek salad one week, we’ve got whatever, and this is going to change seasonally, I don’t do a sale a day, through the winter, I change it to a soup night or a chili like soup slash chili night and I’ll make homemade bread and do a super chili. So themes can be really helpful. It’s optional, but it can help you just to come up with ideas. Okay, step five, plot out the next month using those 10 meals combined with your themes if you’re going to use them, combined with leftover nights, bailout foods and takeout. So you might hear me like Bernie, there’s like about 30 days in a month. And I only came up with 10 meals while I plan in a leftover meal every single week. For us. I do that on Thursday nights. And that’s what I put for my tasting greenness ladies just because that’s what I do. Because we do meatless Fridays. So if I have meat in the house, that we want to use up, that’s just like a good catch up on whatever was leftover. If it’s a rare week where we don’t happen have leftovers, then, you know, I’ve got to rework some things and I’ll do a last minute breakfast dinner or pull a bailout food out or just rework that somehow, you know, things come up like that. But that’s another thing in your planning, like, you can just plan to always make more so that you have enough for leftover nights and things like that are about for lunches and stuff. We’ll talk about that. But
10 meals can get you really far. I mean, with leftover nights in there, and with Bill foods, you’re just having things you know, a couple of times and it’s all foods that you guys really like like I said my kids would be thrilled if we had burgers once a week and sometimes we do like grass fed beef Sure, or you know, high quality meats. That’s that is something I prioritize. So yeah, we can have burgers on these high quality things. Don’t think of it as you know, a junk food, whatever. We’re not having McDonald’s, we’re having beautiful holding foods. So sweet potato fries, you know, we can do that once a week. You can. You are, you know, you’ve got to take people’s ideas into consideration your home but you get to curate this. Usually, if you’re the one meal planning and if you’re listening to this, you probably are. So make it fun. Make it things you guys like, I do that when I’m like in a huge rut. Like okay, what would I go get? If I could order out at a restaurant right now? Like, Oh, I love getting souvlaki out. I will make Slovakia I will buy the pitas, like all that stuff because sometimes we just need to kind of think outside the box. Alright, next up step six, because we’re talking about meal planning, okay, we just talked a lot about dinners. Now is where I want you to think about breakfasts and lunches. Maybe make a list of those to maybe on the side, you write down a bunch of things that you like to prep or you like to enjoy that your kids like to or maybe you’re leaving them out of this, maybe they do their own breakfast and, you know, whatever on that end like that is what we do here. My kids pretty much eat energy balls. Every single morning for breakfast with very little variety, my energy balls, our oats, peanut butter, protein powder, honey, flaxseed, mini chocolate chips. I think that’s everything. And so it’s complete carb fat protein, I should find a way to work with greens powder and get greens in there too. But I think they’re definitely taste that at this point. So I’ll see about that cinnamon I do put cinnamon there. But they pretty much do that for breakfast every day. But then my breakfast switch up. And this is helpful to think about because you want to shop for it. If I’m on a Greek yogurt, and like protein granola kick, I want to make sure I buy Greek yogurt. If I’m doing shakes every morning, I want to be sure buying a frozen spinach or a fresh spinach to freeze it. Make sure I’m gonna have protein powder on hand. Those kinds of things. So think about and maybe write down just like five different breakfasts you like. And maybe you have this stuff for all of it as much as you can enhance you can switch it up. Same thing with lunches lunches, figure out what works best for you, but I tend to do for this is just rely on leftovers. Other times I grab a couple staples. So I can play around with things during the week like I’ll grab, there’s some things we just pretty much always have, I always have some kind of cheese. I always have hot sauce, and whatever. So if I grill up a bunch of trick a bunch of chicken on Sunday or Monday or something as our meal, I always do it as part of our meal, I will plan to have grilled chicken. This is like another tip within a tip. I shared this in the chasing greatness group, like Sunday or Monday, whatever I’m planning for dinner, I make sure it’s something that’s a big staple that then I can repurpose for other things. So I don’t do a separate meal prep, I just do a lot of something might be roasting a whole chicken, it might be grilled chicken, it might be whatever, all different stuff. So say I grilled a bunch of chicken and we them for dinner that night. Prepared however way sometimes I’ll make like a lemon caper sauce jiggle on it. Or I’ll take that and I’ll put in a salad or wrap whatever. I will then have some staples, like I mentioned cheese and like hot sauce and stuff. And then I’ll have to buffalo chicken wrap someday for lunch or another day, I have some fat on Greek dressing, I’ll do a Greek salad, like, I’ll just mix and match that. Or I will do leftovers like it just really fluctuates this week. We’ve had enough leftover every night. I don’t know whoever making four. But I’ve just seen leftovers every day for lunch. And the week before that though, I did grill up a bunch of chicken. And I was switching it up every day with all different kinds of salads and wraps. So see what works best for you come up with some specific things you like that you want specifically, you know, for lunch or whatever, like something I did a lot when I was working full time was I would always get pumped, I really didn’t get sick of it. And if I had a big taco salad for lunch, so I didn’t do it every single day. But I would do that like for a week like okay, this week, I’m gonna prep taco salads. So I’ll make a bunch of ground turkey, or ground beef, I will buy like the little mini block cups, I will make sure I have everything to do that for lunches this week. And the next week, I’m going to do like Southwest salads, all by all little things for that. So you know, see what works. But don’t forget about breakfast and lunches. Because a lot of times we think, oh, we’ll just wing it, you’ve got to have the staples around to be able to do that. Okay, and lastly, continue on Step seven, is just continue on consistency is truly the hardest thing. So when you find what works for you, you’ve got to repeat it, you’ve got to make it a system. Right? That’s what we’re talking about getting these systems in place so that things are smoother. That is a problem with like, 99% of us My hand is totally in the air for this I’m really good at starting new things. And I’m not great at keeping up with them being consistent in with them. If it’s working, keep working it and you know, there’s gonna be some trial and error and figuring out what works for you. That was really helmet one year I was just going through all my documents trying to clean up some things on my desktop and in my Dropbox and whatever. And I was laughing at some of these things. I had like meal plan calendar for 2018. And I was like, did I really plan out the entire year? And yes, yes, in fact, I did. Because I probably was going into it thinking this was gonna be the best year ever. I’m gonna plan every single dinners and you know, December of 2017 like I can foresee everything to happen in 2018 and I guarantee I abandoned it and never did I remember like having the printout and being like wants I’m not making them for dinner away months later. So for me what is currently working is roughly a month at a time, but more more likely that it’s weekly that when I clear off my whiteboard that’s on the side of the fridge. I assess what’s in the house. I grocery shop before that, like there’s got to be some kind of chicken or the egg here. Some people like to do grocery shops, see what’s on sale, and then they come up with their dinners from there. Others like to come up with their meal plan, go shop for all that stuff. I’m kind Have in between and a mix, like I usually have a pretty decent stack in our freezer. But then I would just kind of shop the extra. So I do go in, I guess with a little bit of a plan of like, okay, I know I want to make soup lackeys for lunch or that’s gonna be one dinner this week. So I have to make sure I get picked up and right on the end. And some things you might not always have stuff to make to Ziqi sauce, that kind of stuff. So weekly before you grocery shop seems to make sense. But do what works for you some people to like, do a lot of big bulk shopping and do it monthly. And that’s why I kind of just put out that meal calendar, like I said, as inspiration so that you can tweak it and adjust it. And you know, I do use that as inspiration for myself, I then just look at what I actually have in the house and how it fits our week. So as always, you can join us in the chasing greatness group too. If that is a good fit for you if the eight week program was not a good fit. The chasing greatness group is a monthly workout group with some other added perks like meal calendar, and like different trainings and a Facebook group and all that good stuff that you can check that out to over on my website and or work with me if you are interested in that. But alright, I hope this gave you a good direction to take and to get organized for your meals. Next episode we are going to continue this conversation. And we’re going to talk about healthy fall prep planning your workouts All right. So whether you are in one of my programs or whether you’re doing it on your own, I think you will still find some benefit in it. And I will talk to you then. So have a great rest of your day. Go sign up for the challenge. If that fits you right now. Please leave a podcast review if you haven’t done it yet. Just a couple days left, and I’ll talk to you

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