meal prep

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It can be a real struggle to stay healthy at the office. It's tempting to eat out every day for lunch, or to grab something quickly which isn't always the best option. Processed snacks fill up vending machines and seem like they're taking away your choice to eat something fresh. It's hard to consistently eat well, but here are some great tips for clean eating and saving money by bringing your own food to work.

Make It Convenient

Keep healthy foods at the front of your fridge and junk foods at the back.Getty Images

Eating healthy can be a huge pain, but if you lay the groundwork it can be a lot easier. People eat what's convenient because that's the way our brains are wired. If the easiest thing to eat were also the healthiest, you'd see a big difference in your habits. Cut up big bowls of fruit salad and take some to work to snack on, bring healthy alternatives to chips like carrots and hummus, and always check your processed food labels to make sure your 'healthy' granola bar doesn't have twice the sugar of a can of Coke. A big help with convenience is meal prepping so you can just grab your lunch on your way out.

Prepping Is Key

Prep in stages or all at once. It's on your schedule. Getty Images

Prep can be the worst part of making every meal. It takes up the bulk of the time. Still, it's crucial to make healthy meals in advance and luckily, there are different ways to do it. You could break it up so that you don't have to do it all at once, or you could make a big day of it. I find it easier to clean and cut up a whole container of strawberries and leave them ready in the fridge rather than clean a handful of strawberries each time I want a snack. It takes more time in the moment, but the rewards are substantial throughout the week. Yes, prepping also includes making a shopping list and planning the type of meals you want and what you need to buy. It's a process, but it's something you get better at with practice.

Give Your Meal a Home

Use Tupperware containers to prepare several meals for the week. Getty Images

Invest in your Tupperware if you want to bring your own lunch to work. If you have a nice set of containers, you can meal prep multiple meals for the week, and you don't have to worry about needing to wash the one you used the day before just so you can repack your meal for the next day.

Mix and Match

Roast veggies and meats together to save time and make multiple meals. Getty Images

If you get easily bored eating the same meal for lunch every day, learn how to prepare foods you can mix and match. Make more than one type of meat, grain, and vegetable, and rotate the combinations. This variety will make it easier to get excited about your lunch and cut down on the craving to eat out. You don't have to prepare a lot of each item, but be mindful of things that will taste good with a different range of sides.

Bring Your Own Snacks

Nuts and fruit provide a healthy energy boost that won't make you crash.Getty Images

If you suddenly can't make it to lunch and you're too hungry to go on, then you're going to rush to grab whatever snack you can find. If you pack your own snacks and have them on hand, then you don't have to worry about being forced to make unhealthy choices. A bag of nuts kept in your desk drawer won't go bad quickly, and bringing fresh fruit and veggies each day will be a nice reprieve from salty processed snacks.

Making healthy choices is difficult in our modern culture, and especially in our modern workplaces. If making better selections is important to you, then learn to love the groundwork and all of the benefits it brings.

Good luck and happy prepping!

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It's the end of the month and you get your credit card bill, eyes pop out of your head and you think, WHERE IS ALL MY MONEY GOING? You've stopped eating out, you only buy cheap coffees, and your clothing and travel budget is nonexistent. You think you have no more room to cut costs. I am here to tell you that you do! There is hope at the end of the "very broke" tunnel. I know this because despite all of my penny saving tricks, I needed to find a way to save another $100 or more a month and I found it. It's your recipes man! Yep that's right. You think you are being thrifty by cooking home-cooked meals but let me tell you where all the extra money goes…it's those darn recipes!

Recipes are a total money sucker. That's where your "stay in and cook" plan starts to get expensive. Let's play this out. You make the frugal decision to stay home and cook. What's the first thing you do? Google a recipe that has you flying to the store to pick up all the missing ingredients you need for this home cooked delight. Before you know it, you have a jar of masala seasoning (of which you only need a teaspoon), a bunch of leeks (of which you only need one), and a jar of sun-dried tomatoes (of which you only need a quarter of). You use your new ingredients one time, and are on to the next recipe, likely throwing out, or never using the other leftover un-versatile ingredients. Stop this, stop buying ingredients you only use once a year, stop googling recipes that require additional trips to the store, stop wasting money…and no, I am not saying stop eating. Well I am, I am saying stop eating food that requires you to waste money and start REVERSE MEAL PREPPING.

What the heck is reverse meal prepping (RMP)? It's cooking backwards! No, I don't mean put your back to the stove while you try to simmer your veggies. I mean make a weekly grocery list, stick to it, buy your staples, some proteins, some veggies, some fiber, complex carbs etc… When it's time to cook, type in three main ingredients you have in your house like chicken breast/broccoli/rice or salmon/pasta/green bean or potato/egg/cheese...you get the idea. NOW google. Recipe's will pop up with those ingredients. If any recipes pop up with additional ingredients you don't have you can either leave them out, or google a substitution for that ingredient.

Sounds obvious right? I have so many people ask me "what gave you the idea to make that!?" and I simply say, I just googled a couple ingredients I had on hand. I care about being healthy, but I am a very flexible cook. If a recipe calls for onions and all I have are scallions, it's fine. If a recipe calls for sweet potatoes and all I have are regular potatoes…yep you guessed it, it's fine. This way at the end of the week, or year, you wont throw out hundreds of dollars of food, and you won't head to the store to purchase hundreds of dollars of additional ingredients.

A few tips to make your Reverse Meal Prepping successful:

  • Have a well stocked spice cabinet
  • Have a variety of condiments that have a long shelf life
  • Only buy one meal's worth of meat/veggie protein at a time (unless you are prepping lunches and stuff).
  • Buy veggies that you know you love (not the I "should eat this" kind)
  • Minimize the purchase of foods that expire within 7 days, more trips to the store is better than throwing out food
  • Don't be afraid to get crazy in the kitchen and mix ingredients you never thought would go together! Breakfast Pizza and Hotdog omelets can totally be a thing!
  • Focus on healthy ingredients, not magazine worthy presentation

Let the RMP Begin!