One of the biggest complaints against eating real food every night is the time it takes to cook. YES, I eat a home cooked meal every night and NO, it doesn't take me all night. For the most part, I don't eat packaged snacks and I always have real food for lunch, too.

How?

Meal planning and prepping. I'll share my thoughts on how to meal plan another day, today's post is all about prepping.

Every Sunday I do my meal plan for the week and we go grocery shopping. Costco trips are once a month; since it's just Chris and I bulk shopping is less frequent. Sunday afternoons I take 30 minutes to 1 hour to prep the food we bought.

In the photo above, I chopped up three peppers, 2 cucumbers, made 7 green shake bags, and bagged my green beans for the week.

Here's the breakdown:

- peppers are sliced for snacking with hummus, and for the fajitas we're having this week

- cucumbers are ready for snacking as well, or for salads if I'm caught needing to make a quick meal

- green beans are my afternoon snack almost every day, with almonds.

- the green shake bags are baby spinach (bought a huge container at Costco), frozen mango/peach and frozen berry. I can add these into the blender with my Shakeology and unsweetened almond milk in the morning and don't have to worry about measuring anything.

Typically, I'll also cook up a batch of quinoa or brown rice, and do any other chopping I'll need for the week ahead. This week happens to require very little prep time, which I LOVE.

What else can you prep?

- marinades

- breakfasts like protein pancakes or overnight oats

- other types of snacks: portion nut butters or yogurt into reusable containers to grab every morning

- ingredients for dinner: chop cauliflower or sweet potatoes to roast, bake chicken breasts or brown meat for crock pot recipes

Doing prep on Sunday afternoon saves me 10-15 minutes in the morning, extra time I use to play with my dog (or catch up on TV shows, oops!).

Are you using time as an excuse to eat healthy? STOP. Would you rather "lose" an hour a day now, or lose years off your life? Once you get into a routine of clean eating, I promise the time won't feel lost, it'll feel like time you're investing in your health and your future.

Still feel overwhelmed? I'm here to help. Send me a message if you're interested in learning more about clean eating and how you can make fitness and healthy living a habit!