A few weeks off, a Vegas vacation, and an engagement announcement!

I've taken a few weeks off from blogging about my meal preps. I promise it's for a good reason, though! I've been preoccupied with wedding planning because I'm recently engaged!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, we are by no means obsessed with our meal planning. We can go out and enjoy "cheat" meals without feeling bad about it. But, for the most part, we enjoy our clean eating and choose to lead healthy lifestyles.

With that being said, we ate lots of delicious food while visiting Las Vegas. One of our favorite meals was Gordon Ramsay's BurGR! I had a chicken burger and it was amazing. BurGR is a definite recommendation from me if you ever have the chance to visit.

The week before we left for vacation I made one of the happiest finds of my meal prepping life! My local Kroger Marketplace (where I do all of my grocery shopping) has daily prepared salmon, tilapia, and steak and are made with sodium-free seasonings. They also have daily prepared BBQ chicken that is really delicious. This find has significantly cut down on my meal prep time because now all I really have to prepare is our boneless, skinless chicken breasts and roasted vegetables.

This week I also tried brussels sprout for the first time! I love cabbage and have been told that's basically what they taste like. I took a chance on roasting them with the rest of my vegetables and they actually turned out wonderful! It's something I'll definitely be putting them into the vegetable rotation.

Do you have any meal prep tips or suggestions? Please share them with me! I'm always interested in trying new foods!

Asian Inspired Flank Steak

Today's meal prep was not what I had originally planned to eat this week. I went grocery shopping at a particular super center I try to avoid at all costs just because I had some gift cards that needed to be spent. And, as I suspected before I even went shopping, they did not have fresh fish. So, I happened upon some flank steak on sale and decided to give it a go.

At first I was thinking I wanted to do a play on stir-fry. I didn't have any rice for the stir-fry, but I did have some quinoa I needed to finish off. Thus, my play on stir fry.

I cooked the steak on the stove top on medium-high heat until cooked through (quinoa was boiled separately). I added onions, minced garlic, and sodium-free soy sauce to add flavor.  Once everything was cooked I mixed it together (as pictured) and added a little more sodium-free soy sauce to add flavor to the quinoa and VOILA ... my creation (and, not to toot my own horn, but it tastes awesome).

For the rest of my meal prep, I baked boneless, skinless chicken breast and roasted my vegetables. My vegetables are roasted in the oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. I picked up some corn on the cob from the Little Rock Farmers' Market that I'm very excited to try this week! Other vegetables included this week are squash, sweet potatoes, and asparagus!

Happy eating!

How My Meal Preps Changed

My meal preps finally changed for the better when I attended an Eat Clean, Get Lean workshop at ZenStudio Fitness taught by health coach Elizabeth Finch. It was there I learned how to plan the best diet for myself. I learned the importance of pairing healthy proteins and fats with carbs. I learned how to  make healthy choices while eating out (I've been doing better with this one, even though I will still chow down on a good Big Orange burger). But, the biggest thing I took away from this workshop is how to prep my veggies! This lesson has been invaluable to me and the lesson learned is to roast my vegetables all together with some Extra Virgin Olive Oil and a little bit of sea salt. This has completely changed the way I meal prep.

So, I take my veggies of choice for each prep, put some tin foil on a baking sheet, put all of veggies on the sheet and put the Extra Virgin Olive Oil and sea salt on them, then cover them with tin foil and roast them in the oven on 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes.

I also now shop at the Farmer's Market or buy local and organic produce when I can find it at Kroger. I've found that the local and organic foods just taste better.

Today I tried a meatball recipe I am extremely excited about. I mixed together a pound of 97/3 lean ground turkey meat, grated parmesan cheese, minced garlic, parsley, spinach, and one egg. I rolled the mixture out into 12 meatballs and baked them for 25 minutes at 375 degrees.

Do you have any good healthy meatball recipes? Please share them!

Trial and Error Meal Preps

Meal prepping did not start out easy for me. I would look at pictures of meal preps on Instagram and think "I can do that." I wanted to do it, but I also wanted it to be easy. And, I wasn't sure how to make it easy. So, a few preps included frozen meals. I passed the meals off as not being "that bad" for me. And, they're not, but they're also not the "best" meals for me. 

However, one of these meals includes of of my favorite preps I've done; the breakfast meal prep. I replaced regular bacon with turkey bacon a while ago. My personal favorite turkey bacon (strictly because I like the taste of it) is Jennie-O turkey bacon. I also have discovered Bob's Red Mill whole grain pancake mix, which is what I used in this prep. I added organic blueberries to these pancakes, which is my fruit of choice for all pancakes and smoothies I make. Boiled eggs and fresh, organic strawberries topped off this meal. As a little treat to myself on these pancakes I used a teaspoon of sugar free maple syrup. I see another breakfast prep in my near future.

My First Meal Prep

I've been asked by a few friends to share my meal preps, so I'll start from the beginning.

I started meal prepping because Jake (my boyfriend) and I wanted to start eating healthier. He's been a "gym rat" for years and got me into the "gym rat" lifestyle in August of 2013. I started going to the gym with him just to spend more time with him and once I saw my first "gains" I was hooked. I've been in the gym (We go to 10 Fitness) or at ZenStudio Fitness almost every day since then.

Anyway, we both hit a plateau of sorts and knew the only way to change our physiques was to change our diets. So, I did a little research and jumped full force into meal prepping.

My first prep (March 16, 2014):

My first meal prep wasn't awful, but I realize now each meal was just a little too much food. And, it took several hours to complete because I wasn't sure exactly how to cook my veggies all at once. Meal prepping has been a trial and error experience, for sure. I won't pretend to remember how I cooked all of this, so I'll just give the basics of what's included.

These meals included: baked Tilapia fish, baked skinless chicken tenders, turkey and spaghetti squash with low sodium marinara sauce, turkey and veggie soup, and canned tuna mixed with greek yogurt, seedless red grapes, and chopped gala apples. The veggie choices included: asparagus, green beans, sweet potatoes, and celery (the celery came with peanut butter).