not enough time to meal prep every week?

Hi! Here is an easy strategy for getting proper nutrition to support your goals.

We don’t always have time to cook healthy meals or whip up a proper snack. If you are trying to gain strength or lose fat a few small tweaks can go a long way. Just like most people, I’m crazy busy and sometimes would have a power bar before a workout, but I noticed that that wasn’t getting me through my workout and back home with the energy to cook dinner before having a hangry meltdown, so I had to switch to something a little more substantial. Now I have a small frozen meal as my pre-workout snack.

I usually buy 4-7 of them depending on how good the sale is. Sometimes they have five for 10.00 and sometimes they only have two for 6.00 or 7.00. But they always have a selection of healthy options on sale.

What do I consider healthy? Not necessarily paleo, or low carb, or keto. I don’t care about any of those types of diets. As long as it has an adequate amount of protein, (14-25g)  and some vegetables, and isn't too many calories I’ll get it. For my size, (I'm not quite 5 feet tall) I stick to 180-330 calories per frozen meal. Another trick is to add an additional servings of frozen broccoli or peppers to your frozen meal to increase your vegetable intake which are lacking in quantity for most people. Frozen meals rarely have 2 full serving of vegetables.

I have a client who works late and struggles to get enough food before bedtime which doesn't allow her to have a decent night’s sleep, so she switched to frozen meals for her bedtime snack.

I have another client who struggles to get enough protein each day and was having only power bars and shakes for 2 meals a day, so she switched to frozen for one meal. 

I’m sure a lot of people are already having frozen meals and are like, duh! But I’m talking to those of us who haven’t considered frozen meals because they used to be crap like 15 years ago, so we just don’t think about it. There are some pretty decent options on sale every week at most stores.

Of course, cooking our food from scratch is better, but if it just isn't happening, and we need to face reality, a healthy-ish frozen meal is better than a box of cereal, a bag of chips, etc.