Meal prepping ideas I How to prep meals in advance I Fastest way to meal prep

YouTube, what's going on? Welcome back to the channel. Welcome to the video. In this video, we're going to be covering meal prep 101, meal, meal planning 101, whatever you want to call it. Um, basically helping yourself have food, have meals ready to go, help you stay on track, help you stick to your diet, whether you're losing fat, gaining muscle, whatever the case may be. We're going to talk about what to do in this video. Now I'm going to give you something to remember first and foremost. I'm going to talk about my strategies, and actually I'm going to take you into the kitchen. It's— I don't have a very glamorous kitchen, but I'm going to take you into the kitchen. I'm going to show you my strategy, show you what I do on a weekly basis to help me stick to my nutrition, whether it's meals, whether it's meal timing, all that stuff. I'm going to show you exact foods, exact meals. I'm going to show you all of those things. So I'm going to show you that, and then I want to talk about your strategies, how you can implement all this information we're going to talk about today into your So we're not gonna be here very long. I'm gonna take you into the kitchen. But first and foremost, I want to say this. Remember, when it comes to meal prepping, meal planning, you've probably seen something to the effect of like, whether it's on Instagram or on TikTok or on the internet, where everybody has these containers full of chicken and then it's broccoli and then maybe some white rice if they're lucky, maybe some brown rice if they're lucky. And they have these little containers for each meal. If that's what you wanna do, that's amazing, go for it. But that does not have to be what meal prepping, meal planning is. Remember, meal prepping, meal planning is just planning ahead your meals. That's it, that's really all it is. I've seen a lot of people get overwhelmed that like, I don't have time to make all those foods and eat the same food every single day out of these Excuse me, little containers and they get very overwhelmed. It doesn't have to be like that. And I'm gonna show you what I mean here when we go into the kitchen. I'm gonna go over what I do, but just keep in mind, all this really means is just having a plan. Because having a plan is going to help you succeed with your nutrition. Again, whether losing fat, building muscle, whatever the case may be, having a plan, shocker, is going to be massive. So please don't get overwhelmed and please don't think that's what it has to look like. What your meal prep is gonna look like might be different than what my meal prep is gonna look like. For example, if I work from home and you work at an office, we might have 2 different meal prep or meal planning routines, and that's okay because we have 2 different lifestyles. And so I'm gonna show you what all that means in this video. Now, without further ado, let's hop into the kitchen. I'm gonna show you what my meal prep consists of. All right, let's first cover protein because normally protein is The most time-consuming and the hardest to meal prep, right? You can't just go grab a nicely freshly grilled chicken breast at the store normally. You gotta you gotta make it, right? You gotta make this steak. You gotta make this steak, right? So I just want to first show you normally what I buy. I actually just went to the grocery store not too long ago. So this is primarily what I buy for my protein sources. I have meats right here. So I have my chicken. Steak, steak, salmon, and some more steak that I actually already cut up and grilled up, and we'll talk about that here in a second. But these are my main protein sources. And so what I would say to you is make a list. And if you have not already watched my healthy grocery shopping video, please go watch that video after this video. But make a list of 4 to 6 protein sources that you want to have throughout the week. This way, When you're doing your meal prep, you won't have to eat the same thing every single day. You're gonna have some variety that comes with it. Now, I wanna talk about how I actually cook the food, and I'm gonna tell you something, I'm gonna tell you a secret you can't tell anybody. I'm actually a closet lazy person. I actually don't want to do a lot of work, so I have found my workarounds. So let's take chicken breasts for example. So normally what I'm going to do with this chicken breast I'm going to get this marinade right here, which if you haven't had it, it's amazing. I am literally, again, I'm a pretty basic person, so, you know, please feel free to do whatever you'd like with yours. But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take this seasoning, I'm gonna put it on all of these chicken breasts, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to use my air fryer right here. This thing is a lifesaver. Shout out to one of my clients, Allison. She made me get this. But what I'm gonna do is— this air fryer is sweet because I'm gonna show you something, even though it's not— so it's sweet because again, it takes me 16 seconds to put this seasoning on this chicken breast right here. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut this up, I'm gonna put it in this air fryer, right? And basically all I do is I press a button, I press a button, I press a few more buttons till I get to the chicken. So it's flashing chicken breast, you see it? It literally is going to cook it for me. That's all I do. So I'm just going to click start and I can go do my work. I can go do laundry. I can go do a ton of things while the chicken's already cooking. So a lot of people say, I don't have a lot of time. You literally press 3 buttons. Again, this sequence right here to marinate the chicken or season it, put it in here, Press 3 buttons, let it cook for me. That sequence took 2 minutes and then 25 minutes to cook. And then when it's done, I'll have these chicken breasts while I was answering emails, while I was doing laundry, doing whatever I have to do, right? And this is— if this is you, you can tend to your kids, you can clean the house, you can do whatever you have to do, but you're making it an easier process on yourself. And I'm— again, I'm trying to cook all of these things. If I can't cook all of them, I will do as many as I can because I'm not just going to cook one chicken breast. I'm going to make sure I cook as many as I can to keep it in the fridge and have it for later. So I'll have meals ready to go. All right. So that was my chicken right now. Let's talk about steak. For example, I have this right here. This is great. If you don't have this, it's very similar to the air fryer. It's a Philips smokeless grill. So if you don't have this, this is very, very good. Um, so what I do is I'm going to, again, I'm pretty basic. I'm going to put this seasoning On top of my steaks, I'm gonna plug that bad boy in, and this is gonna cook it for me. I don't really have to do anything. So I'm gonna let it be on each side for you know whatever it is four or five minutes. I'll come back, I'll flip it, I'll answer some emails, I'll do whatever I got to do, and then it's gonna be done. And again, I'm gonna cook all of these. I'm gonna cook all of these on this grill right here because again, why would you just cook one when you can cook all of them and Store them for later. That's one of the big concepts I want to tell you is let's take this steak right here for example, right? This, this ground sirloin. I'm not just going to cook half of it. I'm going to cook all of it because then I'm going to know that I have leftovers in my fridge no matter what. I'm always going to have some sort of food ready to go. And one of the biggest things I've seen is when talking about nutrition, your environment is going to dictate your, your actions, right? And what that means is, if you have foods like this in the house and they're cooked and they're ready to go, guess what? You're gonna eat these foods 'cause they're in the house, they're already cooked, and you're gonna have them. So, just make sure, no matter what you do, make sure you cook all of it. Don't just cook half of it, cook all of it, alright? Alright, and speaking on that same note of protein, remember, sometimes you're probably not gonna have time to cook chicken breasts or steak or whatever it is. I can already hear it now, Eric, I'm busy, I'm on the go, da da da. Perfect. Totally fine. I'm just gonna show you a quick few of my quick grab-and-go simple protein options. All right? So the first one is just gonna be this tuna packet. And now, you can find this tuna packet. It has 190 calories for 33 grams of protein. I believe they have some out there that are about roughly around 100 calories for roughly around, I believe, 15 to 20 grams of protein, somewhere between there. I believe it's the StarKist brand, but either way, some form of protein, some form of tuna can be used for a quick, easy source of protein. You literally just take the container, eat it, good to go, right? You can even throw it into your salad. Perfect, right? Next one is gonna be just simply protein powder. This is my preferred brand, and as you can see, I have a few Legion products here. I absolutely love Legion. This protein powder is by far the best tasting protein powder. I've ever had in my entire life. Um, also very clean, easy digestible, super good. For one scoop it has about 22 grams of protein. So again, very lean source of protein, not a food quote unquote, but protein powder can be massively, massively beneficial in your quote unquote meal prep journey. If you want to try Legion's protein, feel free to head to the link in the description of this video below. Um, there's a code you can use. For 20% off your first purchase. So if you want to try it out, cinnamon cereal, absolutely insane. All right, next is going to be beef jerky, and that's just going to be, again, simple, easy grab-and-go. For one serving of beef jerky, which is about 28 grams, is going to be about 10 grams of protein. And again, this is super simple, and it's, it's real food. It's beef. There's real food here. It's nothing crazy. You're not drinking like only shakes. Like, It's real food, right? So that's that as well. And then Greek yogurt is one of my staples as well. I just love these Oikos Triple Zero. Again, 15 grams of protein, super convenient, super simple. I have a whole fridge full of them. That is my 4th option for go-to sources of protein. And last but not least, just very quickly, I want to make sure I show this as well. This is my pressure cooker. If you don't have those 3 things I've shown in this video thus far, this is going to be the pressure cooker. We have the air fryer up here, and you saw the Philips Smokeless Grill. All of these things, again, you press 3 buttons, you put it in here, you can go do whatever you gotta do, come back, and it's done. You don't actually have to cook it. And that's one big hack I want you to understand, is whether it's the air fryer, pressure cooker, whatever, you can have the food, you can cook the food without actually having to cook it on the stove and spend all this time doing it. All right, so Use these things to your advantage. I want to show is just some quick and easy things I do to help quote-unquote meal prep. And again, if you've watched my healthy grocery shopping video, you may have seen this. But what I like to do is— there is nothing wrong with buying frozen foods. All of these foods you see right here are just nutrient-dense whole foods that are just frozen. So again, for example, Let's take these vegetables right here, right? If you go to the ingredients of these vegetables, you can see it's all just real food. There's nothing— it's just real food frozen. If we go to this rice right here— shout out Whole Foods— if we go to the rice, it's just cooked white rice with some water. Like, that's it. So for me, I eat 1 to 2 bags of these per day. So I'm just gonna put this in the microwave And that's how I quote-unquote meal prep my rice. That's all I gotta do. I don't spend tons of time cooking rice. I have this again, same thing. I have that right there. It just cooks it for me. I have these right here. I think it's like 4 or 5 minutes in the microwave, good to go. I have these right here. I actually throw these into my air fryer. Once again, takes me 6 seconds to just put some fries in the air fryer, press 3 buttons on there, and I can go do whatever I gotta do and it's done. The spinach, for example. I, again, I'm a closet lazy person. The spinach is just literally organic chopped spinach. That's it. Like, again, if you go to the ingredients, it's just spinach. Ingredients: organic spinach. That's it. So again, I'll put this in the microwave for 2 and a half minutes and I'm good to go. And that's it. So again, this doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be hard. Use things like this to your advantage. And then when you go grocery shop, like Look for things like this. Like, there again, there is nothing wrong with having this right here. The ingredients are just— it's just the actual food. There's nothing crazy. There's nothing wrong with buying these quote-unquote frozen foods. And so this right here, I can assure you, takes up a lot of time. It takes— it gives me back a lot of time. I'm sorry, it doesn't take up a lot of time. It gives me back a lot of time. I'm not sitting there like doing all this crazy stuff with the broccoli and the asparagus. Like, if you want to do that, that's awesome, but like, again, this is just what works for me. So if you are having a really hard time getting started with meal prep, things like this right here can be the chef's kiss for you. All right, now the next thing I want to show you very quickly as well is when it comes to vegetables, again, um, I'm lazy. I don't really like doing it. And so what I'll do is I'll buy these little Asian chopped kits right here. This is the one I like. You can buy Buy whichever one you like, but again, like nothing crazy. Like, you know, again, when looking at these things right here, just keep in mind as well, the salad dressing usually takes up a lot of calories. So if you want to buy these things and not use the salad dressing and use your own salad dressing just for a lower calorie option, you can do that as well. But again, all I do is I get this right here, I put it in a big bowl And it's done. And I'll put, like for example, I'll put my chicken on top of this salad. Now it's a high protein filling salad. So quick and easy options, again, does not have to be complicated. So another thing I wanna tell you guys is I always, always, always have, I'm almost done with my watermelon, but I always have just quick, easy grab and go things in the house, especially fruits. You can never go wrong eating fruit, never. You can never go wrong eating fruit. Anybody who tells you not to eat fruit, punch them in the balls. Always have these because like, again, no matter what comes up, no matter what craziness is going on, you can make sure you always have quick and easy things. And again, like I'll buy this watermelon, I'll cut it up, I'll do the thing, but I can always randomly grab an orange. I can always grab a banana. Like you grabbing this banana is probably better than 99% of other things you are going to grab inside of your house. And so, Again, keep things super simple. If you always have these in the house, you can always— in the back of your head, you always know you can have these things. And again, using these things throughout the day, saying, hey, I'm gonna have one serving at breakfast, one serving at lunch. Perfect. You've now gotten 2 servings of fruit per day. Very easy grab-and-go things. So, all right, you've seen some of my strategies. You've seen how I I prepare my chicken, my steak, my frozen vegetables, my frozen rice. You've seen the quick and easy options that I take, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with grabbing a pre-made bag of salad. There's nothing wrong with grabbing some frozen vegetables so you can just put them in the microwave. Like that spinach I showed you, man, I love that stuff. I enjoy it. I actually like that spinach. And so there's nothing wrong with making it easier on yourself, especially if you are somebody who is busy. You have a job, you have kids, you got to feed other people. Like, find ways to make things easier. And so that's what I kind of want to bring into the next point. This last point here is, you know, think about your strategy. So what I want to say here is like, again, this comes back to planning your life. If you have a spouse and kids and other responsibilities, Might look different than my life, where my life is this right here— fitness and nutrition. That's my life. That is it. So, you know, you might have a different schedule throughout the day than I do. So go through your day, like plan out what your day is going to look like. When you wake up, do you have— like, one of the, one of the questions I ask all my clients is when they sign on is I give them a questionnaire and I say, you know, run through your day. The first question is, do you have time to cook breakfast? If you do, awesome. What are you going to make? If not, find things you can do easily. I showed you my every single morning, my go-to breakfast. It's what I have every single day and I love it and I enjoy it and it works for me and it fills me up and it gives me good energy. And so finding, you know, what is that schedule going to look like for you? So for example, I'll give you an example of mine. Mondays and Wednesdays are my check-in days for my clients. On those days, I am in front of the computer for a long time. I'm not cooking food those days, darling. Like, it's just not— and just, I'm not doing it. So I know that, okay, Mondays and Wednesdays are gonna be a bit busier for me. So you better believe Saturday and Sunday, I have a bit more time where I can cook food. So when Monday rolls around, I'm not spending time cooking food, doing this, doing that. What I'm doing is I'm going into my fridge. I'm gonna get that frozen rice you saw. I'm gonna get some, some whatever protein I have cooked up that's going in the microwave very quickly. Heat it up, da da, eat it, back to work. It takes me 10 to 15 minutes to eat and I will say I eat kind of fast so don't eat as fast as I do but either way like I don't spend time cooking on those days. Same thing with Wednesday. I know on Wednesday I am not cooking food so I know that on Tuesday I better have enough food prepared for Wednesday and so On Tuesdays, this is actually a Thursday I'm recording this, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays, it's a little bit more time to cook, not insane, but a little bit more time, so I know, alright, cool, like I'm gonna make ahead 1, 2, 3 meals for Wednesday, 'cause I know Wednesday's gonna be a bit crazy, and so go through your week like that. If you know you have a day where like the kids got soccer on Tuesday, Thursday nights, and you're gone from 6 to 9 PM, like it's totally fine, but on Monday, maybe cook a bit extra at dinner, or on Monday morning, When you are doing chores around the house, put the chicken in the air fryer, let it cook, do your thing, clean the house, come back to it, it's good, it's ready to go for the next day. Find ways to make things easier on yourself. Plan ahead. We talked about planning a few times, maybe just a few, a few times in this video already. Do that. Take your time, work through things, look at your daily schedule, look at your weekly schedule. Where can you fit in this? You know, having that air fryer? Where can you fit in using that grill? Where can you fit in cooking up some of the ground chicken or the, or the steak or whatever it is for you? Plan out some times to do it. And again, it doesn't have to be crazy amounts of time. I, I don't spend a lot of time cooking food, and I can probably assure you I eat much more food than you do. I don't spend a lot of time cooking food. I just input in and put the time blocks in where I know I'm gonna cook food at this time, I'm going to make food this time. I put those time blocks in just like I would with this YouTube video. I blocked off from 11 AM to 12:30 PM YouTube video editing, filming, all of it. I blocked it off. And then I'm going to block off a period of time today where I say, okay, cool, for these 15, 20 minutes, I'm going to cook some food, meal prep, do whatever I got to do. And so use that to your advantage and take that time to do that. And again, like you saw in the video, What I would do if I were you, and a lot of my successful clients do this, take it by meal. And I would pick one meal that's the same every single day, or roughly about the same every single day. All right, so I wanna show you this as well. I'm a huge, huge advocate for making one meal of your day the same every single day. And when I say the same, you can have some variation, but I'm gonna show you what my breakfast is every single morning that I love, that keeps me super full, That gives me good energy, good digestion, and it's super quick, super simple. So what I do is I just mix— so what I do is I wake up around 5 AM and I have this right here. I go to work out around 6, 6:30 AM, right? So this is my breakfast/pre-workout meal. What I do is I just mix my Legion Protein with some water and I make a protein shake. It's literally that good. I don't have to mix it with like almond milk or anything. It'd probably be better, but it's so good by itself I don't have to. I do a protein shake. I do a Greek yogurt right here. So again, this breakfast right here is already 37 grams of protein between one scoop of protein powder and one of these Oikos triple zero yogurt. 37 grams of protein right here already. People always ask me, how do you get so much protein? Right here, super simple. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to mix it with either watermelon and/or clementines, either one of those two. I'm gonna throw a banana in there every single morning. This is my breakfast. It's super quick, it's super easy, I can adhere to it, it is sustainable, and it takes the guesswork out of it for me. I don't have to think about what breakfast is gonna be. Literally this every single morning. The less decision-making you have to have, the better, because the more you have to think about things, the harder it's gonna be. And so again, this is my breakfast slash pre-workout meal, and then I'll take— actually, I have right here. I'll take my Pulse pre-workout, which right now I'm doing the caffeinated version. I normally don't do a ton of caffeine, to be honest with you, but I wanted to try this out. They have a stim-free version as well. Um, but again, I'll take this about— I'll eat this around 5:00 AM. I'll take this around 6:00 AM and I'll be good to go. Um, again, if you want to try this out as well, if you want to try the pre-workout out, again, feel free to head to the link in the description of this video. Um, there's a code For 20% off your first purchase of any Legion Athletics, all right? And most of the time, that meal's gonna be breakfast. You saw, I have the same breakfast every single day and I love it and I enjoy it. It's quick, it's easy, I don't have to think about it. One of the biggest things that people get tripped up on is like you're trying to fly by the seat of your pants. You're like, well, what should I cook this meal? What should I do that meal? What can I eat here? Take the guesswork, take the decision-making out of it. Make one of your meals the same every single day. Oftentimes what this looks like is either breakfast or lunch. For example, you saw my breakfast, same breakfast every single day. Or you could say, hey, you know what, for lunch, no matter what, I'm having a big-ass salad every single day. What goes in the salad can change. You can have a different pre-made salad bag. You can have chicken instead of salmon or have turkey instead of fish or whatever. But for lunch, you're having a big-ass salad every single day no matter what. You could even combine those 2, by the way. You can say, hey, for breakfast, this is my breakfast. For lunch, I'm having a big-ass salad. Dinner rolls around, you can be a bit more creative, change some things up, do whatever you gotta do there, but you've already taken out breakfast and lunch. Do you understand how easy that is going to be for you moving forward? You don't have to think about it. You don't have to guess. You're having the same thing or roughly the same thing every single day. And some people might hear that and say, oh my God, it's not gonna work for me. I'm gonna lose my mind. Number one, to each his own. But number two, don't knock it until you try it, especially the breakfast part. Like, especially, like, I've just seen through coaching thousands of people, most people actually like having a— having the same breakfast every single day. They enjoy it. It's a nice routine for them. And so if you have not done that yet, I would definitely do it because again, you want to make as little, as least amount of decisions as possible when you're going on this journey because The least, the lesser decisions you have to make, I was trying to find the right word, the lesser decisions you have to make, the easier this is gonna be for you. The easier it's gonna be, the easier you can stick to it. The more you can stick to it, the more results you're gonna see because consistency is what breeds results. And so finding ways to make it easier, massive help. So guys, that was the video today on meal prepping, meal planning, whatever you wanna call it. I gave you some of my strategies. Remember, it doesn't have to be, Putting your food in individual containers with, you know, half of it's broccoli, half of it's chicken, and, you know, all that kind of stuff. If you want that, awesome. Feel free to go ahead and rock it out. But don't let that, don't let that be the thing you think you have to do. It just means having a plan, preparing ahead. And even one last note I'll say, it sometimes isn't even going to be food you make in the kitchen. It might just be, I know I'm going out to, I'm gonna be out running errands and going to my kid's soccer game on this Saturday. So you know what? I'm gonna plan ahead at what restaurant I'm gonna have. I'm gonna make sure I look at the menu. I'm gonna make sure I get some source of protein and some vegetable included in there. And so, you know, just planning ahead, that is the biggest part here. Just take that extra 5 or 10 minutes to plan ahead. Promise you with all of my heart, it is going to pay off in the long run. Okay? So any questions, any concerns, guys, drop below. I'd love to hear from you. If you enjoyed the video, please feel free to let me know below. I think this is a topic where I do think people need to touch on it more. So if you enjoyed this video, Please feel free to let me know below, share it with a friend, and if you did, again, like the video, subscribe to the channel, click that notification bell, those 3 things, and thank you for watching. We'll chat soon, okay?