Meal Prep Tips for Weight Loss and Maintenance Success: 11

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. I'm really excited to share my guest with you today. His name is Rich and he runs a site all about meal prep, and it's really interesting how he got into that, but I thought it would be great to chat with him going into the new year because I know a lot of you are going to be working on your diets and wondering what you can do to stay on track. So Rich is going to help us out with that today. So welcome and tell everybody a little bit about sort of your background and how you got to be interested in meal prepping.

Yeah. Thank you, Cheryl. It's great to be here. Yeah. My name is Rich. I have been meal prepping for, you know, as long as I've been cooking. I grew up in Austin, Texas, and I wrestled in high school. That was my high school sport. One of the weird things about wrestling is that you have to have weight classes. And so as a high school kid, I was having to diet and eat my own food and You know, so really it just started out of necessity. My mom didn't want to cook separate food for me every night, and I don't blame her at all. And so if the family was having spaghetti, then I would get on the grill and make chicken and rice. And after doing that, you know, several times, I realized quickly I don't like cooking all that much at the time, and I don't have time with studying and sports and practices and having to bring food to school that was, you know, on track with the diet. So I just started making all my own food and I had some, you know, particular kind of food dietary needs at the time that I couldn't really even like, you know, I couldn't even buy food from restaurants really or from grocery stores. 'Cause I had, you know, for wrestling, I'd have my water weight down. And so I basically had no, like a no sodium diet. And if you've ever cooked or tracked sodium, anything you eat from anywhere is really high. And so out of necessity, I just started meal prepping. I would cook a bunch of food on Sunday nights for the school week as a sophomore and junior in high school. And that's really where I got started. And then really it just kind of continued since then. In college, I would— it was the same kind of deal. I wanted to save money and wanted to eat healthy. And so I would cook a bunch of food on the weekend and eat it in between class and during the week and for dinner just to save money and time, you know, for studying and all that. And then, um, it's become one of those weird, you know, hobbies slash just, you know, life hacks that has helped me, um, even since college. Um, so I, for the last 5 and a half years, I've been in grad school and, uh, working as a pastor full-time and have my own business on the side and I'm married. And so meal prepping has just always been that thing that's saved me time, saved me money, and helped me eat healthy along the way.

Yeah, it sounds like you're probably busier now than ever, really.

Life— we also have an 8-month-old, so life is crazy. Life is crazy right now. And so I like to keep the fridge stocked, otherwise I'll just eat terrible food. And it's like if the food is there and it's cooked and I just got to heat it up, I have no excuse. So it's been super helpful for me.

Yeah, that's really awesome. Just to clarify for some people, I did know some wrestlers when I was in high school, so I'm maybe a little bit more familiar with it than some people might be. But yeah, so people that do wrestling have to meet a weight class typically.

And that's right.

You guys do a lot of crazy stuff in an effort to— I think what the idea is, right, to be to actually be bigger, but to be able to lose enough water weight quickly to weigh in at a lower weight class. So you mentioned that you were doing a very low sodium diet, and that's obviously so that you don't retain water. Just some background for people to understand what that kind of life is like. Can you share with us some of the other things that you had to do when you were trying to make weight besides always watch your diet? Because there's a lot of other interesting things that you guys do, some healthy, some maybe not as healthy, but I just think it might be interesting for folks.

For sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I was always a bigger kid growing up. And so like my junior and senior year, I would come in at the beginning of the school year in August, September, weighing around 205 to 210, and I would drop down to about 180. And so I typically had to drop around 25 to 30 pounds for my sophomore through senior year. And so, yeah, you kind of nailed it. The goal is to be as strong as you can for your body weight, to be as lean as possible so that you are pound for pound, you know, stronger, bigger, you know, better than the guy across from you. And so typically the lighter you can get, the stronger you're gonna be for your weight. And then there, you know, there's some kind of manipulation here and there of like, you know, if a guy at a certain weight class was really good from a different school or, you know, different region, you might try to, go away class above or below him, you know, to avoid having to go against him. And so my senior year was probably the most extreme. I cut from 210 to 190, and then 190 to the 180 weight class. And then when I was kind of gearing up for, you know, playoffs and state and whatnot, my best friend was at 171. And so I decided to go down to 160. And so I got And it was wild. So I got down to 168, and that's when I really cut the sodium down to where basically had no salt in my diet. Had to be under 1,000 milligrams of sodium a day, which 1,000 sounds like a lot, but it's really hardly anything. Most people eat that in like one meal or one, like one bag of chips would have twice that. And so that was probably the most extreme I had to get. I ended up not getting down to 160. It was just too miserable for me. But my, for me, I really tried to be healthy about how I cut weight. So I tried to diet, diet right. I didn't start early, get down to like a reasonable place. And then it was kind of, you know, more watching like the water weight, you know, day of a meet, you know, it'd be, you know, the night before you'd get in a sauna and then the day of you wouldn't eat or drink much. You'd wear, you know, full body sweats, you know, and go for runs and jogs, just kind of lose water weight and You know, 1 cup of— 1, you know, typical water bottle is about 2 pounds of water. And so, you know, if you were close on weight, like, you just wouldn't drink water. It's the fastest thing you can manipulate to lose or gain weight. And so— and I had friends who were much more extreme and much less healthy. So they would much more binge eat. You know, they would eat, you know, pizza and Chick-fil-A, you know, for 4 days a week, and then they would starve themselves for the other 3 days. I just, one, I just hated doing that and didn't see the point in that. Other guys would definitely have to, you know, drop a lot more weight than I did. So I had friends who would lose, you know, 25 pounds in 3 days because they would just not eat for 3 days. And it was just, for me, I didn't wanna do that. And so meal prepping was one of the things that just kind of helped me, you know, stay healthy along the way.

Yeah, I'm glad to hear that you did that in a much healthier way maybe than some of your counterparts. Did, I think you said, did you continue wrestling into college Or were you just—

I did not. No, I wasn't that good, to be honest. I mean, I loved it.

No, I was just curious how your diet changed then once you went off to school. Like you said, you continued the meal prep kind of for the same reasons, to try to stay healthy and to save money and to save time. But did anything change in your diet over the years since you started experimenting with more of this stuff?

Yeah, I mean, so in high school, whenever I was dieting for wrestling, from August until season started, to lose the 25, 30 pounds, I would mostly do a keto diet. And so your listeners are probably familiar with keto, but it's basically zero carb, as little as absolutely possible except for trace carbs. And so I kind of followed that whenever I was in high school, preseason, and then kind of during season, it was more low carb, not as strict on keto necessarily. And so whenever I went off to college, I did not want to do that. And so I I like carbs, I like food. My wife and I, you know, we like, that's our source of entertainment and comfort and everything good in life is like, okay, we're gonna celebrate, we're gonna get food, we're having a hard day, we're gonna get food. And so definitely have to kind of watch our food and diet, you know, if we're gonna eat out, you know, some, like we want the other 80% of our eating to be healthy. And so in college it was, you know, I still have always, I've always loved working out. And so even today I still work out 3 to 5 days a week, kind of a, you know, train and powerlifting style of training. And so I, you know, diet's a huge part of that if you wanna do it well. And so now in college and even post-grad, I mostly just try to eat healthy, you know, like kind of lifestyle healthy eating. But for me, that's typically high protein. And then I, eat kind of a steady amount of fats and then I manipulate my carbs based on, hey, if I had an off day, I won't have, I'll have as little carbs as possible. If I had a really hard leg day where I'm, you know, squatting and doing like a really physical workout, then I'll eat more carbs that day. So that's kind of my, like my way of kind of lifestyle eating. It's easy for me, high protein, you know, and then just kind of adjust the carbs based on, hey, if I'm working out today, great. If not, then I don't get to eat. And so it's incentive to get in the gym.

Yeah, no, that's such an amazing way to approach it because I think people kind of forget sometimes when they're following low carb or keto that you can, you can tolerate more carbs and stay in ketosis if your goal is staying in ketosis. If you're working out, you can tolerate more carbs and sometimes they're useful for certain types of workouts. So I think that that's a really cool and healthy approach that you've taken to the whole thing, which is awesome because, you know, being a younger person, a lot of people in your age group aren't as focused on being healthy yet. Um, so I think it's good though when you get in the habit and get a good start.

Yeah.

Um, when you're younger, it's, it's just easier. You have to fight less things as you age. So that's awesome.

Um, so absolutely, I believe it.

So you kind of— so you work— oh, the one thing I did want to ask you, when you say high protein, what does high protein mean to you? And everybody, you know, obviously keep in mind he is doing weightlifting, so this is a little bit different.

Yeah.

Um, but I'm just curious what that means for your height and what kind of Yeah, yeah, that's a great—

it's a great question. So, you know, I think high protein for me is typically at least 1 gram per pound of body weight. And for me, that's a baseline I try to reach if I'm— and then I can sometimes go a little bit higher. I tend to kind of go to 1 to 1.2 grams per body weight. If you are really overweight, like if you have a higher body fat percentage, I think that number can be lower. And so I think if you're really, you know, if you're over 20% body fat, I would recommend like maybe like 0.8 of your weight. So if you're 200 pounds, eat 160 grams of protein a day is probably a good place to be. That's my recommendations. It's not gospel. I can't quote a study off the top of my head that would back that up. That's just kind of what I've always, it's been a benchmark for me. If I'm trying to really, if I'm trying to like bulk up and gain weight and put on muscle, I'll go higher. And so, I've had seasons where I'm doing 1.5 grams a day, and at times that for me, that's been, you know, 300 to 350 grams of protein a day. I don't like doing that. It's not fun. And so it's a lot of— that's actually a lot more— that's a lot harder than actually training. And so I think for a typical lifestyle, if you just want to eat healthy and, you know, I think it can be lower, but if you're really training hard, I think at least a gram a day is probably where you should be.

Yeah, I would have to say everybody that I've heard talk about this in recent history, and you said you can't cite any studies. I'm not sure if there's a ton of studies on specifically like protein in relation to weightlifting, but all of the experts that I've been listening to lately, just for optimal body composition, they really recommend the 0.8 that you said is kind of the minimum for just a general healthy diet. So, I think you were spot on with that. Yeah. And then, increasing based on your goals, as you mentioned, when you're trying to put on muscle, you go up to even maybe 1.5. But they said just for general, most people if you go between 0.8 to 1.2 grams per pound of body weight, then you should be pretty good. So I think you're spot on.

Absolutely. And something— yeah, I'm glad that— I'm glad they backed me up, or I backed them up. And one thing I've noticed is that, for one, protein tends to be a— just sources of protein tend to just be healthier generally. So if you're eating chicken or turkey or even beef or pork, they tend to be healthier and leaner and have better like nutrients for you. Whereas carb and fat sources, you know, they can be healthy or they can be really unhealthy. And so for me, like whenever I'm trying to eat, whether it's dieting or not, a higher protein diet, one, it tends to fill me up more than, you know, if I eat a bunch of carbs, I'm probably not going to be as full as I would if I ate, you know, you know, chicken or something like that. And so one, it fills me up more for the amount of calories that I get to eat. It's more satiating. And I think if you're trying to diet, it's really important to pick foods that, that will fill you up. So, you know, you could eat 6 apples for the amount of carbs that are in like a cup and a half of rice. And I think that a lot of people tend to not pick food sources that will actually fill them up. And so they feel really hungry when they're dieting because they really want that piece of chocolate or whatever it is. But they— if they, if they, if they substituted that, they could eat actually a lot more food and they wouldn't be as hungry.

Yeah, couldn't agree more. And I think that's really the beauty of the keto diet, because not only is it maybe a little higher protein than most people are used to, especially if you really put your focus on that, but it also, you know, creates— since you're not having these sugar highs and lows and because you are eating really nutrient-dense, really satiating food, it's I think that the studies that want to say that low carb or keto isn't as good, they don't take into account the fact that it's just so much easier to stay at that lower calorie level. There's many different ways to lose weight. People can— you can do it vegan, you can do it vegetarian, you can do it low fat. But I just think that eating a higher fat, adequate protein diet makes it so much easier to stay at those lower calorie levels. It's been Definitely my experience.

Yeah, absolutely. And then I know for keto, at least like everyone's different in how they, you know, their mindset and how they do things. I tend to be all or nothing. And so if I'm doing a keto diet, it's like if I want to stay in ketosis, I really have to be very strict or else I'll, I'll go off course. And so it kind of requires more adherence. And so I think it's one of the reasons that people lose a lot of weight with keto. One is they, you know, they tend to cut carb sources, so you hold less water, so you you lose 10 pounds in the first 2 weeks because you lose all your water weight. So one, you get really motivated when you see the scale move like that. Now, whether it's good for you or not, that's debatable. But I think it does get motivation going faster. And then because it requires, you know, near-perfect adherence, people tend to lose more weight. Whereas if they just kind of are, hey, I'm eating healthy generally, but you're more likely to have cheat meals or I'm just going to have this one little snack or this one thing at work that, you know, the free donuts that someone brought in. When you're on keto, you can't do that or else you go out of ketosis. And so I think it tends to kind of help people stay on— it requires you to stay on track in ways that most diets don't have that same kind of requirement.

Yeah, no, I would agree with that. And it also just limits, you know, limiting food choices in general in some way. For some people, it can seem too restrictive. But if the goal is really weight loss and you want to do it, you know, I would really recommend that people not lose weight as quickly as possible is my overall recommendation.

Yeah, I agree.

But some people, that's what they want. They want, that if they do want to lose weight in that way, it certainly makes, you know, maximizing that effect a lot, a lot easier.

Um, yeah, no doubt.

So, um, well, I'd love to hear all your philosophy on this and background on this stuff, but obviously what people probably want to know this time of year is if they've never meal prepped before, how do they get started with it, and what are some of your best tips and education that you can give after all of these years of meal prepping, which by the way, I just think is amazing. I've never meal prepped in my entire life. I like to cook, so it doesn't bother me so much to do, you know, cook every night or whatever. But I think for a lot of people that is not the case.

Yeah.

And so I think this is gonna be super helpful.

Yeah. Well, I'm glad. I mean, I think, you know, I'll just kind of ramble for a bit. I think one, you know, people tend to, when they first start meal prepping, they go on Instagram and they see, you know, someone's fridge that's like fully stocked with like 25 Tupperware containers and, you know, they're all broken out by like breakfast, lunch, dinner, and they're super, you know, organized. And that's great for people who want to do that. I have weeks where I, where my fridge looks like that, but that's not where I started. I started by, hey, I'm just going to cook one meal that I know I already like. It's, it's, I make, you know, I make tacos every Tuesday night. We make, you know, ground beef tacos or ground turkey. And then, okay, I'm just going to take that And I'm just gonna— and just simply double the recipe. So if you make 1 pound of meat, typically get a second pound and cook more, and then you just have leftovers for lunch the next day. And that's meal prepping. It's not like— my whole business and the website is not meal prepping. It's just eating leftovers. Like, it's not like— there's no big science to it. It's just eating, cooking more food and eating your leftovers rather than throwing them away or letting them sit in the fridge for, you know, until they go bad. And so I think there's just a little more intentionality there. And so I would start by just telling people, hey, pick something that, you know, you already like. You don't— don't go out and find some new recipe that you've never tried before and make 19 servings of it because, one, if you don't like it, that's a waste of money and, you know, food. And two, it's just— you don't need to do that. So I would say start with something you've already tried that, you know, you or your family like. And just double the recipe and do that for the week. So start simple is the first thing I would say. And then, you know, I would probably say start with whatever meal you hate cooking. And so for me, like, I don't mind cooking dinner most nights, but I really don't like having to, you know, figure out lunch every day. And so, and one, that's where I tend to either eat out for lunch during the workday or if I'm particularly busy, like I don't want to have to like go home and make lunch and eat it and then, you know, whatever. And so, and, you know, always forgetting to pack lunch, you know, day of, or if I'm out the door in a hurry. And so I tend to meal prep my lunches. And so on Sundays, you know, so that's the meal that I want to have covered. For others, it's dinner. It's, hey, they eat out a lot for work anyways, you know, so they're doing work lunches that are paid for, whatever., but they get home and it's like, it's 7 o'clock and the last thing they want to do is cook. So they get takeout on the way home and that's where they're spending money and they're eating unhealthy because they want to save time, or they're tired. And so I would say for those people, it might be, hey, meal prep dinner for the week. And so just kind of think through like, what is the meal that is the most inconvenient or the one that you always tend to kind of eat out for and start there. For most people, it's probably lunch or dinner. At least for me, you know, breakfast is, breakfast is also the hardest to meal prep because eggs just don't taste good. I mean, like, I, I've done like the egg muffins in, you know, the muffin tin and I've, you know, I've done that. It, it, it works. It's not great. And so I think, I think I would start with lunch or dinner. And then, and then I would, you know, the other big tip I would have is use simple recipes. You know, a lot of recipes online, if you go on Pinterest, they're gonna have,, you know, 20 different ingredients and 9 different spices and you got to buy stuff that you've, that you have never tried or used before. I just, I like really simple meals that, that don't, don't take long to prep. They use a lot of the same ingredients. And so I tend to cook a lot with like find like ingredient overlaps. And so like I use onions and bell peppers in like half of my food because they're good, they're healthy, they're easy to prep. I can use them in Asian food and like a stir fry. I can do it in a sheet pan. You know, I can do it with like, you know, fajitas on the grill. So finding foods that I can use in a variety, variety of different ways. And so for me, that means, you know, on Sundays I can get onions and bell peppers and slice them all up and I can cook them for fajitas and for stir fry. And I'm not having to prep, you know, and buy and prep all these different kinds of vegetables. So that's just one thing that's super easy for me is just ingredient overlaps. You know, I think planning ahead is also probably helpful. I think some people, you know, they can kind of be overeager from the start and so they'll plan out, you know, a whole month of food and it can be overwhelming to kind of try to do that. And so I definitely recommend just kind of starting small. I think that's the best thing for new people. I think that's probably the best way for them to get started.

I think there's so many awesome tips in there. I can't wait to go through those and kind of map them out again, like 1, 2, 3, 4. But I think you're spot on with starting with something simple, something that you've already tried that you know that you love. Because to your point, you make like 10 servings of something and then you don't like it. How awful would that be? And you're going to end up wasting money. And then also the very last thing you said about starting simple, I think most people would probably in their head think, oh, I should do it for a week. Because it's like a week is kind of this magical sort of number in their head. What if you did it for 3 days or 4 days or 5 days? What if it's easy for you? And like you said, especially at the beginning, just start out small and see how it goes. Have you experimented with— this is something I've thought about buying for a very long time and I just haven't pulled the trigger yet. But because your life is very full of meat as well, I was talking to my uncle about this a while back and he has. A vacuum sealer. And he said it's absolutely important.

Oh yeah.

Because quite often when you buy meat in the store, I mean, now I always put it inside of a freezer bag, leave it in its original packaging and put it inside a freezer bag because they get so easily freezer burned. Yeah. But he said that does not happen with food vacuuming. So I'm just wondering, are there any things like that that you've experimented with or, or special kinds of containers that you find keep the food longer or just any other tips in that sort of realm of actually keeping the food stay as fresh as possible?

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, you know, fortunately, like, I think storage, food storage containers have come a long way. You know, I grew up in like the Tupperware, you know, that's where that's all you had was Tupperware and it would, it would stain, it would look gross. You couldn't, you know, in the dishwasher they would get turned over and get filled with water. In the microwave you couldn't do that. And so I just, I love using glass, glass containers. They're not the cheapest, they're a little bit more expensive to buy, but the benefit is that you can— they can go in the microwave super easily, they can go in the oven, they can go in the dishwasher, and they're more sturdy, so they just hold food better. So I recommend glass, typically recommend glass meal prep containers just for all those reasons. But they do tend to be a little bit more expensive. I think Pyrex has like a decent, you know, like if you go on Amazon, it's like a 16, you know, set of, of glass cook— you know, glass storage containers. Um, I have never done a vacuum sealer. I— my father-in-law has one and he loves it. Uh, I just haven't— I just haven't done it yet. Um, I, I tend to— I try not to freeze food as much, to be honest, um, because once it's in the freezer, it just lives there forever. And then in 2 years, we're like pulling it out, it's like, what What is this? You know, and so I tend to kind of— I tend to try to avoid freezing stuff if I can, but that's not always the case. And then, yeah, so that's probably what I would recommend is glass, glass containers.

Well, I agree with you on that one. And for another reason, besides all the reasons that you mentioned, is it's also much healthier because plastic, particularly these real disposable plastic ones like the Yeah, the ones that you buy in the grocery store that are just meant for, you know, people don't have to return them to you because they're real inexpensive. Well, also that plastic can leach into your food, particularly if, you know, even when they're microwave safe, I think that that plastic leaching happens. So that's not something I've ever done a super deep dive on, but I've heard enough people talk about it that I replaced my stuff with the glassware a few years ago. So I do like to do that. And for people that do like to freeze things, because I'm a big I like to freeze things. So if I make a big batch of chili or a big batch of soup, I will freeze it. And that way it's just like a couple weeks later I take it out, and that gives you more variety also with the meal prep, right? So, um, but one of the things that I learned the hard way is just exactly what you said, like taking it out like, hmm, is this chili or is this tomato sauce? Like, I don't know what it is. Yeah. So a couple things, if I do happen to use, I will use plastic Ziploc freezer bags for a few things. So there's those you can easily write on, but for containers that you can't easily—

for sure.

I just use a Post-it note and I just stick it on the top of it. And that way it's a lot easier to know at a glance what it is in the container, especially if, you know, it happens like you said and it's like 3 or 4 months later and, you know, your memory's not quite as good as it used to be like mine.

I might not remember what it is. So, um, yeah.

So yeah.

I mean, yeah, it's not, it's not hard to use a freezer like that. I just, I just always forget to do the Post-it. And so I'm like, I don't know what the heck this is.

Right.

Um, So yeah. And I also live in Texas, so like we don't, it's hot here 10 months out of the year. You know, it's almost December and it's 80 degrees outside. And so, you know, we, I don't tend to eat a lot of like hot soup or chili.

So yeah. So the things that might be more amenable to freezing, you're maybe not eating as much.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

That totally makes sense. Well, anything that we haven't talked about yet, final thoughts on meal prepping? 'Cause like I said, I'm sure some people are gonna be listening to this that are going into the new year saying, I'm gonna be healthier and I'm going to spend less money and I'm going to, you know, maybe try lower carb or keto or some different way of eating where if they had more of a plan, they might be more successful. Any final thoughts or tips around that kind of stuff?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a couple of things that I would just— just general advice. I don't know how many tips I'm about to let loose, but I think one is I would definitely have variety in your meal prepping. And so, like, I have I have, you know, 4 to 8 meals that I just are kind of go-to things that I always cook. I don't do the same thing, like I don't do taco meat every single week, but it might be like, hey, the first week of the month I'm gonna meal prep taco meat for my lunches. The second week it might be, you know, I'll grill some burger patties and I'll eat it with, you know, spinach and like some sriracha mayo for lunch every day. The third week it might be, you know, I'll do some Greek chicken on the grill and I'll eat it, you know, in a wrap or something. So having like, having like some go-to meals, so you're not eating the same thing every single week, but you're not having to have, you're not having to cook, you know, 19 different recipes a week. You know, I think it is helpful to have some, some like kind of go-to simple things like that. And then kind of rotate through. You also don't have to cook everything that you, that you meal prep. Like, I think one thing that's really helpful for me is just like cutting veggies and fruit on Sunday. And so, you know, for us, like, we eat a lot of like sliced bell peppers. And so just having them like already, you know, sliced and deseeded and like ready to eat makes us tend to go for that in the fridge that much more often because we're not having to get a cutting board and a knife out and do all that. You know, I think having some food, like if you do want to eat more fresh food each night, you know, one thing you could do is just, hey, put your chicken in a marinade. And then each night you just pull out a few pieces and you grill that on the spot. And so you don't have to have everything, you know, if it's Thursday, you know, by that point, like the food you made on Sunday might not be as good as it once was. And so I think having some food just prepped that you can kind of easily cook on the spot, particularly like veggies that you have to chop, I find that to be really helpful. I think you can also use, I mean, these days, like Like we, we use a Crock-Pot and we, we love using that because we can just dump stuff in before we go to work, come back in 8 hours and it's good and ready to go. I think that's a great way for people to save time in their meal prepping. So we'll often like when we meal prep, we'll do something in the, in the Crock-Pot, just dump it all in and let it go. And then we'll prep a few other recipes for the week. So I think that's just one way to kind of save time for us that we've, that we've done. I think, you know, the other thing I would say is I think buying in bulk is one way for people to save time and save money because you're not having to kind of constantly refill things. And the challenge is you tend to kind of— you tend to not always use it all. And so for people who are starting meal prep or, you know, they're starting off the new year and they want to, you know, finally eat healthy and save money on food, start with what you already have in stock in your pantry or in your fridge or in your freezer. You've probably got, you know, plenty of food that you can go ahead and just cook and start to eat. So I would definitely do that. Just kind of clean out your pantry, clean out your freezer. And so I think those are some, just some random, you know, tips that I would have for meal prepping. You know, my site has a ton of meal prep recipes that people could check out, you know, whether they're, you know, keto or Whole30 or low carb. You know, a variety of different kind of diet-based, you know, meal prep recipes. I have, I think I have one article that's like 50 cheap, 50 recipes that are each serving is less than $2 a serving. And so that's more like if you're really trying to save money, it's been super helpful for a lot of, for, you know, for a lot of people. So I recommend that as a resource. If they go and Google and search cheap meal prep, they could find it there. But, but yeah, I think, I think that I would just encourage people to give it a, give it a try. Don't give up. Don't start too much at once and just let this be a small habit that just helps you, helps them save time and money.

Yeah. I just want to piggyback on one thing. Well, two things that you said. First thing is I forgot to give background on how I actually came to know about you. And it was because I was looking at some sites looking, linking back to my site and I saw this Meal Prepify and I went over there and you had link to one of my recipes for something. So that was really cool, number one. But then I started looking through your site and I do think it is such a great resource. And I think, you know, the fact that you're pulling from different recipes kind of from all over the web, from all different creators, that's really useful. But the other thing I wanted to piggyback on, you know, you mentioned the ground, like prepping ground beef for the week or something like that. And I think, you know, for me, I'm much like you. I could eat the same thing every day for lunch. I love to be boring with my food. It's a great way to like not have to think about anything and to just to easily manage your weight, easily manage your macros. But yeah, I thought of is, uh, so for people that might say that's too boring for them, because I know that there are those people out there, they don't want to eat the exact same thing every day for lunch. But for example, like, you could do— if you— let's just use the ground beef for an example. Say the one day you have, you know, Taco Tuesday, and maybe the next day you take ground beef and you put it in a pepper and put some cheese in there with it. And then the next day maybe you make it into a taco salad, or, you know, there's ways that you can still prep without having the exact same meal. Repurpose. And, uh, like I said, for me, it wouldn't bother me, but I know that some people are thinking that, like, they don't want to eat that same thing. And it might seem overwhelming because they might have to start thinking, oh, I gotta prep more things to make more variety. But really, you could use the same ingredients and just, you know, use them a little differently and use different spices and, you know, use some different side items with it. So I think that's one way to shake it up a little bit.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we, so for us, like, you know, we, we make grilled chicken almost every week and it's just simple, like olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, put it on the grill. But we eat that on, on everything from tacos to salads to wraps to, you know, if I just need, like, I got back from the gym and I just need like 30 grams of protein to hit my numbers for the day, I'll just like eat 3 or 4 slices. And that's been like one of our go-to, like really simple. It doesn't take a long time, things kind of cook.

Yeah, no, that's perfect. So tell everybody where the best places to find you online are and your website and any other details like that where you can be most easily accessible.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, again, my website is mealprepify.com. So just meal prep I-F-Y dot com. And they're welcome to email me, rich@mealprepify.com. I am not super active on social media because of, you know, grad school and baby and, you know, work, life. Yeah. But I actually don't mind email. I know a lot of people hate their email. I don't mind it. And so if anyone wants to reach out or has any questions or, hey, I'm looking for recipes on fill in the blank, would love to help. You know, I'm starting to put out a lot more recipe content and a lot of, you know, more diet-specific and calorie-specific. And so, you know, I know for a lot of people, like, if they get a meal plan from a doctor or from nutritionist and it says, you know, eat 500 calories for lunch, like, I don't know how to do that. And so I'm starting— it's not there yet, but hopefully by the new year I'll have a bunch of, you know, hey, if you need, you know, lunches for 500 calories, here's a list of 20 of them. Starting to put out a lot of that. So hopefully that'll be helpful to your listeners whenever this goes live, and it can be a resource for them. But otherwise, just check out the website and email, and would love to connect with people and see how I could help.

Yeah, awesome. That's wonderful. And also keep in the back of your mind for other little resources, I do have a cookbook coming out. So for people, it's Easy Weeknight Cookbook. And so like you're talking about, for people who don't have a lot of time, yeah, then that'll be a good resource as well. Because I'm with you, if it's got like 20 ingredients or something. That's entertaining every once in a while. But just for me on weeknights and with the kids going off to practice and all kinds of different stuff, it's like whatever is quick and easy is what's happening.

Yeah.

So, um, hopefully that'll just be another little resource for everybody that can help out in that way, even if it's not meal prep. But, um, several of the recipes you could definitely do meal prep. There's one in the crock pot, there's a couple of other ones. So anyway, that's coming out.

Absolutely. Well, that's awesome. Well, let me know when you, when you publish that and I will definitely share it.

Awesome. Well, thank you again, Rich, for all of your wonderful information. I am so looking forward to getting the transcript from this and making like the— there was at least 10 amazing tips in there that you gave everybody. So thank you so much. And of course,