Week 4- Start your food journal!

This is a goal I wanted to work into the program, but I wasn't sure where to fit it in.  There are so many important pieces to the puzzle that I wanted to get you started on from the beginning, that it was hard to decide what needed to come first!  So I'm going to go ahead and add in a second goal for this week that I want you to get started on.  In addition to the fruit and veggie goal for this week, you're going to start keeping a food journal.  You can jot it in the notes app on your phone, you can snap a photo of everything before you eat it and save the pics in a food journal album, you can use the MyFitnessPal app or something similar, or you can go the old fashioned route and just write everything in a notebook.  You can even make notes on your meal plan.  It really doesn't matter where you record it, but you must write down everything you eat AND drink every day in a place where it won't get lost.  Make it as easy as possible for yourself so this will become effortless.  It doesn't need to be complicated!

Food journaling is going to be an important part of the process as we move along.  Recording what you eat will help you to be aware of everything that you're ingesting (or not ingesting!) and will help you hold yourself accountable.  It's also vital to know exactly what's going in, in order to know what's working for you and what  you need to change.  Your food journal, along with your progress stats (your initial weight, measurements and photos) will be your keys to unlocking what good nutrition means for you.  

Week 1- Shannon's Meal Prep

Here's a rundown of my meal prep for the week:

1. Put eggs on the stove to boil.
2. Sliced up a bag of colored bell peppers from Sam's.  Half of them were put into a ziplock bag, raw, and the other half were sautéed with 2 sliced onions.
3. Sliced and sautéed a pack of mushrooms from Sam's.
4. I thawed out a 3 pound bag of frozen chicken breasts from Sam's the night before.  I sliced half the breasts into strips and seasoned with Mexican spices- chili powder, oregano, cumin, garlic, salt and pepper.  I sautéed these on the stove.  The other half of the breasts I left whole and seasoned with an Indian spice blend I have, called Garam Masala.  I baked these breasts at 375*.  Tip for precooking chicken breasts: leave the chicken slightly undercooked, so they will finish cooking when you reheat them.  If they're cooked all the way through, it's easy to overcook them when reheating, and you wind up with tough, leathery chicken!
5. Peeled the eggs and packed everything up in storage containers in the fridge.
6. Mixed up a batch of Bircher meusli.
7. DONE!  This took about 1.5 hours of total time, including clean up.

Already in the fridge or pantry:

1. Hummus
2. Spinach, salad greens, cherry tomatoes, avocado, baby carrots
3. Pre cut broccoli and cauliflower florets
4. Greek yogurt
5. Deli meat
6. Canned tuna
7. Frozen berries
8. Fresh Eggs
9. Salsa

I have a bunch of storage jars I use to keep all this stuff in.  Storage containers are a must!  If you don't have these on hand, you must go shopping!  Now that the prep is taken care of, here's how I'll use all of it throughout the week...

For breakfast,  I have Bircher meusli (I love this stuff!!) ready and will just add Greek yogurt and some berries to serve it.  I can quickly scramble some eggs with my sautéed mushrooms, peppers and onions.  I can also use the frozen fruit and whey protein I have for smoothies.  I can always just go with Greek yogurt topped with fruit, too.

I can get a salad together for lunch with the salad veggies I have in the fridge, and can add in cooked chicken strips and boiled eggs, or maybe some tuna.  Another option would be to mix together my cooked veggies and chicken and heat it up together, or turn it into a fajita bowl by adding some canned black beans, salsa, and avocado.  I have hummus in the fridge, too, and I can use it to dip chicken in or some sliced raw bell pepper and baby carrots.  In a pinch, I like to put some hummus on a few slices of deli meat and roll them up.  It's a really easy quick snack!

Dinners can be thrown together the same way.  If you have a day that doesn't go according to your plan, and you aren't able to get something else cooked, you always have these easy options to fall back on!

I hope this gives you some ideas, and shows you how simple the process can be!