Hi there!

If you are new to clean eating, food prep may seem like this overwhelming thing. But I promise you, it's not as bad as it seems.

It all comes down to how repetitive you are willing to be with your daily meals.

If you are one of those people who works a lot or is away from home most of the day, than repeats will probably be your best friend. But that doesn't mean your food has to be boring. On the contrary!

Lets say you want to prepare 7 lunches for the week. You shop, you bring everything home, and then what?

I recommend picking 2-3 recipes tops. Include a recipe you can freeze, a recipe that can go in the slow cooker, and a recipe you can cook right on the stove.

If you prep meals for the freezer, you can either cook them right away and then freeze in portioned sizes, or you can freeze the ingredients together in a bag and cook when you are ready. It's actually pretty fast and easy. If you need help in that department, please check out my Clean Eating Freezer Meals Cookbook.

It may sound daunting to cook 3 meals at once, but if you have a slow cooker, it can really lighten your load. I have 2 slow cookers simply because it makes meal prep so darned easy!

Once you have your meals prepared, it simply becomes a process of dividing the food into portioned containers you can grab out of the fridge for work. In fact, I think you'll find that you will have plenty to freeze for future meals with this method.

If you need a good slow cooker, I have this one (affiliate link). It's affordable and it's a work horse. As I said, I have two of them and I often have them going at the same time. In fact, you could even get away with prepping just 2 meals for the week if you don't mind alternating between the two. Leftovers can go in the freezer and you just repeat the following week. Before you know it, you'll have a huge variety to select from right in your freezer. Not just for lunches, but for busy weeknight dinners too!

I suggest containers such as this one (affiliate link). They tend to freeze pretty well and it's not the end of the world if you lose one or have to throw one away.

Food prep can also be made easier if you cook larger recipes. Have some for dinner, then portion out the leftovers for the freezer.

Either way, you won't have to spend hours and hours of your weekend slaving away over a hot stove. And even if you don't have a slow cooker, keep your meals simple and make larger quantities for dinner so you have enough to dole out into containers for the week. If you do this often enough, your freezer will be full before you know it and you'll never be bored with your food. It's always easier to make a larger portion of something for leftovers than it is to cook a full meal anyway. So make things easy on yourself and make sure you have leftovers!

See? Not so bad!

I hope this helps you, and remember, if you have questions, feel free to hit reply and ask! It may take me a bit to respond, but I always do. :)

~Tiffany