Week 6: Meal Prep Sunday is Back!

by Leah Itsines January 10, 2019

Welcome back!

I am so excited to be writing this post because I know how much you LOVED Meal Prep Sunday last year.

And now it's a NEW year! Which means NEW recipes and NEW meal plans.

YAY!

As always each plan is designed to help you easily fit balanced eating into your life so you can be your happiest and healthiest self.

And of course there's a plan for meat eaters, vegetarians and vegans - something for everyone!

For me, meal prepping is key to eating healthy.

With just a couple hours of effort, you can set all your meals up for the week!

This means no skipped meals, no food overwhelmed, no last minute takeaway, no boring meals and no hours in the kitchen every day.

Life is SO much easier when you take the time to meal prep.

So let's kick off the first week of Meal Prep Sunday for 2019!

Meal Prep Guidelines

Each Meal Prep Sunday Plan contains one daily plan, which you can use from Monday to Wednesday or for the whole week. It's completely up to you.

For each recipe I provide, you'll need to work out how many serves you need. This is determined by how many days you follow the plan and also how many people are following the plan along with you. For instance, if you and you're partner (2 people) decided to follow the plan from Monday to Wednesday (3 days), you would need to make 6 servings of each recipe.

To be clear, each plan isn't a diet or weight loss plan but a guide to easily incorporate balanced and healthy eating into your life. However, because each plan is packed with goodness you may notice a change in your energy, overall wellbeing and potentially your weight over time depending on you normal eating routine.

If there's a recipe you don't like then simply swap it out for one of my many others. Simply look for recipes that you can easily batch cook, keep in the fridge and reheat if you need.

After you've portioned out any warm or hot meals into containers, make sure you give them some time cool on your bench, before putting the lid on or putting them in your fridge. Putting hot into the fridge straight away, can cause bacteria to form and no one wants that.

Granola

REGULAR

This Week's Meal Prep Plan:

Breakfast: Granola with Date Syrup (You can also use maple syrup or honey)

Snack 1: Carrot Sticks with Hummus (2 tablespoons)

Lunch: Quinoa Fried Rice with Lemon Chicken (80g)

Snack 2: Apricot Bliss Balls

Dinner: No Bun Burgers

Meal Prep Method:

1. Read through this whole post first - so there's no risk of missing anything - and then work out how many days and how people are following the plan so you know how many serves you need to make of each recipe.

2. Go through each recipe and construct your shopping list for the week. What's great about meal prepping is you don't need a million different ingredients because you're making the same meals.

3. Go food shopping!

4. Once you're home, make sure you're kitchen is clear and ready for cooking, and then get out all the ingredients and containers you need. This is also the time you can put on some music, a podcast or a movie - or maybe you just want silence - whatever you need to enjoy the next couple hours.

5. Let's start cooking! We're going to begin with your Granola. Simply follow steps 1 to 5 and then once you're done store each serve in seperate containers - that way breakfast is all ready to go and you can easily grab it in the morning. If you have any leftovers, simply store the rest in one big container in your pantry.

6. On to your snacks. With the carrots and hummus, you may want to just take a bag of carrots and a container of hummus and put them in the fridge at work (if you have one) - this way you can chop up the carrot and grab the hummus as you need it. Otherwise, cut up all the carrots you need and then seperate each serving into a container before adding the hummus to one side of the each container.

7. Now it's time for your Apricot Bliss Balls! Yum! Simply follow all the steps of the recipe and then put them in the fridge - we'll come back on how to store them later.

8. With all the simple stuff done, let's make your lunch - Quinoa Fried Rice with Lemon Chicken. Simply follow all the steps of the recipe and then in a seperate frying pan cook up your chicken with a little salt, pepper and lemon juice. Once everything is cooked you can combine the chicken and fried rice, and then seperate each serve into seperate containers. Once the food has cooled, you can put on the lids and store your lunches in the fridge.

9. One more recipe to go! It's time to cook your No Bun Burgers. For this recipe, I want you to ONLY follow steps 1 to 6 and then place all the patties and cooked onion in a container in the fridge (once they have cooled!). Then each night, as you're waiting for your patty to reheat for dinner, you can use this time to get your tomato, avocado and lettuce ready aka step 7 of the recipe - this way your enjoying you're veggies nice and fresh!

12. Your Apricot Bliss Balls should be all set now! Take them out of the fridge and then choose whether you want to store them in one big container in fridge at work OR store each serve in individual containers in your own fridge to quickly grab each day. The choice is yours.

11. Time to clean up! Put on your favourite music so you can smash this last step. After you've finished cleaning, all your food should have cooled down so you can now put on the containers' lids and store them in the fridge.

12. You're done! AMAZING!! You just finished another week of Meal Prep Sunday and you should feel so so so proud of yourself. Well done for putting your health and tastebuds first. Now take some time to sit back and relax - you've earned it!

Quinoa Fried Rice

VEGO/VEGAN

This Week's Meal Prep Plan:

Breakfast: Granola with Date Syrup (You can also use maple syrup or honey)

Snack 1: Carrot Sticks with Hummus (2 tablespoons)

Lunch: Quinoa Fried Rice (Take out the oyster sauce and use more soy or a little sesame oil instead) with Lemon Tofu (170g)

Snack 2: Apricot Bliss Balls

Dinner: Sweet Potato Burgers

Meal Prep Method:

2. Go through each recipe and construct your shopping list for the week. What's great about meal prepping is you don't need a million different ingredients because you're making the same meals.

3. Go food shopping!

7. Now it's time for your Apricot Bliss Balls! Yum! Simply follow all the steps of the recipe and then put them in the fridge - we'll come back on how to store them later.

8. With all the simple stuff done, let's make your lunch - Quinoa Fried Rice with Lemon Tofu. Simply follow all the steps of the recipe and then in a seperate frying pan cook up your tofu with a little salt, pepper and lemon juice. Once everything is cooked you can combine the tofu and fried rice, and then seperate each serve into seperate containers. Once the food has cooled, you can put on the lids and store your lunches in the fridge.

9. One more recipe to go! It's time to cook your Sweet Potato Burgers. For this recipe, I want you to ONLY follow steps 1 to 5 and then place all the patties and cooked onion in a container in the fridge (once they have cooled!). Then each night, as you're waiting for your patty to reheat for dinner, you can use this time to get your tomato, red onion and lettuce ready aka step 6 of the recipe - this way your enjoying you're veggies nice and fresh!

Sweet Potato Burgers