Meal Planning 101.

As Justin and I sit down to discuss our weekend plans, the topic of when will we go to store always comes up. I do not enjoy grocery shopping but I love grocery planning! Planning what we will eat the following week always makes me excited. Deciding what will fuel my body, my mind and now help the tiny baby in belly start to grow is so empowering.

What you eat influences everything; your mood, your workout, your brain power, not to mention your overall health. We haven't always been great at meal planning, we used to run to the store and grab whatever was cheapest or sounded good that week. We now know how eating healthy and planning ahead affects our whole lives.

Meal Planning can be broken down into the following steps:

The Grocery List
We start meal planning on Fridays and Saturdays for the following week. If you think you can meal plan on the way to the grocery story, your doing it wrong. You need to know what the next week has in store for you; what night you will need to do a quick meal and what night can take longer. By the time we go to the store we have a list of what each of us will have for breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner the following week.

Meal Prep
I suggest separating your meals out as soon as you get home from the store, you will forget or become busy so do it immediately. We have separate containers for all our breakfast foods so I prep my oatmeal for the whole week that way I have no excuse if its there waiting for me. When it comes to lunch I don't make my wraps days in advance but I do precook chicken, drain black beans and cut veggies.  For dinner we separate all meats into servings for two, all veggies get individually bagged as well. When you have a plan there are no room for fast food!

Snacks!
Yes, you even have to plan out your snacks, The only way to keep the vending machine at work from looking good is to have a delicious snack waiting for you. Put some peanut butter in containers or buy the single servings at the store and slice up an apple, you have a great snack that it ready when you are! Make sure you plan realistic snacks, if you wont have a refrigerator don't plan to take yogurt with you.

Hopefully with my tips above you will be able to successfully plan a week of meals. It is not hard just takes time and planning. You can do it!

My breakfast! Cold oatmeal and strawberries, I add a few strawberries to my oatmeal before I leave for work every morning. Easy peasy and delicious! If you need a cold oatmeal recipe let me know!

If you have any questions please comment below or maybe you have other great tips you want to share! Thanks for reading!

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Let's Try This Again.

A lot has happened in the past 2 years since my last blog post...maybe I'll be better at this my second round?

To fast forward through the past two years I will give you snapshots (literally) below.

Justin proposed on Valentine's Day 2013. Valentine's will never be just a holiday for us!

We had the most beautiful wedding on May 18, 2014. I could not have dreamed up a more perfect wedding. Justin and I are forever blessed and honored to be married on a perfect day with all of our friends and family around.

 Now we are being blessed with our biggest adventure ever, we are expecting our first baby! I am 16 weeks pregnant and I everyday is an amazing journey.

Ahh! It feels so great to be sharing our lives again. I truly do love writing and sharing our adventures. I pray that this time around I will be able to keep my focus and post often. 

Thanks for reading, feel free to comment, share and check back in with us!