My Meal Prep Steps + Budget for Losing Weight

Hi everyone!! Today’s blog post is all about how I meal prep if I want to be on my A GAME for the week. Every step, every detail, time, cost, calories. BOOM. I’m the type of girl who gets bored of the same ol food the whole week, so I couldn’t just meal prep a ton of one veggie, one grain, and one protein for 8 meals. I have to switch it up for every entree to keep it interesting, so every single one of these meals is different.

I don’t meal prep every single Sunday like this, but in a perfect world I definitely would try to. It was actually really relaxing doing this! Sometimes I only prep 2 meals at a time, but doing 8 meals at once is for sure the most budget friendly and time effective. Each of these meals are def smaller portions, but if you are trying to lose weight or tighten up fast, they will really help you.

So here’s basically everything you need to know to successfully and efficiently prep your meals for the week:

-TOTAL COST $46-48 (approx $6 a meal)

-MAKES 8 MEALS

–TOTAL TIME: 70 MIN

GROCERY LIST:

3 Sweet Potatoes

2 Cups of Carrots

2 Large Zucchini

1 Package of Lean Ground Turkey Meat

1 Package of Chicken Breast Tenders

1 Package of Quinoa

20 Asparagus (roughly)

Package of Zoodles (Or 2 zucchini to zoodle yourself)

1 Head of Broccoli

Box of Spinach (approx 3 cups)

Marinara Sauce (low sodium, no added sugars)

(Assuming you already have olive oil, salt, pepper & tupperware)

STEP BY STEP

Set oven to 350
Measure + boil water for quinoa (I did 4 cups water 2 cups quinoa)
Cut 1 cup of carrots

4. Lay out veggies on cooking tray. Season them with olive oil, salt and pepper. Mix all around. (Other cup of carrots, sliced up head of broccoli, all of the asparagus) Place these veggies in the oven once it’s pre heated.

5. Once water is boiled for the quinoa, put in the pot and add the chopped carrots. Cook until ready.

6. Aerate the sweet potatoes with a fork (helps them cook faster in the microwave). Place them in the microwave for 15-17 Min. (depends how big they are, just make sure they’re fully cooked through)

7. Slice the 2 zucchini and then saute them.

8. In another pan, saute zoodles with a little bit of olive oil and salt.

9. Start prepping your tupperware. Set out your 8 pieces of tupperware, and prep 2 of them with raw spinach. (1/2 cup of spinach in each tupperware)

10. By now, quinoa should be ready! Place cooked quinoa in both raw spinach containers, and then in 3 empty others. (So quinoa in total of 5 containers)

11. Using the same pot you cooked quinoa in, throw in the rest of the 2 cups of spinach in there to saute.

12. Add in 1/2 cup marinara sauce to the zoodles, let it simmer for a few more min.

13. By now your zucchini slices should be ready. I placed these slices in 2 of the 8 containers. (one with raw spinach and quinoa, the other with just quinoa)

14. Now the zoodles should be ready! Place the red sauce noodles in 2 of the empty containers!
15. After the zucchini and zoodles are done and in the containers, I used the same pans to cook my turkey meat and chicken. (less dishes!!!!)

16. As the meats are cooking, take out the sweet potatoes and let them cool.

17. Time to take out the roasted veggies! After they have been in the oven for at least 20 min (depends on how powerful your oven is), go ahead and take them out!

And here is when allll the meals come together!! The roasted veggies should be ready, the sweet potatoes, and the meats!

18. Place mashed sweet potato in 3 of the containers. 1 empty container, one with just quinoa, and one with quinoa and raw spinach.

Place turkey meat in 3 of the containers. 1 with just quinoa, one with zuchini and quinoa, and one with marinara zoodles.

Place the sauteed spinach in just one meal. (turkey and quinoa container)

(See pic below for more understanding of what I did!!)

19. Last steps. Add in the roasted veggies and chicken!

Broccoli was added to 2 meals- zoodles container and sweet potato and quinoa container

Carrots were added to 2 meals- sweet potato mash, and quinoa zucchini container

Asparagus was divided into 3 meals- sweet potato and quinoa container, zoodles and turkey container, sweet potato and carrots container

Chicken was added to quinoa was added to 5 meals- broccoli and zoodles containers, quinoa spinach carrots zucchini container, broccoli sweet potato quinoa container, sweet potato quinoa asparagus container, and sweet potato asparagus carrots container)

DON’T WORRY- All of where each ingredient goes is explained next as well!!

Here’s the breakdown of each meal and calories:

All under 400 calories:

Quinoa with carrots, ground turkey, sautéed spinach: 390 cal
Zoodles with chicken and broccoli, 250 cal
Quinoa with grilled chicken, grilled zucchini, raw spinach, and roasted carrots, 340 cal
Sweet potato mash and quinoa with broccoli, grilled chicken and raw spinach: 400 cal
Quinoa with ground turkey and zucchini: 360 cal
Quinoa and sweet potato mash with grilled chicken and asparagus: 370 cal
Zoodles with turkey meat and asparagus: 340 cal
Sweet potato mash with grilled chicken, asparagus and carrots: 330 cal

Again, these meals are smaller portions, so they are helping with weight loss. My personal advice and experience, would be eating a BIG healthy breakfast, at least 400 calorie breakfast, and then eating 3 of these meals throughout the day. So, a total of 4 healthy meals. (AGAIN= FOR WEIGHTLOSS!!!) But, this also depends on your schedule, and how you like to spread out your food intake, etc.