Enjoy quick and easy meal prep for delicious, healthy meals

Turning healthy meal planning and prep into a quick and easy activity involves a few basic starting points:

• Change in perspective about preparing food
• Prioritizing your wellness and practicing some level of mindfulness
• Understand how eating and portion control are tied to emotional health
• Expecting that you may deviate from your goals without a plan
• Practicing methods that work for you on a regular basis until they become a new healthy habit
• Using helpful meal planning and preparation tools that streamline the process

No matter how you go about making food, you are still faced with some level of meal planning and preparation. This is even true for many ready to go mail order meal kits. Need to plan which preservative-filled package to cycle through your menu first? Or do you still need to purchase fresh produce to accompany the main dish? Your kit may send all of the groceries you’re going to need. But there is still washing, chopping, measuring, and cooking to be done.. This is the inescapable truth about meal prep. It takes 15-30 minutes, minimum, before you can eat. Or it takes at least that long to wait for that unhealthy takeout to be delivered!

The only way around meal prep is to hire a personal chef, order takeout more often, or continue consuming packaged foods that have a long shelf life. I don’t blame you one bit if you can afford to keep those activities up and still manage to feel your best. For those of us that can’t sustain that lifestyle, there has to be a better way.

Simple meal planning strategy and tips

If you are new to meal planning, or looking to add a fresh approach into your existing strategy, Healthy Mason Jars© meals can make meal planning and prep easier for you. Experts offer these tips for coming up with an easy meal planning strategy:

• Start small, start out with what you have on hand, or with what you are most comfortable with using.
• Carve out some time for choosing recipes, coming up with an ingredient and shopping list, and preparing foods in advance. Have a plan and avoid shopping when you are hungry.
• Try to select menus that use some of the same ingredients,. This saves money on groceries and time in putting together meals. Meal prep once, eat two or even three times from that one session.
• Keep track of your favorite recipes or recipes that worked well for you.
• It helps to learn more about ingredients, quality of foods, and portions.
• Keep your flavors interesting!

Healthy Mason Jars© recipes keep all of those tips in mind. Just choosing two Healthy Mason Jars© meals per weekday equals 10 recipes per week. If you can tolerate making some of those meals the same for each or every other day, that’s only a few different recipes to plan and shop for during the week. Healthy Mason Jars© meals are easily scalable to make multiple meals during one prep session. 

If you need to track calories and nutritional information, those numbers are all provided for you. If you don’t need to track anything, then you’ll hopefully just be adding some new and tasty meal combinations into your week.

Change the way you feel about meal prep by changing your perspective about preparing food

If investing the time in making meals for yourself is a dreaded activity, you have the power to change your thinking about it. What makes meal prep so daunting? Is it because we don’t know where to start? Exhausted before we begin and just want to get to the point where we feel better and not hungry anymore? Do we feel like no matter what we try to eat we continue to struggle to feel happy with how we look and to feel well? Is buying fresh produce frustrating and expensive because our intentions are good in the store and then sink quickly after the first avocado starts to over ripen? Could there be other reasons? Yes.

Becoming more intentional about preparing food and understanding how the different ingredients are going to make us feel is something we can do right now. Remembering to think this thought takes practice if it’s not currently a habit for you. The center of this new thinking is telling yourself you are worth the effort. It’s also telling yourself that your health and wellness are important. Taking care of yourself is your personal right.

Prioritize your wellness and practice mindfulness in food preparation

Mindfulness is most challenging when there are distractions in front of us. Perhaps dividing our attention between noise in general, children’s needs, text messages and notifications, trying to carry on conversations, and other accumulated mental clutter from the day. It’s very easy to get overwhelmed when faced with a task like getting a healthy meal put together every day on top of all of that stuff. Especially if we haven’t really learned how to do so and it’s not one of our habits. We’d like to fast forward to the feeling of comfort from not feeling hungry anymore, when our blood sugar levels are more balanced, giving us a sense of peace and control over our lives amidst the chaos.

How we practice our food preparation is something we’ve learned. We can relearn if we set our minds to it. The key, in my experience, is to start small. Changing habits always begins with a first step, and new habits often stick when we tackle smaller, more manageable steps. Starting a new habit even with all the tools right in front of you can be overwhelming. What really makes learning something new stick is feeling comfortable with it and understanding it.

Emotional health is tied to eating and portion control

How we feel before, during, and after eating is biological, and a function of the mind-body connection. We generally know what’s good for us. We probably have more experience with what isn’t.

What we are actually choosing though is how we want to feel while eating and afterward.

Can you remember a time when a meal or food choice made you feel really energized? Sluggish? Comforted? Light? Satisfied? What else was happening when you were eating? Were you with family or friends? On vacation? Trying out a new recipe that worked? Seeking relief from sadness or exhaustion? Beginning a new wellness routine?

Actively thinking about how you felt when you are eating is practicing mindfulness surrounding your health, vitality, and nutrition. This is a good thing to do. When we scarf down the mac and cheese we might think we’re feeling super amazing at the time. But how do we feel 15 minutes afterward? Could we have achieved the same level of euphoria and comfort from the cheesy noodles without the heavy food coma and post-munching guilt? I would venture to say, yes. This is where the old saying “everything in moderation” rings true. 

Countless search results for the question “how long after eating before your brain tells you you’re full” arrive at the same conclusion. It takes about 20 minutes for the chemicals in your body to register that there’s food to be digested. Your systems have a job to do at that point. They are telling you they have what they can handle.

Using this logic, you can still enjoy mac and cheese. But if you eat it more slowly (savoring it!), have less of it, balance or offset the less desirable nutritional components of carbs and dairy with some added healthier sides like different colorful vegetables, then you will have accomplished so many things. You satisfy the emotional need to eat the mac. And you add nutritional variety into the meal. You act more intentionally with your eating speed and portions,. This gives your body time to do what it is designed to do. With any luck, you will feel better eating your favorite comfort food this way. Practicing this more often will eventually change your thought patterns and subsequent feelings about how you feel attached to different foods.

A perfect portion is only two cups

The quest for better health can sometimes be a winding road and a lifelong investigation. For those of us that grew up with parents who grew up with parents from the Depression era, a scarcity mindset is generationally pervasive. My ancestors needed to eat whatever they could whenever they could and however much they could for fear of not having enough to eat at a later time. Today, food insecurity is still a very real problem for many children. While it’s a huge problem in and of itself, when those children grow up and hopefully can provide for themselves, it may not be easy for them to shake that early conditioning surrounding food and what it means for safety, let alone good health. Or, overindulgence becomes a way to compensate for feeling deprived earlier in life. Both extremes are not great for achieving optimal health.

With the portion distortion that we have often become accustomed to when food is prepared for us (like in a restaurant), two cups – 16 ounces – at first mention might not seem like a lot of food for one meal. But that same amount layered onto a plate actually presents a generous amount of food and can display a wide variety of appetizing colors, textures, and flavors that appeal to the senses.

Arriving at the perfect portion size

Somewhere early in my wellness learning journey, I opted to attend an Ayurvedic wellness workshop that was – ta da! – focused primarily on mindful eating. I remember the instructor sharing with us what she had learned about ideal portions. She said that one should only need to eat an amount of food that would fit inside your two hands when cupped together. 

Then some years later, when my oldest son was in elementary school, he received an assignment to investigate the answer to a science question of his choice and prepare his findings for class. He selected trying to find out how much snow his little brother could eat before he exploded…We modified his question, of course…to instead figure out how much snow his brother could ingest just until he felt full.

It was during our research together that we stumbled upon the information that an average adult should consume no more than two cups of food at any one mealtime. That is the approximate volume that the stomach holds comfortably.

Almost immediately, I recalled the information from that Ayurvedic workshop. Two cups of food is essentially what fits into your two cupped hands. 

You need a plan. How to begin preparing healthy meals

“Just tell me what to eat! I don’t want to spend a fortune on fresh foods that just go to waste. I just want to feel better and eat healthier.”

Those are statements I kept hearing in my social circles for years and even found myself muttering them from time to time. All different types of people at different stages in their life were struggling to stay or get inspired to eat healthier. Such a complaint always came with the sentiment that “it’s too much work” and “wouldn’t it be nice if someone could just tell me what to eat?!”

When faced with making lifestyle and health habit changes, expecting to be successful overnight is at best altruistic. Positive thinking is incredibly important. However, until actually doing something different happens when faced with a decision, or new information is completely understood to the point of knowing it as your own idea, making changes that aren’t habits yet can be overwhelming.

Taking too big of a step from where you are is overwhelming

Even if you’ve convinced yourself that you are ready for a change, when you are faced with making a healthy choice versus not, there are often other strong variables involved. Like your learned stress response,. Or your schedule constraints. Emotional challenges. Perhaps the pull toward existing habits that can get in the way and are difficult to overcome.

Just telling yourself to change may not be enough. Practicing a new way of living takes time to form new thought patterns surrounding your ideas, beliefs, feelings, and decisions. That’s why making small changes at first tends to have greater staying power than attempting a full makeover overnight.

For beginners, taking the leap from where you are right now to successfully living the daily habits of a seasoned fitness pro may also be too overwhelming at first. Getting a handle on the basic first steps to better wellness and programming them into your day will set you up for success. If you choose to tackle larger comprehensive wellness programs at some point, by starting small, you’ve demonstrated that you can trust yourself to follow through with your goals.

Steps for healthy meal planning

Choosing what to eat can be deeply personal and is unique to each individual. What works best for one person may not be the best plan for another. There is no one size fits all approach. With the mindset of starting small, you can begin by adhering to some universal understandings about food and nutrition.

I went through a long process involving new awareness after being inspired to create these meals. The experience forced me to really look closely at food ingredients and quality, along with portions. Many of the early meal and salad combinations that I was testing turned out to not be very health-conscious or reasonably calorie friendly.

Trying a new way of eating or changing a lifestyle habit can be challenging for many people. In each Healthy Mason Jars© meal, two cups of food are prepared in advance as layers of delicious ingredients. Each meal in the recipe collection is less than 450 calories and uses 10 ingredients or less. Many recipes use simple sauces or dressings to prepare to enhance flavor.

A simple way to start

A simple way to start preparing healthy, uncomplicated, flavorful meals using natural foods is to try making Healthy Mason Jars© meals.

Many of the same core ingredients are used in multiple Healthy Mason Jars© recipes. This makes meal planning and grocery shopping easy to manage. Multiple versions of the same meal can be prepared during the same prep session and then enjoyed on different days.

My goal was to create a set of flavorful recipes that could be prepared in advance in a convenient grab-and-go-style, using as many natural ingredients as possible, while also providing the added value of pre-calculated nutrients as you would otherwise find on many pre-packaged convenience foods.

The appeal of many pre-packaged or frozen meals for busy individuals and/or dieters is both convenience, and the calories and portions they may be tracking are already pre-calculated and itemized on the food packages’ nutrition labels.

Many fresh foods don’t come with detailed nutrition labels on them, which may pose a challenge for someone who doesn’t have the time to enter several individual ingredients into a fitness tracker.

Meal Prep Tips

• Many Healthy Mason Jars© recipes use similar ingredients. Select a few using the same main ingredients to prepare multiple meals for the week.
• Prep similar ingredients all at once and use a large plate or cutting board to make measuring easier during assembly. 
• Consume meals made using heavier dressings first.
• Have specific ingredients on hand? Start with the recipes you can make that include those ingredients. 
• Need several meals within a certain calorie count? Scroll through the calorie counts index to plan which recipes to choose from.
• Prepare meats, sauces, dressings, fruits, and vegetables separately or in advance before assembling jars. 
• Keep measuring cups and spoons handy while you’re assembling your jars. The most common quantities used in this collection are:
  • Half-cup
  • Third-cup
  • Quarter-cup
  • Tablespoon
  • Teaspoon

More Meal Prep Tips

• Most recipes use a salad mix as a base. Particularly if you grow your own greens or pick them up from a Farmers’ Market, it is more economical to mix your own in a large batch. A good mix is any variety of green lettuce, spinach, cabbage, and other leafy greens (mesclun, kale, etc.) chopped into generally the same size pieces and tossed together. Prepare a large batch in a bowl before you assemble your Mason jars.
• To pre-cook meat without adding calories, place parchment paper at the bottom of a baking pan, along with a little bit of water (just enough to cover the bottom of the pan). Place meat in the pan and cover with tin foil before baking.
  • For boneless, skinless chicken breasts, bake at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 minutes or until a meat thermometer reads 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Let cool, then shred or chop and divide into individual servings. 
• When using tomatoes, remove seeds and extra juices before mixing with other ingredients. This keeps other ingredients from getting too soggy during storage. No one likes soggy lettuce!
• If you are watching your sodium intake, be mindful about not adding any extra salt to season ingredients. Many of the Healthy Mason Jars© dressings and sauces will add flavor later.
• Try to keep ingredients as close to their natural state as possible. Healthy Mason Jars© meals taste best using fresh ingredients. There is very light cooking or reheating involved for many recipes. 
• Eat right from the jar! No need to dump it into a bowl or onto a plate. Using a wide-mouth jar makes for eating from the jar easier. 
• Wash and reuse your jars. A one-time purchase of 12 Mason jars can sustain your weekly meal planning and preparation cycle.

Specifically for Healthy Mason Jars© recipes, here are some meal prep and planning tips:

• Three chicken breasts sold in a package together generates around six half-cup servings to use in making six-plus meals.
• When you select a recipe that calls for half a mango, plan on making two of that recipe for the week. Or choose another recipe that uses the other half of the mango for the same week of meals. For recipes that use only half of a whole food, plan on making two recipes at a time.
• For recipes that require canned black beans and corn: mix one 14.5 oz. can of each together will create six half-cup servings. That is enough for six recipes that require those ingredients.
• When planning to prepare recipes using shrimp, save time by using fresh cooked or a fresh cooked/sealed frozen pack of shrimp. Thaw only the pieces you need and keep the rest frozen until next time.
• For recipes that use a tomato and cucumber combination, one average-sized cucumber and medium tomato chopped up together yields about one cup, which is generally good for two recipes. 
• For recipes that use heavier sauces or a lot of juices, place the greens on the top of the salad instead of the bottom of the jar, so they do not soak in the liquid for too long and lose their texture during storage. 

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