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These seven meal prep mistakes are easy to make, but they are totally avoidable. Staying on a healthy eating plan is really simple if you plan meals and snacks that you actually look forward to and enjoy. Watch this video to make your meal planning, shopping, and prepping easy and fun.
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Hey everyone, Anna here. Well thanks for joining me today on my channel. Today I'm going to be
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talking about seven common mistakes people make when they meal prep or right before they're going
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to meal prep. So let's just jump right into it. Number one, you didn't get recipes before you
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head out to the store to get your groceries and meal prep. How are you going to buy your groceries
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and meal prep when you don't even know what you want to buy? You're not going to go to the
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grocery store and all of a sudden know what recipes you want. It's so hard to look on your
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phone on Pinterest or recipes when you're at the grocery store and try to figure out what you want
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to make. And then on top of that you want to have your list of all your ingredients and that's just
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much easier to do before you head to the store because you can have your notes ready to go
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all the ingredients and all the different portions that you want to buy. And that leads us into our
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second point and that is you didn't make a list. I know for me it's very easy for me to get
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distracted at the store if I don't have a list. I make a list every single time I go to the store
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on a free app on my phone. Super easy, just put down everything and then once you go to the store
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you can check off what you have got and you put it in your cart and you know that you've gotten
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all those things on your list. It's very important that you stick to that not only for your meal
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prepping to be healthy but just to save time in the grocery store otherwise you're going to be
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wandering around aimlessly trying to pick up different crazy snacks and stuff that you don't
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need if you're trying to stay on a healthy diet and also not spend a ton of money that's the best
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way to do it. Stick with the things that you're going to be using for your week or two for your
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meal prepping. All right so number three is you got too much food and this I am guilty of in the
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very beginning. I would you know buy all these big portions and I was meal prepping only for myself
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and you kind of always overestimate what you're going to need. This is especially bad when you're
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buying like fresh produce because of course you know those go bad and it's just a bummer to waste
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all that food. Of course there's certain things that you can buy in bulk and then you always use
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like brown rice, quinoa, sweet potatoes, those last a really really long time so if you buy too
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many of those you can use them in the next couple weeks. Potatoes, onions are another one that lasts
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quite a while but buying too much food and then prepping too much food is just a bummer. I hate
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hate hate wasting. I like to use up everything and so the more I've done this just the more I've
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realized how much I'm gonna use for the next time. All right so the fourth one is you didn't get
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enough variety of foods and you're not allowing yourself flexibility. So even though you want to
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stick to your meal prepping diets and all the recipes you've done you still want to allow
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yourself a little bit of flexibility to have you know some fun snacks so you don't go crazy and
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just go off your diet or your lifestyle or anything like that. A couple things to keep in mind you may
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not always have your meals with you. There may be times where you're busy and you're going to be out
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and about and what you want to do is prevent yourself from going to fast food right or the
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convenience store and getting chips or like a fried I don't know spring roll or something I don't
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know what you get at a fast food restaurant but just have those items that you can go and get at
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if you do go to the convenience store or the gas station or the grocery store say like it's a packet
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of tuna those things that you can eat really easily they have the flavors all you need is a
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fork right. Hard-boiled eggs those are another one that Albertsons has and Fred Meyer they have
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them already ready to go eat them really nice hummus and carrots is a really easy one to pick up
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if you want a snack and beef jerky I'm a vegetarian so don't do that but that is a really good easy
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snack and they're available everywhere gas stations and all of that. All right so that leads me in my
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next one number five is you didn't prepare snacks as well so not only should you allow yourself to
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get snacks while you're in a out and about have those healthy snacks that you have in mind but you
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should prep your own snacks as well don't just think about the big meals like breakfast lunch
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and dinner I like to prep at least like one little snack bowl per day that way I have it when I go to
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work and I don't have to you know worry about when I get hungry in between or go to the Skittles
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machine or grab candy or anything like that. I like to put in hummus homemade hummus that I made
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cucumbers apples are a good one peanut butter has lots of protein and that will keep you going
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and I like to make all sorts of little energy balls and overnight oatmeal which if you like
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this video I show you in all these other videos how to make those types of things so go ahead
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and subscribe to my channel and then watch my other videos for all those different recipes
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super super easy. All right so number six is getting lazy lazy and not measuring things out
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like your portions the whole point of meal prep is to portion everything out right in healthy portions
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but if you're making the healthy food and you're still not portioning out correctly you could still
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get way too many calories even from a healthy food right so if you have you know way too much brown
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rice way too much sweet potato that can add up really really quickly so whatever you've calculated
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for your macros and your calories it might be good to keep in mind you know even if you're not
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calculating like weight or anything like that have a little thing in mind like you know a piece of
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meat the palm of your hand and keep nuts like just a handful things like that make sure to not just
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throw things in there willy-nilly and then number seven is don't make recipes that don't hold up
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well right so I do meal prep eggs but I only make them for maybe two or three days because that's
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you don't want to eat them past then. Same thing with fish, salmon I will not eat salmon past like
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a day or two after I make it I just I'm not picky but that's just one thing that I don't do
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and then keep in mind salads obviously you're not going to want to pour your dressing on your salad
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in your meal prep container or else it's going to get soggy right so think about those types of
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things the things that might not hold up as well maybe you plan to eat those in the first few days
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and then the things that will kind of maybe the next days after that. All right well I hope you
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enjoyed this video that was seven common mistakes people make when they're meal prepping of course
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like I said go ahead and watch my other videos I have all sorts of other videos associated with
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meal prepping, fitness, nutrition, and all these different recipes
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