If you love being a business owner but not the stress involved, you're not alone. Studies show that 58% of those surveyed said being busy causes stress and 70% skipped meals due to so much to do. Skipping meals quickly leads to plummeting energy, loss of productivity, and overeating unhealthy food later.
Meal prep is one answer to the stress-eating cycle. But before you throw your device across the room over one more thing on your to-do list, we can help. Here are our best meal prep tips for busy business owners to reclaim their time, health, and energy.
1) Get Your Mindset Right
Just like building a successful business, meal prep and eating healthy is also a mindset. Focus on the reasons you want to start meal prepping in the first place, whether it's to save time and money in the long run, eat better, or feel in control of your life. It's a good idea to jot down your reasons so you can revisit them when you hit a plateau in your meal prep learning curve.
2) Prioritize Nutrition the Easy Way
There's more advice and content on nutrition out there than you'll ever have time to consume. It's always a good idea to prioritize learning about nutrition, but it can evolve slowly. Instead, focus on what you already know: Eating sugary, processed, fried foods is never healthy and negatively impacts your health. Now you can check off what not to eat off your list.
Next, remember that a balance of lean proteins like fish and chicken, fibrous vegetables, whole grains, and some fruits is a win for your diet. You can also get in more essential nutrients by selecting the right supplements.
- Whey Protein - Give your body a boost to aid in higher glutathione production, which can improve your immunity and help the liver and gallbladder deal with fats and break down free radicals. Choose from chocolate, fruity cereal, vanilla ice cream, cookie dough, or strawberry cheesecake to enhance a dish, smoothie, or drink.
- Organic Greens - Get a full serving of veggies with our Organic Greens to bolster your immunity, detoxify the body, reduce blood pressure and inflammation, and even lower your blood sugar.
- Probiotic - Get a powerful probiotic blend and digestive enzymes to improve overall health and digestion while fighting colds and the flu.
- Collagen - This essential protein found in bones, skin, muscles, tendons, ligaments, corneas, and teeth and often lacking in our natural diet. A high-quality collagen protein supplement can benefit your hair, nails, and joints while improving skin quality and smoothing cellulite.
- Essential Multivitamin - Get the vitamins and minerals your body needs to recover from an active lifestyle while boosting your immunity with the help of added zinc and magnesium.
There's always a way to sneak in extra nutrients into your day with the right supplement. Shop all of them here to choose your favorites and enhance your health.
3) Focus on the Flavors You Love
Meal prep will prove the most successful if it's convenient and you focus on flavor profiles that already delight you. If you've never enjoyed bitter flavors, don't pull from a list of vegetables that don't entice your tastebuds. You'll end up abandoning your new routine before you get started.
Instead, focus on flavors from savory to sweet that you already love and incorporate them into your daily diet. Whether it's steak fajitas or a sweet berry-packed smoothie, there's always a way to maximize your favorite flavors and nutrition at the same time.
4) Meal Prep in Batches
There's no need to reinvent the wheel with meal prepping when you can batch it instead. Just like you probably batch work in your business, like bookkeeping or marketing, you can batch your meal prep.
Create several dishes at once and store them in your freezer. Breakfast burritos with turkey bacon, eggs, and salsa wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla are easy to make and can store in your freezer when needed. Make a batch for breakfast or as a go-to snack after a busy day at work. Or throw together your favorite fruit, a drizzle of honey, and our strawberry shortcake whey protein powder to store in your freezer for smoothies all week.
5) Make it Fun
If the idea of meal prepping for hours one day a week makes your eyes glaze over, we feel you. Make meal prep fun by combining it with something you enjoy doing. Save a favorite podcast, turn on lively music, or invite a friend to sip a smoothie and chat while you prep. The goal is to make meal prep something you look forward to instead of another dreaded chore.
6) Get the Right Supplies
It's challenging to meal prep when you're constantly heading back to the store for simple ingredients like eggs, salt, pepper, and air-tight containers. Make a haul of containers to keep your food fresh and fit in your fridge or freezer.
You may not have the time or inclination to pore through dozens of recipes to identify common ingredients, but you can do it the easy way. Glance over a handful of your favorite go-to recipes to make sure you have enough to put together dinner for the week. Make a slightly larger batch than normal to save the leftovers and mix them up for lunch to knock out more meal prep at once.
7) Outsource Part of the Process
Unless you're a die-hard solopreneur, you probably have help in your business. Take the same approach with meal prep. You can outsource it all by relying on healthy meal kits and done-for-you meals delivered to your workplace. Or rely on the many local grocery stores offering free in-store shopping that you can pick up after work.
8) Start Simple
Above all else, start simple! You didn't open your business on day one with all your systems, processes, and clients in place. You learned as you went and figured out what to streamline and simplify. Meal prep requires a similar approach. Unless you've always dreamed of being a world-class chef and already tinker with recipes, starting slow is essential to staying consistent with your meal prep journey.
Next Steps
It's easy to indulge in your favorite probiotic-rich food to help build up your gut health. Ready to get even more probiotics in your day to supercharge your health? Start shopping our supplements or comprehensive health programs to pick up organic greens, multivitamins, probiotics, and more.