Being successful when creating a healthy lifestyle change is about more than KNOWING the right foods to eat, the right things to do.

It is about DOING the right things.

And DOING is definitely not near as easy as KNOWING.

The question then arises of HOW to make the lifestyle change and how to get it to stick. How do you eat healthy food when you hate cooking? How do you force yourself to eat the right thing when you get home exhausted and have to cook?

What is the KEY to making a healthy diet stick?

If I could tell you one tip to make following a healthy diet easier, I would say it was all about…

MEAL PREP!

If you want to succeed at creating a healthy lifestyle change, you need to plan ahead. And meal prep is all about planning ahead.

It is about preparing food so that you make it easier for yourself to make the healthy choice day in and day out.

Meal prep is about more than making healthy meals. It is even about more than prepping meals for the week.

It is about preparing yourself for success when it comes to eating healthily even when you are stressed and exhausted.

Prepping for the week like this might be the way to make adhering to a healthy diet easier, especially at the beginning! Thanks Starla for a great meal prep photo.

Meal Prep Keys To Success:

• Choose recipes that use the same basic ingredient and then make a grocery list based on these recipes. Choosing recipes that use the same basic ingredients will make your grocery shops easier. It will also ensure that you almost always have what you need to cook healthy meals on hand.
• Prepare a grocery list before you go to the store off of the recipes you plan to use. That way you won’t forget anything and you won’t have any excuse not to cook. It will also make it easier to avoid buying those tempting foods. It is easier to make excuses if you don’t have your plan of attack written down.
• Choose recipes that make leftovers! Leftovers are key. A big complaint about switching to a healthy lifestyle is the fact that people have to cook all the time….And they are too tired. Too exhausted…Don’t have enough time to do that. But if you choose recipes that make leftovers, you don’t need to cook every day. You can actually just take an hour or two on your day off and prep food for the entire week. You can make food for easy lunches. For quick dinners when you get home stressed.
• Keep It Simple! Don’t add in too much variety. Use the same basic recipes over and over. It may sound boring, but sometimes, at the beginning especially, we have to keep things simple so we don’t have to think too much about the change. We only have so much self-control. We can’t use too much of it thinking about our diet if we want to be able to maintain our heathy lifestyle over the long run.
• Get the proper tools. Sometimes you have to spend money to make things simple – aka sometimes you have to spend some money to get the proper cooking tools to make things easier. A crockpot, a blender…both are worth the money because they allow you to make meals with less hassle. Smoothies are a great quick meal. And if you have a crockpot, you can simply throw in some ingredients and then come home from work with a fully cooked meal. These tools are worth the cost because they make life easier. And if something is EASY, you are way more likely to continue doing it!

Eating well doesn’t have to be difficult. You just need to plan ahead. Proper meal prep is the key to making a healthy lifestyle stick because it makes things easier and gives you less room to make excuses!

How do you prep meals for the week? What are your favorite healthy recipes? Do you use a crockpot or just make tons of leftovers?