To be honest with you my functioning has been really low lately.
Five years ago one of my best friends was murdered and we just went through the trial for that this past week.
I’m really trying to get back into a healthy routine but it can be so hard to get started when you feel like crap.
Last night I did a super easy meal prep and I thought I would share it with you in case it helps you get prepared for the week too.
Why Do Lazy Meal Prep?
I know that these aren’t the best meals in the world but they’re better than what I’ve been doing which was ordering takeout or eating snack food for meals.
When I have meals cooked and ready to eat I will eat them but when I don’t have anything prepared I will almost always order takeout. Lazy meal prep really helps me stay on track and keeps me from binging on junk food.
Making meal prep easy helps me get motivated to do it. I am not someone that enjoys grocery shopping or cooking. Thinking about doing some elaborate meal prep for the week sounds terrible to me.
By cooking super basic and easy meals it helps me get motivated to actually do it.
Eating healthy is essential to managing my depression and anxiety. However, I know how hard it is to get motivated to cook when you’re depressed or feel crappy. That’s why I thought I would share my super easy meal prep with you.
To see all of my healthy meal prep and to follow my fitness journey come follow my Instagram account.
My Super Easy Meal Prep
- Cook your favorite protein. I am pescetarian so I almost always use some type of fish. This week I cooked up four pieces of tilapia and used some cajun seasoning on it.
- Steam veggies. I buy a steamer bag of vegetables in the frozen food section of the grocery store. I throw this in the microwave while I’m cooking the fish on the stove.
- Add a grain. This week I used a bag of quinoa that I found in the frozen food section. You can cook this in the microwave or on the stovetop. I just threw it in the microwave after the veggies were done.
- Divide it up. I added a piece of fish and a little bit of quinoa and veggies into individual containers. This way it is already portioned out and ready for you to eat or take to work for lunch.
Get Started
If you’re struggling with your mental health you probably feel stuck.
I’ve been eating really poorly the last two weeks and thinking about doing some big grocery shopping trip and elaborate meal prep feels completely overwhelming.
However, doing this easy meal prep allowed me to at least get started.
If you want to start a fitness journey start by taking a walk around the block. If you’re like me and you’ve been eating really poorly start by doing the easiest meal prep you can think of.
Sometimes just getting started will help you get some momentum to be able to make actual progress towards your goal. I have a whole video about getting started with your fitness journey you can check out below. Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more mental health videos.
Celebrate
Once you do your small step make sure to celebrate your progress.
It’s easy to compare yourself or to beat yourself up for not doing more but these are terrible habits. Beating yourself up is only going to make your journey more difficult.
Celebrating your progress gives you positive reinforcement and trains your brain that doing small steps are worth doing. When you beat yourself up your essentially programming your mind to believe that small steps aren’t actually a good thing for you to do.
It’s important on your personal development journey that you tell yourself you’re doing a good job and celebrate the progress that you’re able to make.
I could have told myself that the meal prep I did wasn’t good enough or that I should have chopped vegetables and cooked them myself. However, if I focus on the ways that my meal prepping wasn’t as good as it could have been it’s just going to make me less motivated in the future.
If you want to hear more about how I think positively throughout my mental health journey check out my podcast episode about rising above negative thoughts.
I hope this post gives you some inspiration to try an easy meal prep. It’s easy to feel like cooking and eating healthy has to be really complicated.
I follow lots of fitness accounts on Instagram and the meal prep those girls do every Sunday makes me feel overwhelmed.
Try just starting where you are and making one healthy meal for yourself. I find that simplifying things helps me get started and once I have some momentum I’m often motivated to try making a more complicated recipe or learning something new.
I do find that eating healthy really does improve my depression and anxiety and just make me feel so much better overall. Thinking about starting a health and wellness journey can be overwhelming but you don’t have to do it all right now. Just take one small step at a time.
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