Meal Prepping with Victoria and Claire
On this episode of Financially Naked: Stories from The Financial Gym, our host is Victoria Sechrist, Level 3 Trainer. She is joined by her client, Claire, to talk about meal prepping.
Podcast Notes
Clare lives in Vancouver, Washington, and she is a licensed mental health therapist in a private group practice. She specializes in trauma, grief, prenatal loss, miscarriage, anxiety, and EMDR (eye movement desensitization to process trauma). She is currently doing video sessions.
In addition, Clare is an expert meal prepper. Prior to COVID-19, Claire’s quarterly dining out number was under $100, which means she spends less than $33 per month on dining.
Claire got serious about meal prepping around age 20 or 21, because she had developed food allergies to wheat, dairy, eggs, banana, and pineapple. All baked goods are off limits.
Claire-friendly snacks include Boom Chika Pop popcorn, apples, oranges, peanut butter, and she makes raw dessert cake balls.
Once a month, Claire goes to Costco for meat. Bison is easier for her to digest and she cooks up a two-pound batch with spices each week. She freezes the meat she is not going to use right away.
Basic meal prepping includes a carb (like rice or potatoes), a meat, and vegetables. It takes her an hour total and she has meals for a week to a week and a half. She does a lot of meat and carb cooking on Sundays or Fridays.
If Claire is making sweet potatoes and roasted carrots, she slices up the vegetables and puts them in the oven on two trays at 375 or 400 degrees, and sets the timer. While that is in the oven, she cooks the meat. If she wants rice that week, she’ll also cook the rice on the stovetop. Then she cleans the kitchen or vacuums. In less than an hour and a half, you have all of your food cooked for the week.
For fresh veggies and fruit, she decides through the week and mixes them in.
Sauces are your best friend, and Claire is a big coconut aminos fan. She will add a few shakes to her meat during the last couple minutes. It is a soy sauce alternative, but a little sweeter.
For carrots, she slices them in half the long way and then the short way, sprays the baking sheet or foil with coconut oil, puts the carrots down and add salt, pepper, and turmeric, and bakes them at 375 degrees. If you use turmeric, you need to use pepper to activate the anti-inflammatory benefits.
Claire can eat the same thing every day and not get sick of it. If she does, she will switch up the spices in her meat or will use some Claire-friendly pasta, which is red lentil pasta. Make meal prepping as easy as possible. It shouldn’t take four hours.
Claire weighs 121 pounds right now and she gets 130 to 132 grams of protein a day, 200 grams of carbs, and 65 grams of fat per day. There are dozens of free apps that will scan your food and calculate macros for you. Claire weighs her meat and calculates how much meat to eat each day, then she knows how much to make per week.
Claire does CrossFit and she is an indoor cycling instructor. She needs to make sure she is eating enough each day.
She does not necessarily meal prep desserts, because she is more salty then sweet. Every now and then she gets a craving and Claire-friendly chocolate will do it for her. Sometimes she will make batches of homemade Jello with collagen. Chocolate hummus is her new thing.
For people who say they don’t like leftovers, have you actually heated it up on the skillet? What’s gross about leftovers is they dry out, get soggy, or gets paste-y. To get around this, foil is great at capturing moisture. Make sure the top is on the container or avoid your microwave.
Random Three Questions
If you could only have one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
What is the last book you read that you enjoyed?
What is a quote that inspires you?
Resources Mentioned
For recipes:
Instagram: @shutthekaleup
Blog: www.shutthekaleup.com
Recipes for homemade Jello:
Homemade chocolate without sugar:
Coconut oil, cacao powder, monk fruit on the stove
Quotes:
Check your shame.
Move within your means.
Never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.