"Before anything else, preparation is the key to success."

Malenna's pre-prepared travel spread – she's ready for clean-eating, even in Sin City!

Malenna is travelling this weekend, visiting the bright lights of Las Vegas.  Those endless buffets coupled with the "what-happens-in-Vegas" attitude could be toxic to her goals – but she took charge and planned accordingly.

Food preparation–pre-planning, portioning, and assembling meals–is integral to competition success on a number of levels.  Obviously, controlling your portions and knowing exactly what you are eating is extremely helpful when undertaking a health and fitness regimen.  However, there are other benefits to pre-planning your food intake: 

• Making your own meals is often much less expensive than eating out. 
• Though pre-planning and preparing food can seem overly time consuming, in the long run such preparation actually saves you time and energy.  All you have to do is grab your food and go!
• Continually planning your food strengthens your willpower and determination – qualities that are vital both to competition and simply maintaining a healthy lifestyle (and hot body!)

Though the above reasons are compelling, food planning can still be a difficult habit to integrate into your life.  Here are some methods to help the process. 

Planning

Are you a vegetarian?  An avowed carnivore?  Are you trying to emphasize a certain nutrient in your diet?  Are you following a specific diet?  What foods do you eat consistently?

The first part of planning is having a food strategy.  Creating a shopping list that reflects your nutritional needs is crucial.  Make a list of the foods that you like, that fit into your diet, that are based on recipes you will use, and that you know you will be eating on a regular basis. 

Make sure to create a physical  list – something that you can bring with you to the grocery store.  Having the list in your hand while in the store keeps you accountable to the choices you want to make. The list can also be used later to compare and contrast future food purchases.

Some tips and tricks for food shopping:

• Always go shopping on a full stomach!  With your appetite satiated, you will be less tempted to make poor food purchases.
• Avoid supermarket aisles and stick to the store's perimeter, as this is usually where your best "clean" and unprocessed food choices–produce, meats, dairy–are located.
• If you have a partner who is not following your nutritional regimen, it may be helpful to go shopping without them.  This way, your partner is less likely to influence you with less-desirable food choices (like putting Haagen-Dazs in your cart when you aren't looking!)

Portioning

Now that you have your food, it is time to put it all together!  Having a set of measuring implements (as pictured to the left) is extremely helpful in portioning out your food. 

Read labels carefully.  Often portions that you would assume to be "1 serving" can be 2 (or more!) servings.  Online nutrition services such as MyFitnessPal can be helpful in determining portion size, as well as providing ballpark estimates of caloric values for a particular recipe. 

Here's a quick and dirty guide for eating out or when your measuring implements are unavailable:

• The area and thickness of your palm is a portion of meat or poultry (about 3-4 ounces).
• 3-4 ounces of fish may be little larger – about the size of a checkbook.
• Make a fist. That’s about 1 cup.
• Your cupped hand can hold about 1-2 ounces of cereal or a snack food.
• Your cupped hand will also hold about 1/2 cup of foods like pasta, rice, and ice cream.
• Your thumb is about 1 ounce of cheese
• Your thumb is also about 1 tablespoon. "Thumbing" is useful for measuring peanut butter and salad dressing.
• Your thumb tip is about 1 teaspoon – great for butter or tub margarine.

Information courtesy of The Happiness in Health 

Assembling

Putting your meals together ahead of time is essential for both time management and keeping on track with your nutritional goals.  The most common way to stay prepared is spending 1-2 hours on a weekend making only your weekday lunches.  Just doing this gets you way ahead of the game.  If you can go one step further and take an extra 1 or 2 hours to prepare, portion and assemble your entire menu for the week, you can coast! 

Reusable plastic containers are extremely inexpensive and usually available for purchase at nearly any grocery or dollar store.  A great and very cheap New York City resource for obtaining measuring implements, food containers, and often even clean food is Jack's 99 Cent stores.  There are several locations in Manhattan. 

 

               Consistency

Making the above food preparation steps habitual, rather than something you do sporadically, is KEY. 

Having your meals consistently pre-prepared gives you an edge in nutrition, managing your time and, ultimately, RESULTS. 

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Here are some great websites for further reading.  Hopefully they can help with strategies in your quest for persistent food preparedness!

5 Simple Strategies to Make Eating Clean(er) Easier

Making a week's worth of meals in advance (This site is geared toward people on the Paleo diet, but the principles are universally useful)

Tips and Tricks for Make-Ahead Meals
An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day (mind hacks for time mangagement)

What do you think? 

How will you be pre-planning? 

Leave a comment and let us know!

(c) Alex Sidiropoulos 2012