Latest / Midlife Glow Up: Simplifying Fitness, Nutrition and Healthy Habits for Women over 40 / 34. A Simple Food Prep System that Makes Healthy Eating Feel Almost Too Easy

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34. A Simple Food Prep System that Makes Healthy Eating Feel Almost Too Easy · Midlife Glow Up: Simplifying Fitness, Nutrition and Healthy Habits for Women over 40

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I want to invite you to think back to last week.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what you had for dinner most nights?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Did you have a rough plan in your head, even if it wasn't like a full menu planned out, but you knew what your family was eating by the beginning of the week?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you just live with your partner, then you probably had a plan for yourself and your partner for dinners.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing the answer for most of you is yes, because dinner is a meal that we have been trained as women, as moms, to think about.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Dinner is for everyone else.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Dinner is the meal that gets planned ahead.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want you to think about your breakfast.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Your breakfast, not the one that you made for everybody else, but yours.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Did you have something ready, or did you grab whatever was fastest, or did you maybe skip it entirely because there just wasn't time?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And what about lunch?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Did you actually stop and eat a real lunch?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or did you piece together something as you were standing over the sink between meetings or errands?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And what about snacks?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Did you have something on hand that actually filled your belly and gave, you know, fueled your body?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or did you end up grabbing whatever is easiest when hunger hit?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or did you just go without and think if I don't eat the snack, then I'll lose weight?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is where most women in midlife are struggling, not with dinner, but with breakfast, lunch, and snacks.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: The moments that belong entirely to you.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the ones that get skipped or forgotten or thrown together last minute.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And not because you don't care, but because nobody ever taught you to really consider this.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: We learned to feed everyone else.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: We just never made ourselves part of that priority.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what today's episode is about.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to give you a simple framework for food prep that changes this and helps you put yourself back on the top of the priority list.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Midlife Glow Up Podcast, where we simplify fitness, nutrition, and healthy habits for women over 40.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Joan Dandano, your midlife health and wellness coach.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are ready to feel strong, consistent, and confident in this season of life, then you're in the right place, my friend.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, before I teach you the framework for today, I want to start today by making a promise to you.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: By the time that we're done with this episode, this is going to feel so much simpler than what you have been doing or what you have been overthinking and not actually doing.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think most women are making food prep a lot harder than it needs to be.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're gonna change that.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: When I say food prep, I want to be really clear about what I mean.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because in my opinion, food prep and meal prep are two very different things.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: When I think of meal prep, I think overwhelming.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think of cooking complete meals in advance, usually thinking about dinners and usually thinking about everybody else, the whole family.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: When I think of food prep, it's about having the right ingredients and components ready so that eating well throughout your day, your breakfast, your lunch, your snacks, happen almost automatically.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: One starts with feeding everybody else, and the other starts with feeding you.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Food prep is about having components like protein, healthy carbs, vegetables, easy breakfast, grab and go snacks, all ready so that the eating moments that belong to you don't fall through the cracks.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about cooking every meal in advance.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about spending hours and hours in the kitchen.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's about setting your future self up so that when the day gets busy and when things go sideways and when you're tired and you just don't have the bandwidth to make any more decisions, your nutrition is already handled.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what I love most about this definition because food prep is not about doing it all or doing it perfectly.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's just about doing something for your future self.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Some weeks, that something might be making a big batch of chili on Sunday and eating it for lunch, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Some weeks it's about roasting a sheet pan of vegetables and cooking a batch of ground turkey and having those components ready to throw together in different ways.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a lunch, maybe it's a dinner.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then some weeks, the weeks where you just have no bandwidth, maybe you're traveling or life is just piling things onto your to-do list, or maybe work is really stressful, or you've got kids sick at home, maybe food prep for you that week is grabbing a rotisserie chicken and a bag of salad at the grocery store.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes food prep can even be as simple as throwing a protein bar in your purse before you walk out the door.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: All of that is food prep.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: You might already be doing food prep without realizing it.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever been at the grocery store and you're shopping for your kids' favorite food or you're stocking up on your husband's favorite snacks and you grabbed yourself a container of Greek yogurt because you knew that mornings were going to be hard this week, that is food prep.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you have ever hard-boiled a few eggs at the beginning of the week, that is food prep.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you have ever prepped overnight oats the night before so that breakfast the next day was already done for you, that is food prep.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're probably closer than you think to this already.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: When we think about the minimum effective dose for food prep, meaning like, what is the least amount of time that you could spend and have a positive result that's going to help you feel more empowered and more organized for the week?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: It really depends on your capacity.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So when you think about you're already at the grocery store shopping for everybody else, and you grab that container of Greek yogurt, that took you what, an extra minute.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And tomorrow morning, if you put it in a bowl with some berries and a spoonful of almond butter, that takes about two minutes.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a protein-forward breakfast that sets you up for the entire day.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that is enough to start.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: What I love is that food prep flexes with your capacity and your season of life.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't ask you to be perfect, but it does ask you to do something to set the future version of yourself up for success.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: When we, women in midlife, handle our food prep, even in the smallest ways, something begins to shift.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you wake up knowing that even if everything else in your day goes sideways, but your nutrition is handled, that is empowering.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: You and when your nutrition is handled, that means you can fuel your body properly.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And when you fuel your body properly, you can show up for your work, your relationships, your life as your best self.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Food prep is also how we build self-trust.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Think about what it feels like when you open your fridge and there's nothing ready to go.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: You feel a sense of being behind before your day is even started.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: But if you flip that, when you open the fridge and food is ready, when you did that for yourself, you start to become the woman who takes care of herself, the woman who follows through.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can count on yourself.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're really building here.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Most women do not struggle with nutrition because they don't know what to do.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: They do know what to do.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: They've they've read the articles, they've bought the books, they've followed the Instagram accounts, they know that protein matters and that they should be getting a variety of colors and veggies and fiber.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: They know they should probably be drinking more water.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: That is not the problem.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a knowledge problem.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a setup problem.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because if it were a knowledge problem, you would just need more information.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: But you don't.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: What you need is a system that sets you up so that the right choices are already made for you before you're tired, hungry, and rushed and running on empty.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what food prep does.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what the prep method is designed to help you do.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: But before we get into the method, I want to share something that I hear all the time from my clients.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Women tell me that they will start eating better when they start to feel more motivated or when they have more time, when life settles down, when this busy season passes.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand that feeling 100%.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the truth is our lives will always be busy.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And motivation is fleeting.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's a feeling, and feelings come and go.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we cannot rely on willpower or motivation, especially not when we're exhausted and stressed or when your tank is empty.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: But what does work, what we can rely on, is a system that runs even when motivation doesn't show up, a system that removes the daily decision fatigue.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't have to even think about willpower.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: You just follow through with your plan.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're talking about today.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I created this prep method and it's an acronym, and I'm going to walk you through.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: P is preview your week, R is ready your breakfast, E is establish your building blocks.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the second P is plate with intention.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, P is for preview your week.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to think about looking ahead at your calendar before you're actually hungry.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: So this step is super important because if we just go straight to the grocery store, buy a bunch of perishable items, come home, chop them, prep them, but we haven't really looked at our actual week, then likely we're going to have a lot of food waste and we're going to have a lot of guilt associated with that because you didn't actually look at your particular calendar for that particular week.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: We have to take into account our work schedule, our families, their activities, any travel, any social plans, and really consider which meals are going to be meals that you eat at home and which meals to need to be ready for grab and go.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because it really does matter.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you work from home and you are able to eat most of your meals from home, then you can get by with just prepping some components and leaving them in containers that you can assemble at mealtime.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: But if you are someone who is on the go, you work outside of the home, then you need to have things portioned up, packaged, and ready to walk out the door with you.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: It can be the same food.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a different setup.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And knowing which kind of week you're going to have before it starts means that you're not wasting effort or you're not ending up with the wrong food or in the wrong format or a bunch of stuff that you have to throw away at the end of the week.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: So the question I want you to ask yourself before you prep any single thing is what does my week actually require?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And not your ideal week, but your actual week with appointments and family obligations.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Even just five minutes of looking at your calendar before you start cooking and prepping and chopping and shopping and all the things will save you so much wasted effort.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it means that what you actually prep will get used instead of sitting in the fridge until you feel guilty enough to throw it out.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, R is for ready your breakfast.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I really want you to think about winning the morning.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: I always start here with breakfast with my clients because breakfast sets the tone for the rest of the day.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: When you have a solid protein-forward breakfast, you start the day with stable energy and you're less likely to make reactive choices later.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: You are just more in control of how the rest of your day unfolds.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: When you skip breakfast or you grab something that's basically dessert, like the pastry in the in the break room, then you start the day not only feeling behind, but also not setting yourself up for success because you have spiked your blood sugar.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to crash in an hour, you're going to be hungry again.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole rest of the day, you'll be trying to play catch up to hit your protein numbers and just to have energy and stabilized mood throughout the day.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: So breakfast gets its own letter in this method because it matters that much.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, depending on what your morning, your particular morning looks like, there are two different paths that you can take with your breakfast.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: If your mornings are slower or more flexible, maybe you work from home or on the weekends, you just have a little bit more breathing room, then you might want to cook a fresh breakfast, like an omelet or oatmeal or avocado toast, something that you can make right there fresh in the moment.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: But for most of us, when mornings are rushed or chaotic, you're out the door early or you've got people to get ready, the prep ahead breakfast is gonna really be your best friend.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So egg white bites, overnight oats, chia pudding, protein pancakes, reek yogurt, things that you can make the night before, so that in the morning, all you have to do is open your fridge and grab and go.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: That is gonna be setting yourself up for success the best.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: So whichever lane that you are in, the cook fresh or the prep ahead, the goal for either of those approaches is the same.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Have a protein forward breakfast that is already decided before you are tired or rushed, or standing in the kitchen trying to think about what I should have to eat.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Remove that decision, make it easy and win your morning.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: E is for establish your building blocks.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think about prepping parts or components, not full meals.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is the heart of the method.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what really sets apart food prep from meal prep.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because what you're doing is you're making components of meals that you can mix and match in lots of different ways throughout your week, depending on what you feel like and what your day and your schedule requires.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: As always, I encourage you to begin with the protein.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Protein is your anchor.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: When protein is prepped ahead of time, healthy eating gets so much easier.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: When it's not prepped and you open the fridge and there's nothing ready, then most women end up under-eating protein without even realizing it, chasing energy in the afternoon, just having that big crash, or battling cravings by dinner time and it feels so hard to manage.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then we feel bad about ourselves because we think, gosh, if I just had more willpower or discipline, that is not the problem.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a setup issue.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: I want to refer back to my four by four fist method for getting in the right amount of protein without having to stress or track or obsess over macronutrients or weigh every single bite of your food.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the goal is to get four fist-sized servings of protein into your body by four o'clock in the afternoon.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: So by four o'clock in the afternoon, you can think back over your day and think how many servings of protein have I had so far today?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you had Greek yogurt for breakfast, a protein shake for your snack, chicken on your salad at lunch, and maybe you had some hard-boiled eggs at snack time.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you did that, and you're probably going to get protein at dinner, the meal that you have already thought of for everybody else, then you are going to set yourself up to hit at least 100 grams throughout your day.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've done a full episode on this method, and I will link that in the show notes.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: The starting point is simple here.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Just ask yourself which proteins are going to set you up for success for the week and then prep those first.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Some of my favorites are grilled chicken, ground turkey, hard-boiled eggs, cottage cheese, maybe some tofu, having your protein shake supplies ready to go.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've got a can of tuna or some smoked salmon.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need all of these, just two or three that work for you that you will actually eat is how you're going to handle your protein.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then from there, we build around that.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I would suggest pulling a couple of these.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe some.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then after that, you want to think about some healthy carbs, some fiber and some color, and then some healthy fats.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: So for our carbs, maybe you're going to throw a sweet potato in the microwave and you've got a little 90-second rice pack that you're going to throw in the microwave.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Those would be some really easy options.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are going to make a big batch of brown rice in the rice cooker or quinoa.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Fun fact.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can also cook that in the rice cooker, one of my favorite things to do.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's produce.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So fiber, color, think roasted vegetables, maybe salad grains if you don't want to do any cooking.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: You'll chop up some peppers and some cucumbers.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: The key word here is that these things are ready to go because produce that gets prepped gets eaten.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Produce that has to be washed and chopped at mealtime is likely going to get skipped.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, you've got your healthy fats.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: These usually don't require much prep, but we need to think about them ahead of time and have them on hand.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Avocado, nuts, seeds, olive oil, nut butter, that kind of thing.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that is it.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're establishing our building blocks.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And those are our protein first, then our healthy carbs, fiber and color, and healthy fats.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now all you have to do at mealtime is assemble it.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll talk about that in a little bit.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the P, the last P is plate with intention.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going to talk about making it visible, making it taste good, and making it yours.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is my favorite step because here's where everything comes together.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: When you think about plating with intention, and when you think about two other P words, the first one is personalization, and the second one is placement.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: So for personalization, this is basically flavor.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: If something tastes boring, you're probably not going to keep eating it.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And what we're looking for is a lifestyle change, something that sticks with you long term and helps you shift the trajectory of your entire rest of your life.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: When we think that healthy has to be boring and flavorless, just human nature says you are not going to adopt that as a habit that becomes part of who you are.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: When you prep plain, bland food, it is not enticing to want to eat that.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the fix is simple.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: We just need a few flavor boosters to have on hand at all times.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: So some easy ones that don't require any prep are salsa, hummus, and pesto.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to get creative, you can make a Greek yogurt sauce.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: You could make a good marinade for your proteins.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: You could have some seasoning blends or hot sauce.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: I am a total wimp when it comes to spicy, but if that's your thing, hot sauce is a great way to flavor.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's also guacamole or gringata sauce or tahini.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: You do not need to make elaborate recipes.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Please hear me on that.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: I keep things so simple at my house.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: But you do need to have a few things to season your food well on hand so that you can enjoy your meals and want to keep eating them consistently.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, part two is placement.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: So this one is about your environment, and this matters so much because we will eat what we see.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: We grab what's easy.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: So set up your fridge and your kitchen in a way that works for you instead of against you.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us have never really intentionally set up our environment in our kitchen specifically to set us up for success.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what that might look like: having clear containers that you can see what's in them at eye level.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure that your produce is washed and front and center, protein ready to go, not buried in the drawer where it is unseen and then becomes uneaten.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a snack bin, put things within reach that you don't even have to think about, but they're healthy options for you to grab and go.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to refer back to step one when we were previewing the week.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you are home-based for the week or at least several days out of your week, you can leave your building blocks in open containers and assemble them at mealtime.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: So your chicken is there, your sweet potatoes are there, your greens are there, all you have to do is assemble them at mealtime and eat them.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: But like most people, if you need grab and go, then you've got to package those things up ahead of time so that you can open the fridge, grab a container, and walk out the door.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same prep, the same building blocks, but it's just a different final step depending on what your week looks like.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do this, then you stop relying on motivation or memory, because both of those are fleeting, both of those are a finite resource, but you're setting yourself up to make the healthy choice because it's the easiest choice, because you took time when you weren't busy or in chaos to set it up.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, I want to wrap all of this up with whether you are packing things to easily grab and go, or you're assembling things in the kitchen because you're at home.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is the mealtime formula that brings it all together.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: When you go to create your meal, imagine you have an empty plate sitting in front of you.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: We start with the protein and we want it to be about a fist in size.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's usually about 25 grams of protein.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: From from there, from there, we're going to add a healthy carb, some fiber and some color, a healthy fat, and then your flavor.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's it.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: You've built all the pieces already.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: You've prepped them, they're in your fridge, they're visible, they're accessible, they're ready.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's just a matter of assembling.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: And what this does is it eliminates that stressful feeling of needing to track every morsel that you're eating or calculate your calories and your macros from every single meal.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just real food prepared with intention and ready to fuel your body.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: That is food prep.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: So let's bring it all back together.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: The acronym is prep.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: P is preview your week.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: So looking at your actual calendar before you cook a single thing and know whether you are home-based or grab and go this week.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: R is ready your breakfast.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you win the morning with a protein-forward breakfast, whether you cook it fresh or you prep it ahead of time.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: E is establish your building blocks.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: We're thinking about parts, components, not full meals, but starting with protein, building around that and giving yourself the ingredients, the components for a whole week of easy eating by mixing and matching.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then the final P is plate with intention.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Make it taste good, set it up so it's visible and easy to grab.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And when it's time to eat, you just build the plate: protein, carb, fiber and color, healthy fat, and then flavor.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the whole system.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's simple, it's flexible, it's designed for the actual life that you are living, not some idealized version of it.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now I am so excited to tell you about something special that I am doing.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm only sharing this here with my podcast listeners before I open it up anywhere else.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Everything I just taught you today, the prep method, the building blocks, the food prep rhythm, that whole system, I have built a monthly membership around it.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Joan's Kitchen, and it's exactly what it sounds like.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's me in the kitchen with you every single month, helping you build the food prep habit that makes healthy eating feel almost automatic.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Each month inside of Joan's Kitchen, you will Get a food prep focus or theme, coaching and teaching videos from me, live cook with me sessions where we actually do this together, simple protein forward recipes and meal ideas, printable planning tools and cheat sheets, and a growing library of replays and resources that you can come back to anytime, plus the support and accountability of women who are on the exact same journey as you.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: It is$25 a month.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the part that I really want you to hear.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: I am only opening Joan's Kitchen to my exclusive podcast listeners and those who attended the workshop yesterday.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm opening up 20 spots.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And once those spots are filled, I may not even open this to the public at all.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're listening to this episode and you're thinking, yes, this is exactly what I need, I want you to trust that feeling and go grab your spot.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: The link is in the show notes.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Check it out, read through everything.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: If it feels like the right fit, I would love to see you inside Jones Kitchen.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message on Instagram at Jones FitZone, or I'll also include my email in the show notes as well.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening, my friend.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, progress over perfection and consistency over intensity.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep growing, keep glowing, and bye for now.