3 Weekly Preps for Healthy Living on the Go

Healthy living can be maddening. We make a New Year’s resolution to be healthier, to eat better, and to exercise and we often fail because life gets in the way. For the person who is on the go, trying to eat the right foods can be frustrating. If you’re constantly on the go, it’s so much more convenient to eat out.

The problem is, that there are so few options for healthy eating when you eat out. What if you could have the benefit of a healthy lifestyle but not sacrifice the time it takes to prep every day? Many sites claim to have different foods you can eat on the go, but the choices are so starkly different that it can be daunting trying to figure out how to manage it.

The secret is to learn a whole new way of preparing food so that you can eat healthy with little waste. The following recommendations provide healthy food with little prep time and high flexibility. The end result will be three simple bowls you keep in your fridge that will last most of the week.

Prep #1: The Veggie Bowl

The trick to making this work is the flexibility of what you put in the bowl. In the case of the vegetable bowl, I actually use a long rectangular Tupperware dish. You can add whatever veggies you prefer, but this is what goes into my veggie bowl most of the time:

• Broccoli
• Carrot shavings
• Green Peppers
• Cubed zucchini
• Raw mushrooms
• Chopped onions

I spend a half an hour on Sunday evening chopping up the vegetables and putting them into the bowl for storage. I also buy a small bag of kale. I used to buy raw spinach, but I discovered that kale actually keeps longer in the fridge than spinach (which starts getting wilted after about three or four days).

With all the stuff already cut and in a bowl, you save precious minutes through the week when you go to prep your actual meal. Some nights I make a salad out of all the veggies. Other nights I’ll throw them in a pan and make a stir-fry with teriyaki and soy sauce. Or you can just steam the veggies, add salt and pepper, and enjoy them.

Prep #2: The Fruit Bowl

Carb-haters usually avoid fruit, but if you aren’t on a strict keto diet, then you might want to consider keeping a fruit bowl as well. I decided at the beginning of the year to cut out sugar and sweets wherever I could. The compromise I made with myself was that I would replace those sugar cravings with whatever fruit I wanted to eat. I figured that it was better to eat fruit than it was to take down snack cakes, cookies, and ice cream.

You do the same thing for the fruit bowl as you do for the veggie bowl. You basically pick four or five fruits that you like and throw them all in a bowl. The difference is that I mix all the fruit together in my fruit bowl whereas my veggie bowl I keep the veggies separated into sections. Here are the most common fruits I keep:

• Fresh Pineapple
• Strawberries
• Blueberries
• Blackberries
• Grapes
• Mango
• Peaches

I pick three or four from that list, throw them in a round Tupperware bowl, mix them together, and then put them in my fridge. This is the bowl I turn to when I want “dessert” after a meal or a snack. When summer rolls around, I’ll add a separate bowl for watermelon.

Prep #3: The Chicken Plate

This one is quite easy (and cheap). Buy a whole ethical roaster chicken from your local market. . Once the chicken is cooked, I peel the chicken from the bones in small strips (about the size of your thumb.) I put the chicken on a plate, cover with foil, and put it in the fridge.

That’s all there is to it. Three preps that will provide you with flexible and super healthy foods to eat on the go.

Your prep time through the week will be a matter of minutes. You can make salads, fajitas, steamed veggies, stir-fries, and wraps with this stuff. It’s delicious. It’s cheap. And it’s healthy and easy to make.

Most of all, your waistline will thank you as you begin to shed those winter pounds.

Bio: James Leatherman is a freelance writer and owner of Leatherman Media. His passions are reading, writing, hiking, and traveling. You can find more articles like this on his website, Happy Mindsets.