Conquering the 21-Day Fix: Part 1

I was so excited when my friend Danielle asked me to participate in her 21-Day Fix! I'm always so focused with my running workouts that often times I neglect strength training and stretching! I watched this video and knew it was right down my alley, so I eagerly jumped at the opportunity to help Danielle!

When the 21-Day Fix came in the mail I couldn't wait to start reading up on the program! What could be better than someone telling you what to eat, how much to eat and exactly what exercises to do?! It makes true fitness and nutrition much easier. I'm 7 days into the challenge and I already love and feel the difference!

Here's my secrets so far:

1. Read ahead of time
It's important to know what you're getting yourself into so you can know how to best prepare. If you aren't fully informed on how (and why) the program works and how to make the most of it, then you'll quickly fall back into your old routines and habits and you won't get the most of a super easy program!

2. Meal prep
Preparing your meals for the week takes the most effort initially but is TOTALLY worth it when you've got healthy, delicious meals completely prepared when you're hungry. This is the time most people will go out to eat, will stop by a fast food restaurant or will eat junk food, but if you put invest a couple of hours ONE DAY and knock out all your meals for the entire week, you'll truly be on the road to a healthy lifestyle! Here are the keys to preparing your meals:
-Plan: this is super easy on the 21-Day Fix because Autumn (the creator of the challenge) gives a list of foods to choose from! Plus with websites like Pinterest, it's so easy to find clean-eating meals. On the 21-Day Fix, Autumn encourages participants to eat small every meals every 2-3 hours so keep that in mind when you're planning.

Here's an example of my meal planning the first day on the 21-Day Fix:

Lots of food, lots of meals, BUT I ate the same thing, or a simple variation of it, every other day for the first week. This make the meal prep so much easier! I've been meal planning for almost two months now and will NEVER go back!

Click here to see Danielle's blog post on how to meal prep.

3. Grocery Shop:
Now that you've planned what you're going to eat all week, it's the perfect time to go grocery shopping! You'll actually save money by meal planning before you grocery shop because you'll be buying food that you're actually planning on eating, rather than buying food that will spoil quickly because you chose to dine out for lunch and/or dinner rather than eating the healthy groceries you bought!

Here's my standard weekly shopping list. This includes everything on the meal plan above, and I make sure I buy enough for all of my meals for the entire week! Because I plan so well and make efficient meals (chicken and hamburger meat can be used for multiple meals, not one big entree) I actually can eat for an entire week on less than $60!


4. Cook:
Your meals are planned, your groceries are bought, now start cooking! Come up with the most efficient way to prepare your food and prepare all servings at once. For example, I eat two scrambled eggs each morning, so I'll count out how many days I'm preparing for and cook two eggs for each of those days at one time! To make this more time-efficient, I preheat my oven first so while I'm scrambling eggs I can have something baking in the oven at the same time!
I've gotten so comfortable with my food preparation that it only takes me a couple of hours to prepare EVERYTHING I'll eat the rest of the week. It's pretty incredible to think about all the time and money this actually saves me in effort and heartache to just knock it out at one time!

5. Package:
Now your food is cooked and ready to go, so now's the time to utilize those food storage containers and pack your food in proper serving sizes so you can just grab and go when it comes time to eat!

This is one of the reasons why I LOVE the 21-Day Fix! When you receive your package, you receive different colored containers based on what food you're eating. For example, when it comes to your vegetables, you measure your portions with the green container! A lot of people eat directly out of the colored containers each day. But I use the containers to measure out my portions then put the portions in a different storage containers during my food prep day. That way I'm not having to reuse (and rewash) the containers each day but I'm still eating proper portion sizes.

If you want more information about the Fix feel free to comment, email me, or reach out to Danielle here!

Up Next:
In my next post I'll continue my conquering tips by scheduling time for workouts, surviving through the workouts and monitoring your progress! 


Let's talk it over!
 - What diet programs have you done before?
 - Would you be willing to try a program like the 21-Day fix?