The Busy Professional’s Guide To Preparing Healthy Meals Fast Without Breaking The Bank!

Hey gorgeous,

Today I want to talk to you about The 80/20 Rule Of Healthy Eating. This is the simplest way to make healthy meals on a budget that doesn’t take hours - because we both know how busy you are! 

In this article, you’ll learn 3 strategies that are incredibly useful for the busy person trying to eat healthy. They’ll even save you money.

Before I give you the scoop, I want to know if anyone has told you this before…

“It’s impossible to eat healthy when you’re busy.” OR “Sure you can eat healthy when you’re busy but it’ll cost you boatloads of cash.” I used to believe those people. In fact, I used to be one of them. A few years ago, I was swamped. My life was the definition of busy.

I raced from photo shoots shoot to hosting gigs to that night’s workshop. It felt like the accelerator of my life was stuck. Everywhere I went was a race.

Because of this, I found it harder and harder to focus on my eating habits. I’d eat out here to save time or I’d snatch up the cheaper deals to save some money.

But my health was as important to me as my career. How could I strike a balance?

The solution landed on my lap while having coffee with my friend Kimberly Kois McConnell.

She was having the same issue.

We went and identified the major hurdles most busy people have. Here’s what we came up with: 

By the end of a long day, you don’t want to deal with excessive prep work. Spending an hour or more on getting your dinner ready is not an option - You barely have enough time as it is!

On top of that, juggling a bunch of ingredients for different recipes was confusing in the kitchen and time-consuming at the grocery store.

We were so excited about our breakthroughs that we pulled together 30 busy professionals and shared with them our secrets for cooking healthy meals while saving precious time, energy, and cashola. Aka the ever-popular “healthy meals on a budget”. Except we made them tastier - and easier - than what you’ll find in those 30-minute meals cookbooks.  Here are 4 of the strategies we taught them:

Batch Your Shopping

A big motivation for eating unhealthy takeout is having an empty fridge at home. No one wants to make a trip to the grocery store after a long day of hustling.

So plan what you’ll eat at the start of the week and make ONE trip to the grocery store to buy everything you need.

Not only will it save you time, but it’s also way more likely you’ll cook healthy food if you actually have yourself stocked up. Did I mention this will also help you save money? Healthy meals on a budget #forthewin. 

If you want to save even more time and you don’t mind the small upcharge, use Instacart to have your groceries delivered directly to your home or apartment. You can also checkout Thrivemarket.com to get wholesale prices on high-quality foods delivered directly to your door.

Strategize Your Meal Prep for Healthy Meals on a Budget

If you’re a busy professional looking to make healthy meals a priority, strategize your meal prep just like you’d strategize a project at work. 

We found that if you spend an hour prepping for the week it could save you 3-4 hours of working during the rest of the week.

Prepping your meals on a less busy day (usually Sunday) helps you get on track before the week even starts. I prep for the week while I’m cooking my dinner that night since I’m already in the kitchen anyway.

Ask yourself, “What can I prep today so I can just dive straight into the cooking during the week?”

One major time saver is chopping up the vegetables ahead of time. Get it all out of the way once and you won’t need to see a cutting board for the rest of the week.

I also usually batch/cook quinoa so all I have to do is reheat. I prepare any protein like chicken breasts on my prep day too so they are already seasoned.

Stretch Your Ingredients

Here’s a big one: use recipes that include similar ingredients.

For some people, eating healthy means sacrificing variety. They’ll eat the same thing over and over. You don’t have to do this with this protocol.

Mix and match with the same set of ingredients to create very different flavor combinations.

For example, I’ll buy eggs and make a vegetable frittata one night and scrambled eggs another using leftover vegetables from the baked fish I had at the beginning of the week.

Stretching your ingredients means you can buy larger quantities than if you were buying ingredients for just one recipe. This ends up saving you money and keeps these healthy meals on a budget!

When in doubt, remember the 80/20 rule

I mentioned at the start that this is the easiest way to eat healthy and stay healthy. It’s not good for our brains - or our souls - to adhere rigidly to any one rule. The 80-20 principle encourages you to eat for nutrition 80% of the time and for pleasure 20% of the time.

Of course, I fully believe healthy eating can fall in the pleasure category, but in this situation, those “pleasure foods” are all the things that are great for our taste buds but not so great for our health (sugar, processed foods, cocktails). If you focus on eating nutritious, whole foods 80% of the time, the impact of those 20% foods will be minimal. 

Get Started With A Trial Week

“It’s impossible to eat healthy when you’re busy” just isn’t true. These 4 strategies are proof.

They are a few of the biggest shifts you can make to ensure healthy eating is a part of your life even in tandem with a packed schedule. You’ll save time and money without sacrificing tastiness.

So give it a shot. Make this next week your “trial” week. And if your anxiety goes up just thinking about this, remember: You don’t have to live this way forever. Just see what it’s like.

To make it even easier, you can get recipes we used when teaching our students this system: 5 meals each prepared for $11 or less with stress-free detailed instructions. Get The Sunday Starter Kit now!

So decide right now. What day will be your prep day this week?

What are the core ingredients you know you love that you can rotate into different recipes?

Take 5 minutes to think about it now. “I’m busy” is no longer an excuse.