Prep Day

One of the quickest ways to derail this whole challenge isn't your lack of will power to keep you from ordering that large Chic-Filet shake with extra whipped cream but it will be the lack of time you provide yourself with preparing your meals. Eating in the Zone isn't necessarily hard but it is time consuming. You need to maximize any free time that you have be it weekends or a day during the week where you aren't running kids to and from practice or gymnastics. Plan your trip to the grocery store and as soon as you get home start your prep.

I find it very useful to go ahead a "block" out some foods and have them ready to go in your fridge. In those plastic bags in the picture I have portioned out blocks of strawberries, blueberries and watermelon. You can do the same with any kind of nuts, jerky or dry food and then just throw them in the pantry. As soon as I buy a large 1lb bag of beef jerky it immediately gets broken down into small sandwich bags so that it doesn't take me anytime to grab my lunch box and quickly throw together an a la carte zone meal in a HURRY.

Other things that I prep are raw veggies. I will take 5 or so onions, peppers, zucchini..etc  and go ahead and peel and slice them up and throw them in separate container to store in the fridge so it doesn't take me near the time to prepare a stir fry at night or a breakfast casserole for the weekend. The other upside to this is the clean up.

Be creative, get the grill hot and cook some chicken breasts and then break out the scales separate them in YOUR block number servings, zip lock them and have them ready to go. It takes a little while to do this once but you will save a ton of time measuring  and cleaning in the long run.

Clay Crocker