How Meal Prep Can Keep Your Keto Lifestyle on Track

When making a major diet and lifestyle change, two of the most common challenges people face are: 1. eating clean but still enjoying foods you love that taste delicious, and 2. designating time to buy ingredients, cook, and prepare for the week ahead. If you’re looking for ways to simplify your lifestyle and help keep yourself accountable, whether you’re on a keto diet, a paleo diet, or just committing yourself to increasing your protein intake day to day, meal prepping can revolutionize your daily habits to keep you on track.

Is it hard to stay focused on your goals while transitioning to a new diet? Want to up your protein game? Here are some of the best ways to stay motivated and organized while maintaining your lifestyle goals.

Make it fun

Before we get into the details and go over tips and tricks to stay motivated meal prepping, let's remember a couple of key things: Have patience with yourself. Understand that it may take time to practice and incorporate this into your everyday new lifestyle. And most importantly, have fun with it! Changing your lifestyle shouldn’t be approached like a crash diet or punishment. Instead, you’re committing to fueling your body properly, to live your best life today and every day. It’s important to first understand why you’re doing things before you just dive in. So, set some intentions, have patience, and most of all, have fun. This is for you—so here’s to beginning your new healthy lifestyle.

Be mindful and prepared

Meal prepping is a super convenient and efficient way to reduce not only food waste, but also lessen the probability of eating outside of your meal plan. When you’re no longer able to just grab whatever’s available to you on the way home, or take advantage of the free pizza day at the office, it can help to know that you’re well prepared and have thought ahead.

The goal is to prepare meals and recipes in appropriate portion sizes, creating an easy grab-and-go experience for busy people like yourself. You want to achieve your goals and stay focused on eating keto without the temptations to break your diet because you’re too busy, tired, or don’t know how to stay on track. Luckily, there are healthy options to add to your recipes and eat on-the-go, like Kettle & Fire. Their bone broth and keto soups make it incredibly easy to incorporate quick meals and easy add-ons to the regular food you’re preparing.

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1. Have fun with color

A lot of my friends who are sticking to a keto lifestyle all have the same common complaint: it can get boring. Even when it’s not too tricky to stick to high fat, high protein, and low carbohydrate foods, you can easily fall back on the same staple foods over and over again, which can take the variety out of your day.

One of the easiest things you can do to alleviate this is to make your plate colorful. You eat with your eyes first, and if your food is visually appealing, you’re more likely to enjoy it and expect it to taste good. Try new things like purple yams or white asparagus. For lunches or dinners when you’re on the go, an awesome ready-made option is Kettle and Fire’s Keto Friendly Soups. Not only are the colors rich and beautiful, but they’re keto and paleo-friendly too. Win-win-win.

2. Protein, Protein, Protein

I can’t stress enough the importance of protein, no matter your lifestyle. Eating keto or paleo, or even just focusing on muscle building and pushing your body in workouts, means you need to focus on protein-based snacks and meals. Protein will help you stay fuller longer, providing you with long-lasting energy. When you’re energized, then you’re more focused. When you’re focused, you can dedicate time during the week to prepping meals and snacks to stay on top of your goals.

If you have trouble eating enough protein for the day, you may want to consider supplementing with a protein shake. You can calculate your protein factor, but it is typically around your weight in grams of protein per day. If I am 170 lbs, then I should aim for about 170g of protein per day. This may vary depending on how active you are as well.

Or, if shakes aren’t your thing, you can turn to the staple that many health fanatics and keto die hards alike have turned to over the past few years: bone broth. Kettle and Fire’s Bone Broths are simple ways to add more protein to sauces, veggies, and many other meals. Check out Kettle & Fire’s online book of recipes for some keto meal prep inspiration!

Their bone broth soup is made with organic, free-range chicken bones, and there’s 8-10g of protein per serving. My favorite of their entire line of keto soups is the Broccoli Cheddar. It’s ready to eat in 5 minutes, and it’s delicious on its own in a mug—or you can let it simmer with chicken breasts or vegetables, or top it with crumbled bacon. It’s guaranteed to fill the house with a home-cooked smell, and provide you a protein boost on top of it.

Stay prepared on the go

Another great thing about Kettle & Fire is their products don’t require refrigeration until they’re opened and are shelf-stable for up to 2 years. So, if you need to keep a broth or keto soup with you at work, you won't have to go out of your way to get a quick snack or lunch in—or even a perfect, hearty dinner on nights when you’re craving something hearty but are too busy to cook a full meal.

Keto-friendly soups are a super simple, on the go way to make sure you’re getting your nutrition in, even if you’re spending long hours away from home or outside of a kitchen. Pour a mug of Butter Curry Bone Broth Soup or Mushroom Bisque, both of which are made with collagen-rich bone broth and pack amazing benefits, and warm it up at work or after the gym for a super convenient meal that can help you maintain weight loss and a steady metabolism.

Treat yourself

It’s important to feel good about what you’re putting in your body. Even when you have other foods such as keto-friendly cake or cookies—or even the occasional non-keto cake or cookies—don’t let yourself feel guilty or discouraged. The trick is to make sure you’re able to incorporate other high-protein items in your day like, bone broth-based soups, outside of those occasional sweet treats. A lot of times, we feel so guilty about the foods we eat that we label as "cheats" or unhealthy foods, but the truth is you can still treat yourself without feeling guilty by introducing brands like Kettle & Fire into your daily diet.

The reality is that one piece of cake or a couple of cookies will not change your overall health. But if you can never fully enjoy them and always feel regret afterward, then over time, the energy you give to your food and body will be negatively affected. Mindset is everything. Thankfully, Kettle & Fire has these amazing options to take the worry and regret out of meal prepping and making healthy choices.

Think positive, feel positive

Kettle & Fire makes sticking to your diet convenient, delicious, and nutritious—but just as important, it’s food you can feel good about all around. Kettle & Fire bone broths and soups are totally antibiotic and hormone-free, are all organic, and use farm-raised ingredients, which should give you confidence and relief knowing your food comes from an ethical, natural place. I always like to know where my fuel comes from, since so many foods are mass-produced and processed these days. Not only does the quality of your food matter, but how you feel about your food also matters, so ensure that you’re committing to food you can feel good about.

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Keeping it simple is the best way to go. Set yourself up for success by having meals prepped at the beginning of the week. Take a cooler with you to work or put them in the fridge. If you have food ready, you will not have to wonder where the next snack or meal is coming from, which also means less stress and one less thing to think about. Remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint. Don't expect this to just happen. Allow yourself to eat out once in a while. It is okay to eat what you love. Feel good about it, have no regrets, just lessons. Do enough personal development each day so your mind can become sharp and you can be in love with who you are. When you love who you are, you will love everything else around you—including your food.