 Hi friends, welcome back to my channel and a very special welcome if you're new here. My name is Jen, I'm a certified weight loss and nutrition coach and I'm on WW personal points. Happy Friday, it's Friday again and I am out of town again. I actually left yesterday, Thursday to head to California for a continuing education nutrition conference, what I am so excited about. I always come back with so much great information for you guys when I attend these conferences and it's a great way for me to network with other weight loss nutrition and fitness coaches. So I am currently in Orange County, California for the weekend, so I'm filming this video on Wednesday. So like last time when I was in Hawaii, this is a shorter week for my weigh-in but I wanted to share with you guys what progress I've made since Friday, so between Friday and Wednesday. Talk to you about my week, set some goals for when I return from my final vacation until I go to New York in December. I really want to get back to my normal routine, I actually miss it. So I'm gonna share that with you and of course we're gonna talk about this week's WW workshop topic. So if you are excited, give this video a big huge thumbs up. Make sure you're subscribed and your bells turned on because I do a weigh-in every Friday and I upload new videos five days a week. Check out that description box down below for nutrition coaching. I can't recommend enough calories and macros personalized to you. That is how I've lost well over 125 pounds and I offer one-on-one coaching for accountability as well. You'll also find links and discounts to my favorite things and my Facebook group. Come join us there, we would love to have you. So let's jump into my week, setting some goals, the WW workshop topic and my short week weigh-in. I hope you had a fan-tastic week. Thank you to everybody who followed me over on Instagram while I went to Hawaii and commented on all of the pictures and if you aren't on Instagram with me I'll put that right here for you if you're interested in following me there but I also talked all about my trip to Hawaii in Wednesday's what I eat in a day, popped up pictures, gave you kind of a quick rundown of where I stayed and what I did so I'll link that video down below for you just in case you missed it. Plus there was some good new foods in there, taste test, the dogs, all sorts of good stuff. Like I mentioned, I did not track my food while I was in Hawaii but the minute I got home it was back to normal. Started tracking my food, drinking my water. I also hurt my foot in Hawaii so I have taken a bit of a break from working out. I did do a couple workouts on my trip and then since then I've taken what is called a D-load which basically means that you don't intentionally work out to allow my foot some time to heal. So with that, when I return from my trip and through this trip that I'm currently on to California I am really focused on food. Eating the right foods, getting in my protein, drinking my water because we know that you don't have to exercise to lose weight that all of that weight loss is going to come from food and food alone. So as long as I focus on making good food choices I shouldn't see any movement in the wrong direction on the scale. As a reminder, when I returned from my trip and last week's weigh in I lost 0.8 pounds. I mean, who am I losing weight on a week long trip to Hawaii enjoying all the good Hawaii foods? My plan for my trip to California again is to not track my food. We are being served all of our meals so I have no clue what is coming my way and just like I did in Hawaii I'm going to be mindful. I'm going to make healthy swaps. I'm going to focus on getting in my protein and I'm going to make eating healthy a priority but I'm not going to worry about tracking my food and instead enjoy my vacation and the experience. Also, this is currently the week of my cycle. As soon as I got back from Hawaii within a couple days it was here and I'm feeling a little bit fatigued and lethargic so I'm even a bit more grateful that I'm on a deload and not actually working out this week because I've been a little fatigued and I have a lot to do to get ready to head out to my trip tomorrow. So lots of nutrition coaching calls, figuring macros, pre-filming videos, speaking of videos there will be all of my regular videos this week, my grocery haul tomorrow, a video coming your way on Sunday but there will not be a meal prep on Monday because I don't get back from my trip until the evening on Sunday which is the day I generally film my meal prep but I will also down in the description box link my meal prep playlist so there are hundreds of videos for you to look back on and lots of great recipes to create. So my plan for this next week when I return from my trip on Sunday is like I did in Hawaii, like I did when I returned from Hawaii, back to basics. My foot is feeling substantially better and I think by the time I get back I should be able to get back into my normal workout routine which I am craving. Like I said, I've enjoyed the deload but I need to get back to the gym. I wanna start lifting some weights, doing my cardio, walking outside because it's so beautiful here as we move into fall. It's still hot but it's beautiful here and I really wanna get back to enjoying my scenic nature walks as well. So I'm very, very, very much looking forward to getting back to my normal routine when it comes to food, exercise, and water as soon as I return from my trip. So before I jump in to my way in let's chat about this week's WW workshop topic and again it is a perfect one because I get asked this question daily, whether it comes in a DM, on my Facebook group, on YouTube and that is how to make meal prep easy. If you follow me here on my channel you know that I eat meal prep almost every Monday unless I'm on vacation. I always make breakfast, lunch, and a snack or dessert for the week and that really helps me not only stay on track, make healthy food choices but I don't have any excuse to eat foods that aren't on plan because I have them prepped and ready to go for the week. One of the things I hear the most about why people don't meal prep is I don't have time to spend hours in the kitchen, one or two days a week meal prepping or I have not a clue what to meal prep or I'm going to be bored one or two days in of the foods that I meal prep. Not that these are excuses but these are reasons that a lot of people have for not implementing meal prep. Mostly I hear that they don't have time. So let's talk about some tips and tricks from WW on how to make meal prep quick and easy. That way you can't say you don't have time anymore. So if you don't have time to prep and cook a full meal lean on quick or no cook foods and recipes. For example, pick up cooked proteins, rotisserie chicken, frozen shrimp and burger patties. Buy pre-chopped vegetables. You can even add them to take out or fast food meals. Maybe you're missing the ingredients when you do have time to cook. Write out a grocery list while planning your meals for the week and get everything in one run. Consider ingredients you already have when you're planning your grocery list. Choose recipes that use five ingredients or less. Think pastas, stir fries and salads. Or maybe you just don't want to cook every single day. Designate one day a week to batch cook. Make things like chilies, soups, stews, freeze them. They reheat really well or store them in individual portions. Roast a large chicken, beef roast or other protein to use later in no cook meals. This is exactly what I do. I figure out what meal prep recipes I want to make. I check my pantry, fridge and freezer to see what I have on hand. Add the remaining ingredients to my grocery list and head to the grocery store. I only shop once a week. So I make sure that my list is comprehensive and that I have all of the ingredients that I need on hand to prepare not only my meal prep for the week but any of the dinners that Troy and I want to have throughout the week. Make it easy by going to the grocery store once a week making a quick list of what you have on hand versus what you need and figuring out a few great meal options. I offer a paid meal plan in my Facebook group every month. You actually receive 20 dinners for breakfast, for lunch and for snacks or desserts. I've done all the work for you. Points are included, macros, calories, everything is included. So all I do is take my meal prep, my meal plan that I make every month, choose the recipes that I want to make, make my grocery list and prepare them. I will link the information for my meal plan down below. You can get your hands on October's meal plan that's coming out by the end of the month. I highly recommend this. If you struggle with figuring out what meals to make, this is going to be a complete lifesaver for you and you can't beat all of these recipes, all the work done for you for only $25. Let's talk about some time savers when it comes to meal prep. Some universal time savers are things like tacos, salads, egg dishes and burgers that come together really quickly. Keep your kitchen stocked with ready-to-go ingredients, cooked brown rice, canned beans, frozen vegetables. Use tools that you have in your kitchen like the microwave. It cooks frozen fish and veggie in a flash. A pressure or slow cooker and a food processor, it makes chopping and grating a breeze. In the WW apps recipe section, scroll to categories like freezer-friendly foods and easy weeknight dinners. So whether you enjoy being a chef in your kitchen or you want quick and simple recipes, all of these tips and tricks and my monthly meal plan will be huge game changers for you. Utilize pre-cooked things. If you follow my grocery hauls, you know that I buy the pre-shredded chicken from Spouts every week, sometimes one or two containers because it makes having pre-cooked, healthy, zero-point shredded chicken on hand and I can't tell you how many times that's been a lifesaver for me. You can also batch prep and this means just cooking some proteins, some carbs and some veggies for the week and if you get tired of the same meal every day, you can choose a different protein, a different carb and a different vegetable every single day but they're batch-prepped, they're cooked, they're ready to go, saving you a lot of time and remember we're best off cooking at home rather than going out. We can control what's in our food, we know the calories, the points, the macros and we can make healthy swaps for some of those high-calorie, high-point, high-fat foods. It's easier to avoid in-the-moment decisions when we do just a little bit of planning ahead and it doesn't have to mean hours and hours in the kitchen once a week. It can mean an hour or less to set yourself up for success. This topic speaks right to my heart because I am a big proponent of meal-prepping. I have meal-prepped my entire weight loss journey from start to finish and like I said, it's really been one of the key factors in my success and I do film my meal-prep every week but if I didn't film it, I would probably be in the kitchen maybe one to two hours on Sunday which in my opinion saves me plenty of hours during the week by having those meals ready to go. Don't forget about my meal plan. It is really, really helpful if you struggle to put together recipes, figure out points, calories, macros. Again, all of the information is down in the description box. So now let's go ahead and jump in to my weigh-in. Like I said, I just returned from vacation a week ago. I started my cycle. I got back to basics excluding the gym, drinking my water, focusing on my food and when I stepped on the scale, five days later I am down 0.2 pounds. So that means in the last couple of weeks, one of those weeks being on vacation, I've lost a pound. I'm happy to start out October with a 0.2 loss. I'm ready to lose some weight in October. I'm ready to hit things hard when I get back from my trip to California but I'll tell you that just being mindful of the foods that you're eating, not overdoing it, drinking your water and not even exercising can still lead to weight loss. Oh, and being on your cycle can still lead to a weight loss even in a four to five day period. I will go ahead and pop up here on the screen what my total loss for the month of September was and then I will also pop up on the screen my total weight loss so far. I couldn't be happier with 0.2. Point this and point that, add up to a pound and considering everything working against me, this makes me really, really happy and like I said, I'm excited to start October off with a loss. So now I wanna hear from you guys. Let me know what you think about meal prepping. Do you do it? Do you want to do it? Will these tips help you set yourself up for meal prep success? And of course, let me know how your week was. Did you gain? Did you lose? And let me know what your goals are moving into October. October, the final 90 days of 2022. And if you enjoyed today's video, give it a big thumbs up. Make sure you're subscribed and your bells turned on because I do upload five videos every single week. Don't forget to check out the description box down below for my monthly meal plan, the videos that I shared with you, all of the links for the videos, the meal prep playlist, my Facebook group, nutrition coaching and links and discounts to my favorite healthy things. Thank you guys so much for watching. Happy Friday, friends. Come over, follow me on Instagram to see pictures from my nutrition conference and I'll see you in tomorrow's grocery haul. Bye.