 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. It is Monday, so it is meal prep day. You are not going to want to miss this protein packed, incredibly delicious meal prep. So if you're excited to give this video a big, huge thumbs up, make sure you're subscribed. Your bell is turned on because I do a meal prep every Monday and I actually upload five videos every single week. You will find all of today's recipes on my recipe website. I'll link that at the top of the description box for you as well as nutrition coaching where I offer personalized to you macros and calories. Highly recommend this is how I've lost 140 pounds and I have one-on-one coaching for accountability to ask questions or if you just want to chat with me directly. Links, discounts to my favorite things and come join our Facebook group. It's free, it's supportive and we'd love to have you. So let's head on into the kitchen for this protein packed meal prep. So before we jump in to the meal prep, I'm actually going to get my meat, fruits, vegetables, ready for the week. This is something that I usually do prior to starting my meal prep. It's just setting myself up for success, making sure everything is ready for the week, whether it's used in meal prep or it's planned for dinners or recipes throughout the week. I want my fruit to stay fresh, my vegetables to stay fresh. So I actually recently invested in a food sealer. Now I wanted something that was a little bit more affordable than some of the really well-known ones and something that was equally as amazing and this food sealer has been nothing but spectacular and a big game changer for me in the kitchen. So I want to share it with you. I've been using it for a while. I really wanted to test it out, make sure it was something I number one wanted to keep, number two wanted to share with you or number three that I felt could rival some of the higher end food sealers out there and let me tell you, it's amazing. So the vacuum sealer that I decided to purchase because it was very affordable around $50 is the Vivoar VS5 5500 vacuum sealer. This vacuum sealer blew my mind. There's a lot of features on this sealer that you don't find with other vacuum sealers on the market and other ones are at least twice, if not three times the price. You're actually going to receive two different sizes of vacuum sealing bags. You're also going to receive a replacement seal. It also comes with an external hose. This is actually great for marinating. You can also use this to pull air out of things in jars like coffee beans. This has the ability to vacuum seal both dry and moist foods. You just select the option on the display. Again, you can marinate foods with this as well with the external hose and you have a manual control sealing options as well if you prefer to be a little bit more hands-on. It's fast and efficient heat dissipation so it seals the bag super quickly as well as extracts all of the air with the vacuum seal mode very quickly. It has a built-in bag roll storage and cutter for effortless organization and the translucent window allows you to keep an eye on the bag. It has a large flow rate, powerful motor, efficient cooling and overheating protection. Easy to handle, dry, wet and soft foods. Step one, put the food into the sealer bag and put the bag into the vacuum sealer. Press manual seal and it will seal the bag. Go ahead and load the bag with whatever food you are wanting to remove the air from. Once the food is in the bag, you're going to place the bag into the airflow chamber, shut the lid and hit vacuum seal and all of the air will be removed from the bag. I love that you can customize the size of your bag. My recommendation would be to cut your bag just a little bit bigger than needed so that there's room for the high vacuum large suction to pull all of the air out of the bag. It is small, it is compact, it is easy to store. You get free returns, a 30 day no hassle return policy as well as a 12 month warranty. I will link the Vivore vacuum sealer machine down below for you with a discount. Highly, highly recommend. We are loving it. So for breakfast this week, I'm making protein chia pudding. I love chia pudding, especially in the summer. I mean, we're well over 100 degrees here, over 110 a lot of days. I want a cool breakfast, something that I don't have to cook, something that's not hot but something that I can really eat to get in my protein. And this is a nice clean ingredient, healthy protein packed breakfast. So let me show you what you'll need. So first you're going to need chia seeds. I'm using Fairlife milk only because of the protein content. There's 13 grams in one cup. So instead of using almond milk or really any other milk, choosing something like Fairlife is really going to up your protein and it's delicious, tastes just like regular milk. It is my go-to. I use it anytime I need milk for a recipe, a protein shake, really, truly anything. And then you're going to need some almond butter. And because I'm doing a blueberry based chia pudding, I'm going to use the blueberry cheesecake almond butter from American Dream Nut Butter. You guys know I love American Dream Nut Butter. It is my go-to. I eat it literally every day, sometimes twice a day. What I love about it is it tastes amazing. There's mix-ins in every single nut butter. They have almond butter, peanut butter, cashew butter. The points, the calories are less than traditional nut butter. And in my opinion, it tastes way, way better. So we're going to use the blueberry cheesecake. I will link American Dream Nut Butter down below for you with a discount. Of course, we're going to need fresh blueberries, vanilla extract, cinnamon, and then some sliced almonds. So I'm going to assemble three chia puddings for the week. So the first thing I'm going to do is add three tablespoons of chia seeds to a mason jar. One cup of fair life milk, vanilla extract, and a little bit of cinnamon. And then for the nut butter, in my opinion, the easiest thing to do is to go ahead and just weigh it out on your food scale. So I weigh mine out in grams. A two tablespoon serving is 28 grams. So I'm just going to add 28 grams worth of nut butter. Pop on my lid. I did buy these plastic mason jar lids off of Amazon. The other ones were getting rusty, so I was like, no ma'am. So I decided to buy these plastic ones. It was so affordable and it came with the large lids and the small lids. I'll link it down below for you. It's all we use on our mason jars. Give that a really good shake because you do want to get that nut butter mixed in the best that you can. And then you're just going to put this in the refrigerator overnight. And in the morning we'll have amazing protein packed chia pudding. I'm going to top it with some fresh blueberries and a tablespoon of sliced almonds. And that'll be the topping on the chia pudding. And that will pair really nicely with that blueberry cheesecake nut butter. So let me go ahead and put together my other two jars. Three blueberry almond chia puddings packed with protein. Again, I'm going to top it with a tablespoon of sliced almonds, some blueberries. This is a great on-the-go breakfast. Super easy, no cooking, ready to go. And a really good source of protein, fiber, healthy fat. Just a really well-rounded breakfast. For lunch this week, I'm making chicken tostadas. I love a good tostada. And this is going to be, again, perfect to easily assemble without any cooking for lunches. Now, of course, I'll show you what chicken I'm using. You can, of course, use chicken breast. So let me show you what you'll need. An avocado, an onion of your choice. I went ahead and went with red onion, fresh cilantro, tostadas, I just picked them up from the store. Of course, you can make your own. Chicken broth, minced garlic, a can of diced green chilies, a can of black beans, lime juice, chicken. I'm using the pre-cooked pre-shredded chicken from Sprouts, that way I don't have to cook anything. And this chicken is super good and it's just really, truly super convenient. And then you'll need salt and pepper. I will link my little Acacia wood salt and pepper holder down below. It's less than $10 on Amazon and I love it. Some cumin, some shredded lettuce, and then cheese. I'm using cogita cheese or queso cogita, which is my favorite on any really type of Mexican dish. So let's put together these tostadas. Okay, I spoke too soon. I just was reading through the recipe. So we are going to have to do some cooking. However, I'm not going to have to cook my chicken, but there is some cooking involved in the recipe. So at my skillet warming up over medium heat, I'm going to add my diced up onion, cumin, and my salt and pepper. And we're going to let the onions cook down for about five minutes. I'm going to add in a big scoop of minced garlic and just allow it to cook down until fragrant. Now we're going to add one cup of chicken broth and our drain and rinsed can of black beans. We're going to allow that to cook a little bit until the beans are softened, and then we're going to smash them, either using the back of a fork or a potato masher, and make them basically into more of a refried bean consistency. Now I'm going to add in my can of diced green chilies and my chicken, stir that up, and again let it simmer for a few more minutes, just continuing to kind of smash those black beans. Last but not least go ahead and turn off your heat and add in some lime juice. Give it another quick stir and this is our chicken tostada mixture. So I'm going to put together a tostada because I'll have this for lunch today. Now the recipe makes eight servings. So you could do four servings, two tostadas per serving. I will put the points and calories on the screen at the end for one tostada or making eight servings out of the recipe. So whatever you prefer. So the first thing you're going to do is add some shredded lettuce as your base and then we're going to add one eighth of the chicken mixture. This already looks so good. Avocado, a tablespoon of the cogita cheese and then go ahead and top it with some fresh cilantro. And there's the tostada. Doesn't that look absolutely delicious? And like I said, you can do one tostada per serving or two, I'll put points, calories, macros on the screen for one tostada. And then obviously you'll just double that information if you want to have more than one. But this is lunch today and I'm pretty excited about it. In fact, this is lunch for the entire next week. I can't tell you how excited I am for this week's sweet treat. I am making protein rice crispy treats. I love rice crispy treats. And listen, if we can add protein to it, even better. So let me show you what you'll need. First, you're going to need unflavored protein powder. My recommendation is always isopere unflavored. This is the same unflavored protein you can use to make protein flour. So highly recommend. I just buy it off of Amazon. I'll definitely link it down below for you. Of course, you're going to need rice crispies, light butter, vanilla extract. I'm adding some sprinkles because I need a little color in my rice crispy treats and then marshmallows. Marshmallows are always the star of the show, but marshmallows are very high in sugar, very high in points until Choc Zero came into my life. These are their mini-smallows, vanilla-flavored mini-marshmallows. You guys, these are zero points on WW. And 50 calories per serving, no added sugar. And they taste just like regular marshmallows. Actually, I think the texture and even that flavor is a little bit better. I love these. These are new to the Choc Zero line. I do have a discount for Choc Zero, so I'll link it for you as well. So for our rice crispy treats, I'm melting six tablespoons of light butter into a large stock pot. Then we're going to add six cups of marshmallows, which was the whole package of Choc Zero. I love these marshmallows and I love marshmallows. I don't love all the sugar points and calories and marshmallows. And like I said, the taste and texture of these, in my opinion, is even better than regular marshmallows. So I highly, highly recommend. They also came out with some salted caramels that are incredible. They have a lot of new products on their website. So we're going to let these marshmallows melt down. And then we will immediately remove this from the heat, stir in our vanilla, our unflavored protein powder and our rice crispies. Now we're going to press the marshmallow mixture into a sprayed nine by 13 baking dish. I'm going to add some sprinkles just for fun. And then I will take my hand and kind of press those into place as well. We just don't want them to fall off once the rice crispies have hardened. I mean, can we talk about how amazing these rice crispy treats looked and the fact that they are packed with protein is just a bonus. Spoiler alert, I did taste the mixture a little bit. It is so good. It is better than regular rice crispy treats with regular marshmallows. I don't know what Chalk Zero did, but I'm here for it. I can't wait to have these all week. I'll put points, calories, macros here on the screen for you. Thank you for joining me for this week's meal prep. I hope you are as excited about these three recipes as I am. Don't forget you will find all of my recipes on my website. It is linked at the top of the description box along with the vacuum sealer. It is amazing. I'm so glad I picked it up. We love to buy our meat and bulk. So it just helps keep it a lot fresher for longer, not to mention being able to use it for vegetables and berries. It's just really truly a game changer. So I'll link that down below for you. With that special discount, you'll also find nutrition coaching, links and discounts to my favorite things. And don't forget to come join my Facebook group. We would love to have you. Happy Monday. Happy Fourth of July tomorrow. And I'll see you in the next one.