Tag Archive for: weight management

Meal Prepping Made Easy

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I don’t know about you, but sometimes 24 hours a day is just not enough. With school and work, some days I struggle to find the time to eat nourishing meals because I don’t have the time to make a meal and any prepared options are usually not the best choices. I started meal prepping can help free up some time during the week by cooking meals ahead of time!

Set a Day for Meal Prepping

First, set a designated day to cook your meals. I like to cook on Sundays and Wednesdays making meals for three to four days so I don’t get tired of the same meals every day. Also, most of the time food only says good for about three to five days or so. This is also a great way to get the family into the kitchen. Getting kids to help out can spark their interest in healthy food and cooking. Plus, they are more likely to eat the food that they helped cook.

Plan Your Meals

Once you have set a day to make your meals, plan what you are going to make and write a list of food you need to get at the grocery store. Planning your meals in advance can help make grocery shopping much easier as you already know what to get. This way you only need to go to the grocery store once a week. When planning your meals, think about ingredients that could be cooked in multiple ways. For example, you can make spinach into a salad, put it in some soup, or sautee it with other veggies!

Don’t limit your meal prepping to just lunch and dinner. You can save time in the morning by portioning out your smoothie ingredients in mason jars or pre-making pancakes and cut fruit for an easy breakfast for the kids.

Having pre-made snacks make it easy for you to grab and go. Cut up and portion fruits and veggies! Portion out cheese, lunchmeat, and crackers for homemade Lunchables! Pre-package trail mix or cereals! The combinations are endless.

Be Efficient

Utilize your kitchen to the max!

  • Make sheet pan meals by roasting multiple items on the same sheet pan. That’s one less dish to wash at the end of the night!
  • Multi-task. Whether that be boiling some pasta while sauteeing some greens or baking chicken and roasting potatoes, make use of your time cooking.

Portion Out Your Meals

After making all your meals, portion out your meals. This makes it quick and easy to grab your lunch when you are on your way out the door! If you don’t have enough room in your refrigerator, pack your lunch and dinner the night before so you have it ready to go in the morning.

Mason jars are a great way to put salads in. Place your dressing in first and then put hardier vegetables like chickpeas or tomatoes or protein. That way your salad is not soggy when you eat it. It’s also great to use if you want instant noodle soups. Just cook your favorite noodles and shock them in ice water before adding it to the mason jar with other ingredients you want. Add miso, tum yum paste, a bouillon cube, or any other soup flavoring. When you are ready to eat, just add hot water and let it sit for a couple of minutes. And voila you have soup!

Freeze It

If you want to meal prep way far in advance, you can freeze the extra meals you made. You can marinate meat, cook vegetables,  or make soup and freeze it! Making and freezing family meals can be a huge time saver when you are running short on time to make dinner. You can make lasagna, oven bakes, or casseroles in a disposable pan and freeze them until you need them.

Fast food can be healthy. Meal prepping may require taking some time out of your week, but you can have ready to eat meals that you know are nutritious! You can make it as easy as you want it by simply putting everything in the oven or have fun making different meals. Not only does it save time during the weekdays, but it can save you money and unnecessary stress. Try meal prepping this week and comment below how you did it!

AN

Tele-health/Tele-nutrition Video Conferencing

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Have you been pondering an appointment with a dietitian to help you improve your diabetes management, food allergy or celiac disease issues, lipid challenges, improve your athletic performance, lose weight or once and for all heal from your eating disorder? Scheduling and keeping appointments are a hassle, sometimes inconvenient and an expense.

Beyond the actual cost of the medical nutrition therapy appointment there are additional costs. How much does it cost you to take off an hour early from work to schedule an appointment? Are you driving across town or from Clinton, Guymon, or Muskogee for an appointment? Gas is not cheap. If you are driving to the city from out of town you will likely have meal expenses involved also. Do you have to pay child care costs while you are at an appointment?

The additional costs and inconvenience can be eliminated with “tele-nutrition video conferencing” appointments.  Banister Nutrition now provides the option for you to schedule an appointment with one of our dietitians and you can be in your kitchen, office or favorite coffee shop, where ever you please. We have a HIPPA compliant software program that allows us to easily connect with you via an e-mail address you provide. We offer packages of 3-4 appointments at a reduced cost, payable at the time of purchase with credit card.

“If” you want your insurance to cover your medical nutrition therapy appointments, insurance companies have placed limitations on what they will cover. These restrictions include:

  • Your referring physician must be located in a medically deprived area of the state which of course means rural Oklahoma.
  • At the time of your video conference you must be sitting in your physicians’ actual brick and mortar office space.
  • Medicare will cover 3 appointments per year for diabetes and renal disease only.

 

To assist patients with insurance coverage, if you have a rural physician you would like for us to approach regarding making this service available to you please provide us with your physicians name, office address and phone number . We will contact your physician to try make these arrangements for you.

Our experience has been that both physicians and patients living in rural Oklahoma have been very pleased with having medical nutrition therapy available via video conferencing. Initially we all (physicians, patients and dietitians) thought video conferencing would be a little awkward, relationships would not be easily built, and nutrition therapy via this platform would not be effective.  We are pleased to say this has not been the case. Everyone involved has found this new, convenient resource to improve your health care has been very appreciated and helpful.

 

CB