Save Money, Lose Weight, and Eat Green for a Week with this 3-Step Sunday Set-Up

While it's great in theory, preparing healthy, whole, organic meals every night of the week can be quite the feat. If you're a mom and you're also responsible for feeding an entire family, the task can be even more time consuming. Instead of stressing about how you are going to pull it together night after night, Sunday Set-Up is your plan-ahead solution.

Kathy Kaehler, a working mom, celebrity personal trainer (whose clients have included fellow greenie Julia Roberts, Michele Pfiefer, and Jennifer Aniston), and healthy living television spokesperson, created Kathy Kaehler's Sunday Set-Up to help make daily meal prep more practical. The idea is that every Sunday you "set-up" your meals for the week by shopping at your local farmers' market (or natural food market) and selecting, then prepping foods that can be made into a week's worth of recipes.

Image courtesy of Jamie McCarthy/Wire Images.

Eat Healthier Whole Meals by Planning Ahead

More than streamlining the nightly evening ritual, Kathy created this set-up to help moms incorporate more healthy, organic, home-cooked meals into their children's lives. "Families today rely too much on take-out and ordering-in. Our children are not learning how to prepare healthy meals. By implementing Sunday Set-up into your routine, you will save money, eat better, eat healthier, feel more energized, gather as a family more often, and you may even lose some weight."

Sunday Set-Up is as easy as 1-2-3:

1. On Saturday or Sunday afternoon, take your kids and go shopping at your local farmers market or grocery store, picking up the freshest ingredients possible. Bringing the kids is key, as it gets them excited about the healthy ingredients, and includes them in the meal selection (making it more likely that they will actually eat it).


2. On Sunday afternoon or evening, chop, par boil, and grill the ingredients necessary for a week’s worth of meals and snacks. This includes vegetables, rice, pasta, and chicken.


3. After the chopping and preparing, store the fixings in clear glass containers and place them at the front of your refrigerator. That way, you will be excited about all of the mix and match possibilities for meals and last-minute healthy snacks for the week and your kids can easily help themselves to more wholesome options.

Kathy Kaehler's Sunday Set-Up Shopping List

1. Brown rice (organic)
2. Whole wheat pasta (organic)
3. Kidney Beans (organic)
4. Kathy's Kale
5. Chopped Onions (organic)
6. Boiled Eggs (organic)
7. Chopped Peppers Orange, Red and Yellow (organic)
8. Boiled Chicken Breast (organic)
9. Small grape tomatoes (organic)
10. Broccoli (organic)
11. Cauliflower (organic)

Of course, shopping seasonally, locally, and organically is always the greenest way to go. Use the above list as a base, then make changes according to availability.

More on Green Food:
How to Go Green: Eating
Size Up Your Office Snacks and Scale Down
Going Vegan? Keep These 5 Protein Rich Foods in the Kitchen
Emeril Green 2: Farmers Market Shopping
Cooking on a Budget: Use Everything

More on Going Green and Losing Weight:
5 Ways Going Green Can Help You Lose Weight
Burn Calories with These Green Activities

Got a tip or a post idea for us to write about on Planet Green? Email pgtips (at) treehugger (dot) com.

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