Easy Plant Based Meal Prep For Beginners / Down 70 lbs!

I Don't Wanna Know [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey guys welcome back to my channel so today's video is all about weekly nacho are you done shaking hmm is that all hey you have a bed not my white pillows okay let's try that again so today's video is all about weekly food prep for beginners this is literally what I had to start doing at the beginning of my journey it is what made things sustainable and I still do this every single week years later it not only helped me lose 70 pounds but it has helped me keep it off all of these years so I'm going to show you just the three things that if you have these prepped you will be that much more successful on your weight loss Journey or transitioning to a plant-based diet and one of these things you don't even have to cook so if you didn't already know my weight loss guiding cookbook plentifully lean is now available in stores but this is my weight loss guiding cookbook I basically wrote the guide that I wish I had had when I was on my weight loss journey I teach you guys everything you need to know about easy weight loss on a plant-based diet what to do about protein carbs fat I give you a 28 Day meal plan give you my prep day must but most importantly I teach you guys the various plate building methods that I used to help me lose weight and keep it off I was able to lose 70 pounds without ever counting calories it also has 125 of my most popular weight loss recipes and Amazon has this on sale right now it's almost 20 off so if you haven't picked it up yet Amazon is a great place because it's 20 off otherwise you can walk into Barnes Noble it's sold at Walmart The Tattered Cover anywhere books are sold so if you guys follow me on Instagram you saw that this week I was in New York City for the first time ever I was invited to a press release event and had meetings with my publisher Simon Schuster and I got to meet with my editor and the team in person so that was really fun and I did Vlog it for you guys so I'm going to be editing that and getting it up pretty soon for you guys okay so let's talk food prep what are the three main things that if you do them your life will not only be easier but you will be more likely to stay on track when you're getting home when you get to the end of the day and you're tired and you don't want to make dinner having these three things prepped and ready to go will help make your life easier and will help you make good decisions because not even I make good decisions when I don't have anything prepped and I'm tired and I don't want to cook it doesn't happen so I learned very quickly that I always have to have a few things on hand to help me make better choices so the three major things that you want to have prep every week is number one your starches so you want to decide in a week what are the starches that you want to have I personally always have rice made and I always have potatoes made if you make your beans from scratch make your beans I generally don't so I always make sure I have canned beans on hand I even go as far as making my pasta ahead of time because again when you're tired sometimes you just don't even want to boil pasta but if all you have to do is add your cooked pasta to a bowl sauce it and heat it up I can do that so prep the starches that you want to eat during the week because those are the bulk of your calories they're the base of your meals and if you have those ready to go then it's easy to pull a meal together the second most important thing that you want to have prepped are your sauces and dressings so for me every week without fail must-have is cheese sauce so every week I make my delicious cheese sauce because we put it on everything we will put it on Rice we will put it on potatoes we'll put it on noodles to make mac and cheese I put it over steamed broccoli cheese sauce is a must so I always make cheese sauce and then I choose another dressing that I want to have during the week now since we're talking for beginners and we don't want things to be overwhelming I would make cheese sauce and I would choose one dressing for me that is ranch I love ranch dressing if I have Ranch made I will eat more salads and I will snack on veggies and dip them in ranch so Ranch is an absolute must it helps me make good choices and branch is so great on top of rice bowls that are mixed with chickpeas and tomatoes I just I can't actually think of something I wouldn't put Ranch on three inch is a must so the third thing that you want to have prepped and this is the one that doesn't even require cooking is that you want to make sure you have plenty of Frozen fruits and vegetables and fresh fruits and vegetables available and ready to go so at the end of the day when I'm tired I've had a busy day the kids have sports all of that stuff if all I have to do is heat up a starch put a sauce on it and pull together a salad or steam some broccoli and sauce it I can do that and that helps me stay on track it helps not only myself eat healthy but it helps my family eat healthy when pulling meals together is really easy and in that category you also want to make sure you have your dry and canned goods stocked and in your pantry I always keep canned beans some vegan chili boxes of pasta so if you just are really good about making sure that just those three things are prepped your starches are made your sauces are are made and you have fresh fruits and vegetables and your dry goods stocked and ready to go I promise you you are gonna do so much better than if you didn't prep at all and I'm speaking from experience as someone who was 70 pounds overweight for years and years got good intentions don't get you very far you have to plan you have to be prepared otherwise good intentions you know just go out the window when you're tired and hungry alright so I'm going to show you right now how I pull everything together the tools that I use to cook everything up and I'll show you at the end what having it all prepped looks like and really having this done is very minimal and it actually ends up being the bulk of the work if you want to go the extra mile for extra credit the only thing I would add to this list is make a soup for the week or make a curry that you want to enjoy to have over your rice or with your potatoes and really you will be in good shape okay so the few recipes that you guys are going to be seeing from me today are found in my cookbook so if you have this they're right in there for you the guidelines that I'm going through right now are also in the book for you and as you can see I cook out of my book like crazy I I literally we live out of this book it's like I said I put my most popular recipes in here I only put food in here that I love to eat regularly and we do it regularly I should know my own recipes by now but I don't so I have them marked in here but the sauces can be found in here the ranch dressing is in here the cheese sauce is in here I have Caesar dressing thousand island dressing I have Asian dressings in here because dressings are so important I put a lot of effort into developing sauces and dressings for my life because they give everything flavors the sauces are really important so I'm going to start off by getting my starches cooked because they take the longest so right now I'm gonna get the sweet potatoes in the oven and roasted you can steam them in the instant pot but I find that they're sweeter when they get roasted in the oven so I'm just gonna line them up on my parchment sheet here and then I'm going to pierce them I used to think this was a wives old wives tale that you didn't need to pierce them and they exploded in my mom's oven when I was cooking potatoes there she was not impressed so definitely pierced your potatoes and then I just roast them in the oven at 400 for about an hour so now I'm going to move on to my insta pot this is probably the most used tool in my kitchen next to my blender so I'm gonna steam up my potatoes in here and just ignore how dirty this is I don't know how their influencers keep their stuff so clean I'm not one of those so I just got one of these um steaming baskets from Walmart and so I just set this down in the bottom of my insta pot and then I start putting in my potatoes and I always put the largest potatoes at the bottom because they get cooked the most so once I get that nice and full I'm just gonna add about a cup and a half of water to the bottom of the pot and then I get the lid put on and I make sure that it's always that to sealed this you know pretty much goes without saying but sometimes I forget and it's open so just make sure it's sealed and then I just hit Steam and based on the size of my potatoes I'm gonna assume these guys for about 20 minutes so while my potatoes are cooking I'm gonna get the sauces made so I'm gonna make the cheese sauce first and so here I'm just dicing up some potatoes to make the base of the cheese sauce I'm gonna get those into a bowl and my little one is always wanting to be so helpful in the kitchen and then I'm gonna dice up a carrot and get that in the bowl as well and I always let my kids help I think it's good for them and they enjoy it so after I have those diced I put them into the water to boil you guys know the recipe you guys probably make this better than I do I add a few cashews to my blender and this is another really useful tool is a high speed blender like a Vitamix or a Blendtec I got my Blendtec at Costco many years ago and it is held up really really well so I'm going to add my onion powder garlic powder and my salt to the cashews and squeeze of lemon schoolyard drama huh yeah she flat tires um all the time because the ones and then I get the swimsuit so once the vegetables are done boiling in the water here and they're nice and soft I'm just going to strain them out but I want to reserve the water so I'm going to add the potatoes and the carrots to the cashew mixture here and then after I get them all in there I'm going to add some of the hot liquid that they boiled in to the blender blend it up just like this and it becomes this creamy delicious cheese sauce look at that this is why this is the most popular recipe on my website across all my social media you guys love this stuff I love this too you can add jalapenos and salsa to it it's delicious and I just store it in mason jars and then I'm off to make the ranch dressing so that's really easy again one of your guys's favorites some cashews some seasonings a little vinegar blend that up and you get this delicious creamy ranch and then I have all these herbs that I dried from my garden that I like to add and I'm running lows so I'm definitely going to try more this next season but I like to add parsley and chives you guys can add Dill whatever you like so I get that mixed in and I just store everything in these mason jars so now the third part of an easy food prep is making sure you have all of your dried Goods this isn't everything I have in my pantry this is just a small sample so you guys can see you know the team is represented here I like to have beans so you can throw them into burrito bowls like to have pasta to throw cheese sauce on and I love having chili to make chili cheese fries so now that the potatoes are done cooking I'm just gonna release the pressure immediately because you don't want them to sit there longer because they'll just turn to Mush but as you can see they come out perfectly steamed so then I'm gonna do my rice in the instant pot now and I just do equal parts of rice and water so if I do three cups of rice I do three cups of water and then I just hit the rice setting for 15 minutes and then you want to let it sit for 20 minutes and then after it's sat for 20 minutes you want to release whatever pressure is left and then the rice is done see perfectly steamed rice you didn't have to watch it on the stove I definitely love my insta pot but here it is guys I have my starches prepped for the week and then I've got my two sauces that's all I decided to do and I have more of these in the fridge because that's not enough for my family so make as much as you need and then I have my canned beans my chili my pasta any dry goods that you think you're gonna want it's just a good idea to have them in there and then of course I have my fresh fruits and veggies so that we can add them to salads to have for snacks to just round out your meals I love having boxes of salad and I just make sure everything is nice and stocked in the fridge as you can see I've got my starches I've got a bunch of fruit because that's all I allow my kids to snack on is fruits and veggies I don't keep any junk in the house we we've got stuff for salads I've got my starches there and my sauces and I've got you know just a bunch of veggies that they can snack on or add to like I said their salads they love cucumber anything that is going to make life easier to have on hand of course I have hot sauce I have like an entire drawer of just hot sauce I love hot sauce so then in the freezer I just make sure we have plenty of frozen fruit as well because once we run out of the fresh fruit then we can switch to having a frozen fruit in smoothies and for snacks or dessert my kids love to make um just like banana and ice cream so I like to have a variety of fruits and then for frozen vegetables I like to keep green beans broccoli florets frozen spinach and frozen peas all right guys that is it for me today I hope this helped you to see that really prep does not have to be that complicated you don't even have to make all these different meals just start with the basics start with your starches have your sauces made and have fruits and vegetables available to round out your meals and make them super nutritious have your dry and canned goods ready to go so that you can throw them together with your starches and your veggies and your sauce and make it an easy bowl and I promise you this little bit of effort on the weekend before before you start the week is worth the little bit of time it's about an hour and a half total of effort that helps you get through your work week then when it comes to Friday night and the rest of your weekend plan for those Foods differently because you're going to want something more special that's why I have an entire craving section in my cookbook so you can have your cauliflower wings and your pizza and your egg rolls and because you didn't spend all week cooking and expending all of that energy you'll be ready to cook some of that fun weekend food that is cleaned up and healthy and won't derail your weight loss alright guys as always remember to keep this journey about health and not just about the skinny I love you and I'll see you guys next time [Music]

Channel: Plantiful Kiki

Views: 213,435

Keywords: High Carb, low fat vegan, Plant based recipes, The Starch Solution, vegan weight loss, Plant Based weight loss, Nutritarian, Eat to live, Whole Food Plant Based, easy weight loss, vegetarian, dairy free, weight loss

Id: mUzW7-ekUuI

Length: 14min 53sec (893 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 26 2023