Meal Management
One of the hardest concepts for people to understand when they begin a diet, is that it takes more than a few weeks of calorie counting to make a real difference in your life. Eating healthy is a lifelong commitment to the improvement of yourself, that cannot be cheated. There is no shortcut to healthy living or to a fit physique. It takes hard work, dedication, and most importantly time. Since diet accounts for eighty percent of your overall fitness level, in order to actually change your body composition and increase your strength, you need to focus eighty percent of your energy on your nutritional intake one hundred percent of the time, for the rest of your life. Without the proper nutrients no amount of time or effort put in at the gym, on the field, or around the track will matter.
Attaining proper nutrition each and every day can be a difficult task, because it is thought to be incredibly time consuming, and in today’s fast paced world people tend to not make the necessary time for themselves and their dietary needs. The interesting thing about eating healthy though, is that with the incorporation of the right habits, it can take up even less time than unhealthy eating habits. A fairly popular phrase in the health and fitness world is “Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail”, which basically means that if you do not have a plan set in stone as to how you are going to eat, what you are going to eat, and when you are going to eat, the chances of you eating anything in sight all day long become exponentially higher. The best way to ensure that your plan succeeds is through a process called meal management.
Meal Management Is The Key To Success
Meal prepping is a the first and most important step of meal management. It is during meal prep that you sit down and decide on which healthy foods you are going to eat for the rest of the week. It is also helpful, if during this step, you decide which meals are going to be consumed in which order. Having a complete step by step plan will ensure that you are more likely to stick to your dietary goals each and every day. Once your list of future meals is made, you’ll want to make a grocery list of all of the items you will need to make each meal. To maximize your saving, and minimize the amount of time you spend in the preparation process it is best to choose meals with similar ingredients. After your grocery list is written out it is time to shop for your meal prep food items. Now that you have a plan and a detailed list, not only will the shopping process go faster but it will also be easier to avoid temptations.
The second step in meal management is actually cooking the meals for the week. Since the entire premise of meal management revolves around the idea that this practice will save you time, it may come as some surprise that on your cooking day you may spend two to three hours in the kitchen. This is because you will be preparing all of your meals for the week in one shot, rather than cooking them individually each day. Doing so will actually save you about two to three hours per day, as you will no longer have to cook during the week. Instead you will have premade and prepackaged meals sitting in your freezer or refrigerator all week long. The nutritional value of a home cooked meal will finally be available in the convenience of a tv dinner replica.
Organization Is Key
It is helpful to implement an organizational system to meal management, so that you are sure to pack the correct meals on the correct days, and know what to eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and any meal you may choose to have in between. Isolator Fitness makes organizing your meal management system a breeze with seven different colored meal prep containers. The possibilities are plentiful with colorization; you can separate your days by color, your meals by color, or even the types of foods into different colored containers, so that you never end up with the wrong lunch packed. Making sure that each meal is consumed on the correct day and at the correct time of day is more important to nutritional health and muscle growth than most people realize.
Meal management is more than just cooking some food and packing a lunch for work everyday. It is system that works in conjunction with an overall healthy lifestyle to provide adequate nutritional values to each individual system of the body. It is a focus on food that is increasingly important when mild or moderate exercise is incorporated into the average person’s lifestyle. The more intense the exercise regimen becomes the more important the focus on food intake must also become. This is because when you workout you are essentially breaking down your muscles so that they can rebuild and become stronger than before. To properly function and repair themselves your muscles need a certain amount of calories, fat, carbohydrates, and protein from your diet.
Meal Management Keeps You On Track
Without meal management and meal prepping it is as if you are starting your diet over from scratch everyday, and when that happens keeping track of your macronutrients and making sure that you are ingesting just the right about of each vitamin, mineral, and protein is incredibly difficult. If you do not shop for the right ingredients and prepare the meals ahead of time there is a chance that when the day comes and you need to start cooking your planned meal, you will not have all of the ingredients that you need, or the cooking time schedule doesn’t fit into the rest of your schedule for that particular day. More people tend to change their diet plans on the fly to accommodate what they have on hand, rather than rescheduling any other part of their day when a wrench is thrown into their plans. When this happens it can completely throw off your macronutrient counts for the day, which in turn can have a negative effect on the way in which your body works together.
Everybody loves excuses, whether it’s that meal prepping is too time consuming, too difficult, or even too inconvenient, there will always be people willing to shout out a reason to avoid living healthily. Fortunately opposite the naysayers, there will also always be problem solvers who lie ready and waiting with a solution that every pessimist attempts to shoot their way. For example, people may say that carrying around all of your meals for the day is too much hassle and that meal management bags will just add one more thing for them to have to carry. To those people Isolator Fitness presents their wide array of meal management system bags. These bags are specifically designed to not only hold an entire day’s worth of food for a single person, but also to carry their other necessities as well, so that they can conveniently bring everything that they need for the day, packed away in one space saving, and hassle free bag. The two most popular meal management bag styles are the IsoPack and the IsoDuffle.
The IsoPack is designed to look and feel like a traditional backpack but with the added bonus of an exterior insulated meal pocket. This area keeps your daily meals at a safe temperature, well below the food temperature danger zone. This meal management bag can be used by students, hikers, campers, or anyone else interested in maintaining a healthy and balanced diet without sacrificing the freedom of their current lifestyle. The main top pocket can be used in much the same way as the main pocket of a traditional backpack: holding books and folders for students, first aid kits and trekking poles for hikers, or sleeping bags and tent poles for campers. The smaller front pocket should be used for personal items that you may need more frequently, such as: keys, cell phones, a compass, or your wallet. There are two side mesh pockets that are great for hands free, and easy access beverage carrying, and for those who can’t leave home without it, there is even an isolated back pocket specifically for your laptop or tablet.
For those who are more inclined to do their working out in a gym, rather than on the trails, there is the IsoDuffle. This meal management bag is a full sized duffle bag with expansive interior space for extra gym clothes and sneakers, all of your after gym toiletries, and any workout equipment that you may need. In addition to all of that glorious space, there is also an insulated meal pocket that is only accessible from the exterior of the duffle bag. It is worth mentioning that the meals cannot be accessed through the main duffle bag area because the separation is able to ensure that your food never smells like your gym clothes, while also making sure that your gym clothes don’t start to smell like lunch. With as much space provided by the IsoDuffle it comes as no surprise that people even use this bag as a travel bag, whether traveling by car, train, plane or boat. Due to it’s size it can even be used as a flight carry on bag, which means that you can pack everything you need for your weekend trip, and not ever have to worry about enduring airline food again.
There are five other meal management bag designs by Isolator Fitness that support the meal planning and meal prepping lifestyle, without the additional storage space included for non food items. There is the IsoMini, Three Meal Cube, Full Size Three Meal, Six Meal Cube, and the Full Size Six Meal. Each of these bags has unique characteristics that make them ideal choices for different users. The IsoMini is the smallest of the three bags with an interior capacity of only one to two meals. The Three Meal Cube is slightly larger offering a meal space large enough to carry three to four meals. The Full Size Three Meal has an identical interior layout as the Three Meal Cube, with the addition of two insulated side pockets for additional cooling storage. The Six Meal Cube has an insulated pocket large enough for six to eight meals, and the Full Size Six Meal boasts that same amount of space along with two insulated side pockets making it the largest meal management bag designed solely for meal storage.
From the beginning, the entire way through to the end, Isolator Fitness has products and services available to get you through every step of meal management seamlessly. The Encyclopedia of Meal Prep was comprised as a downloadable PDF file to help answer any questions new and aspiring meal preppers may have about the wonderful world of meal management. There are also meal prep containers, and reusable plastic utensils available for purchase, to help simplify the process of meal prepping. IsoBricks are revolutionary ice packs that are designed to stay flat, whether frozen or thawed so that they take up as little room as possible and are able to leave more room within the meal management bags for food filled meal prep containers. When you combine all of these services and products together you get the ultimate meal management system, and the best and more efficient way for anyone to learn how to start meal prepping to live a healthier and more nutritiously balanced life.
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