5 Ways to Make PCOS-Friendly Meal Prep Easy

I’m a big believer in meal planning and prepping food in advance.

Why?

The PCOS-friendly meals we plan and prepare today allow us to always have quick and easy meals on hand so we’re not tempted to eat unhealthy foods that make us feel worse and cause our PCOS symptoms to flare up.

Prepping our meals in advance allows us to stay focused on the ULTIMATE goal—

• feeling more energetic
• sleeping through the night without our hormones waking us up
• having better fitting clothes
• having regular menes cycles with less clotting
• taking back control of our own health and affliction

And all this feels AMAZING!

If you’re like many of my clients, though, you might feel unsure about what to cook and get overwhelmed by the 1,000s of foods choices that have you wondering Can I eat this? Is that PCOS-friendly? More times than not, this confusion and uncertainty leads us to the drive-thru for dinner or to the break-room snack table when hunger strikes. And that’s not what we want.

To help you plan ahead, here are five really easy meal prep ideas:

1. Buy PCOS-friendly prepared foods (and then mix-and-match your way to PCOS-friendly food heaven!) If you don’t like to cook or just want some quick options for those weeks when schedules are beyond crazy, you can buy and stock your fridge with PCOS-friendly prepared foods so that you always have a variety of healthy, on-the-go meals ready at any time.
2. Subscribe to a food-delivery service. If you hate grocery shopping, and love the idea of good food magically appearing at your door, then consider a meal delivery service. With so many companies popping up around the country, choosing the right delivery service can be hard, but luckily for those in the NYC area the choice is easy: Provenance Meals delivers delicious, organic, gluten-free meals straight to your door. They are recommended by the New York Times and Dr. Frank Lipman, and you can use my special code cestaro20 to get $25 off your next order!
3. Keep it simple. You don’t have to be Bobby Flay to cook up a PCOS-friendly meal nor do you have to re-learn to cook once you adopt a PCOS-friendly diet, as my client ‘Robyn’ learned. Even though she loved to cook pre-PCOS, ‘Robyn’ immediately felt overwhelmed in the kitchen post-diagnosis.

To help her transition into her new diet, we built PCOS-friendly meals around some of her favorite foods and substituted a few ingredients to start. Instead of breadcrumbs, ‘Robyn’ switched to almond flour with Italian seasoning when she made chicken cutlets, a family staple at her house.

She also started cooking more food at one time and preparing leftovers for work the night before. ‘Robyn’ was amazed at how much time she saved and felt relieved that she was still able to eat the foods she loved.

On the days that ‘Robyn’ was rushed and didn’t have a lot of time, she prepared one of my favorite 10-minute, PCOS-friendly meals:

AVOCADO AND EGGS ON CAKE

Ingredients

2 organic eggs cooked in olive oil
Salt and pepper
Dash of chili powder
1/2 of an avocado
1 rice cake
1 teaspoon of olive oil
1 small lime

Instructions

1. Fry eggs in olive oil.
2. Add seasoning while eggs are cooking.
3. Scoop out ½ an avocado and add to a bowl with chili powder, salt, and pepper.
4. To the avocado mixture, add a dash of olive oil and the juice of 1 lime. Mix.
5. Spread the avocado mixture on your rice cake.
6. Top with eggs.

4. Don’t become your family’s short-order cook! I know it’s hard, but I never recommend cooking separate meals for yourself and your family. Feeling pressured or stressed out to meet the dinner-demands of your household only complicates your food choices and meal times, and that’s extra stress and pressure you don’t need, especially if you’ve just been diagnosed with PCOS and are learning to eat differently. Prepare one meal that works for the entire family (and then let someone else do the clean-up!)
5. Use a meal-planning app. I help my clients make shopping lists around the foods they enjoy and then assist them in planning their meals for the week. If you’re super-organized and like having all of your shopping lists, recipes, and PCOS-recommend foods in one place, try a meal-planning app. Like meal delivery services, meal-planning apps are numerous, so you might need to do a little research and try out a few until you find one that fits your personality.

What’s your favorite PCOS-meal prep tip?

____________________

Want more recipes that will help mitigate your PCOS symptoms? Grab your free copy of my One Day PCOS-Friendly Meal Plan now!