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MEET THE KROCKS: We are a married couple who started on a life-changing whole food, plant-based weight loss journey in June 2018. To date, we have lost over 240 pounds combined and we aren’t done yet! Read Our Story
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When trying to make a complete lifestyle change, organization is key! Your tendency will be to gravitate backwards to your old patterns and habits, so staying organized and prepared for any situation will help you stay on track. Here are some of our best tips for organizing your meal prep calendar and weekly grocery list:
1. Keep a binder of all your favorite recipes, whether they are photocopied from cookbooks, printed from online sources or handwritten versions of your own creations. When you aren’t sure what you want to make for the week ahead, you can look through this book to get ideas. We like to photocopy our favorite recipes from the cookbooks we own. This way we can keep them in a separate binder with all of our other recipes, write notes on them and not worry about getting the actual books messy while cooking.
2. Put a magnetic calendar on your refrigerator to organize your meals for each week. You can plan these out a few weeks in advance or week-by-week. We only write our lunches on our calendar, since usually eat the same thing for breakfast most days (recipe video coming soon!) and we eat a giant salad for dinner almost every single night.
3. Keep a “master grocery list” of all the things you buy on a regular basis. This way, you can run through that list before you go shopping and see what you need to buy. This document is something you will need to keep updating as your staple items may change over time or with the seasons. When you are ready to narrow down your list for the week, first go through the “staples” you like to keep on hand and cross out any items you don’t need. After you decide what you’ll eat for the coming week, add any special items you need for that week’s recipe(s).
You can download our master grocery list and customize it to fit your needs!
Choose one to download:
PDF | Word Document (so you can customize)
4. I prefer to have a “clean” shopping list when I go to the store. Instead of printing the list out and crossing off items, I normally bring my laptop into the kitchen and open the “Master” list and save a copy of it. I name the new file using the date of the upcoming shopping trip. Then, I go through and delete items I know I don’t need for that week and type in any extra items. Just make sure you save a copy of the “Master” list somewhere and don’t accidentally save over it with your edited list. After you are done, print out your nice clean list for that week and head to the store!
5. BATCH COOK & FREEZE! If you find a recipe you love, make sure you DOUBLE or even triple the recipe next time you make it. This way you can freeze the extra portions and spend less time in the kitchen. We find that most soups freeze well. We store extras in glass Pyrex bowls in the freezer and then move them to the refrigerator for a few days when we are ready to thaw. Just be careful not to overfill your glass bowls, leave plenty of room at the top for expansion and handle with care! If you drop a glass bowl that is frozen, it will shatter much easier (not that we’ve had experience with that 😉).
6. Use weekends to test out new recipes or make “one off” meals that don’t work as well for batch cooking (like veggie pizza or tacos). There might be a recipe you want to try out but aren’t ready to batch cook, and weekends are the perfect time to experiment! We try to do all of our cooking/prepping during the weekend, so we don’t have to cook after a long day at work.
7. Pick one day to plan out your calendar and another day to go through your pantry and put together your list. This way, you aren’t spending a huge chunk of time on this. Eventually you will get into a routine. We like to plan the calendar on Wednesday, make the grocery list on Thursday and head to the grocery store on Saturday morning.
8. Organize your grocery list to make your shopping trips more efficient! Right now our grocery list is organized by sections of the store (i.e. pantry, freezer, fresh fruits/veggies, refrigerator), but I have been playing around with re-organizing it by store. I usually go to Aldi, Trader Joe’s & Whole Foods each week and typically buy certain things at each store, so I think organizing by store might be beneficial. Back in the day when I was shopping ONLY at Aldi, I actually had my list organized by the layout of the store… yes, I have OCD! 🙂
Do you have any tips to share? Comment below and let us know what works for you!
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I would love some videos on breakfast
We actually have a breakfast recipe video filmed and it should be up this Sunday!
Hey guys! Love the content on your channel, and especially enjoy all the music selections! I’ve been following the McDougall plan for the past few years on and off but trying to really focus on cutting down on some of the starch he recommends in order to shed some of my stubborn weight. Do you guys still stick to the Furhman 6 wk ETL style for the most part (limiting high starchy stuff to equivalent of 1 c day)? Or are you more lenient? I have approx 18-20lbs to lose, but wonder if restricting my McD ad libitum “starches” will lead to binging…thoughts?
Hi Patty! Thank you for the kind words! Yes, we do still limit our starches to around 1 cup per day for the most part. We aren’t SUPER strict about it, but we fill up on non-starchy vegetables and beans for the most part. We do eat large portion sizes and over time we just naturally figured out how much each of us can eat per day and still lose weight. I have noticed that I don’t really ever get super “hungry” like I used to, which would lead to overeating. I plan to read The Starch Solution soon, so hopefully that will give me a better understanding of how McDougall’s plan compares to Fuhrman. I think it would be interesting for us to try out McDougall’s plan and see if we continue losing weight like we have for the past 11 months. – Jessica
I have a similar list template in google sheets that I can use on my phone. I even have check boxes that I can mark off as I go. Loved this video!
Awesome! My brother showed me Google Keep the other day! The checklists in there are great – but I do love having a piece of paper with me. Lol 🙂
I know what you mean. Sometimes I print off the spreadsheet to take with me too 🙂
Thank you so much for this video! It’s really helped me as I am only 1 month in on this program but feeling great! I went and got a fridge calendar and the grocery list template is super helpful.
I’ve been binge watching your other videos and love your content. You guys are awesome! Thanks so much for all your effort and time.
Love the Smokey hummus recipe too!
Thanks Nicki! That is great to hear 🙂 We love our calendar! Glad you loved the hummus!
Thank you for sharing with us how you step by step have lost weight with your husband. You have inspired me!!! I have been dealing with over weight all my life, recently I gave up and became morbidly obese. But because of you I’m learning how to do it. And the see the videos you have brought hope again into my life. Your videos are funny and educational. Thank you so much for sharing your life with us. God bless you whole family.
As a fellow OCD, I highly appreciate your attention to detail Jessica!! The graphs and charts you utilize on your channel is a pacifier to the inner OCD monster. Brian makes me laugh with his shrugging of shoulders, announcer voice and twinkle in his eyes. Jessica…I am a massive Rob Thomas fan as well! My crazy dance song…”Real World ’09” and “Wind It Up”, when I feel depressed or need encouragement “My, My, My”, “Little Wonders” and “The Great Unknown”. You guy’s are “Little Wonders” !! 🙂
LOVE all of those songs! I’ve been really digging “Can’t Help Me Now” and “Tomorrow” from his new album 🙂 He is in St. Louis TWO weeks from today! So excited!
I’m a teen who is on the journey to becoming whole food and plant-based! I’m also going to a culinary school which makes cooking for me more fun. It’s hard to start on a grocery list when my mother is the one who buys all the food, but I know this would really help her out! Thank you for providing this info and help as a teen who is working on losing weight herself I really appreciate it!
Awesome! Hope it helps 🙂 Culinary school sounds fun!
I can’t thank you enough for the information you’re sharing about healthy Nutritarian eating! It has been so helpful to see how you organize and plan on this diet. At some point would you be willing to share more about how/where you found (and developed) the recipes in your recipe binder in the early stages of your journey? That’s the stage where my family is – we are trying to build up a collection of go-to meals that will help make this way of eating sustainable for us in the long haul.
Good idea! This would probably make a good video! I’ll add it to the list 🙂
Hello, I enjoy your videos and recently reviewed this one. First of all thank you. I find myself saying “well if Brian and Jessica can eat potatoes for two weeks, I can ( change my eating habits somehow)”. I’ve been using the Plan to Eat website and apps for about a year. It also has shopping lists and your video has given me some new ideas about how to tweak the lists so that I constantly have a list of staples already on my list. You are always asking for suggestions, I don’t make any kind of referral for this, but the app has been a game changer for me. As have you both. Thanks
Thanks Stacey! I will check it out! I am always looking for new ways to stay organized 🙂
I noticed that you guys go to Trader Joe’s a lot. Could you post a shopping list with all your favorite Trader Joe’s items? Its about an hours drive to the closest one so I don’t want to forget anything. Thank you!!
We did make a video of some of our favorites a while back – but we need to make an updated one, as some of the items they have and what we get there has changed quite a bit. Here’s the original one: https://krocksinthekitchen.com/2019/05/05/top-10-vegan-trader-joes-products-we-love/