Meal Prep: Gluten Free Lunches

With all the 'New Year, New Me' resolutions going on at the moment, I feel a bit like I'm jumping on an already heavily-laden bandwagon with this one but please, allow me to explain myself.

'Meal prepping' is certainly not a normal thing in my kitchen...in fact, when I was introduced to the concept of a weekly 'meal prep' around about a year ago I must admit I thought the whole thing was just a tiny bit ridiculous. Sure, it looked super-duper pretty on Pinterest but, I thought to myself, who in their right mind has the time for this extreme kind of food-based organisation??!

However, since graduating from uni and starting full-time work, I've really been struggling to maintain a healthy diet. As anyone who's ever worked full-time in retail can understand, all I want to do after a particularly stressful day is eat lots and lots of cakes and cookies and brownies and biscuits and...well pretty much anything sweet and carby that I can get my hands on. This might be no bad thing every once in a while for the average frazzled worker, but for someone who's supposed to be sticking to a gluten and lactose-free diet, it's a serious no no. 

Needless to say, I've been a little bit poorly lately. My bad. 

So when the New Year came round and all those pretty meal prep pictures started popping up on Pinterest again, I gave it another thought. Perhaps this could be a way for me to maintain my recommended Low-FODMAP diet and not get too bummed out about it... 

So I took the plunge and, on the advice of Pinterest itself, invested in a few of these bad boys. I'm trying to go for the stress-free route where meal-prepping is concerned (I have mental images of myself drowning in tupperware, surrounded by mountains of poorly-cooked quinoa) and these containers tick a few of my boxes as they are not only dishwasher and microwave friendly but also easy to stack together and store away when not being used.

This week, my trial week, I've put together two different meal plans for my first four days at work. Here's what I came up with below:

I've tried separating each 'compartment' into different food groups- so I've got carbs on the left here (potatoes), veg, protein and fats on the top right (carrots and nuts) and then fruit and a little extra treat at the bottom.

Same again with this one- carbs on the left (pasta, gluten-free of course!), veg on the top right and then fruits and a treat again on the bottom right. 

Low FODMAP diets are really hard to stick to sometimes because you constantly feel like you aren't getting enough from each food group. Hopefully, by separating my lunches out like this, I can re-balance my intake of things like fats and carbs (which has probs been too high lately but, hey, it was Christmas!) and start upping my intake of the things I should be eating more of, like fruits and vegetables.  

I'm going to be trying out a few meal combinations in the coming weeks, so be sure to keep up with me on Instagram for all the latest meal ideas! And if you aren't already, make sure you're following me on my brand new twitter account...it's all change here :)

Do you have any tips for sticking to a healthy, balanced diet? I'd love to hear them in the comments below!

In the meantime,

All the love,

Sian x