#30: Everything Healthy Meal Prep Cookbook Author Tina Chow

Clean Eating for Women with Carrie Forrest, MPH in Nutrition

Tina Chow the blogger behind Fit Chicks Cook is famous for healthy meal prepping. I am so excited to have her here today to talk about her new cookbook the Everything Healthy Meal Prep Cookbook. We're going to talk about her book and meal prepping and everything fun about staying healthy. In this episode of the Clean Eating for Women podcast, we talk about:

• Tina’s health journey and how she got into real foods
• How eating better changed Tina’s life
• Tina’s meal prepping routine

Some highlights of this episode on how to make veggies taste delicious:

1. Tina Chow is famous for meal prepping. It's no surprise she got the cookbook deal. She is pushing 200,000 followers on Instagram. Her account exploded because she was featured on a lot of bigger account. She has a full-time job and the meal prepping is something she does on the side, but she is passionate about it. [01:55]
2. She got into meal prepping because she led a busy life and cooking from scratch was so time-consuming. She also wanted to be healthier. She joined a gym and decided to get into shape. How fitness is 80% diet and 20% exercise. [03:16]
3. Tina began researching and came across some meal prepping pioneers on Instagram. She used Instagram to keep her accountable, but things exploded practically overnight. Eating better and meal prepping made her feel so much better. [05:36]
4. Meal prepping is now a normal thing that she does on every Sunday. She gets her groceries on a Saturday or Sunday morning and then spends a few hours on Sunday batch cooking everything for the week. [07:05]
5. Her first meal was a stir fry with sweet potatoes, asparagus, and chicken. She just started with her lunch for the week. She started small and then added more meals from there. She now preps for every meal. [08:40]
6. Her mason jar salads get a lot of attention. If she is known for anything it would probably be that. Taco salad in a jar is one of her specialties. The recipe is in the cookbook. [11:06]
7. The best advice Tina can give for people just starting out is to start prepping with just one meal. Start small and then add on from there. Be open minded to new recipes, but not all at once. [15:11]
8. Snacks are things that are easy like boiled eggs with carrots and tomatoes or nuts and fruit. Cottage cheese with a green apple is another choice. [22:15]
9. A publisher approached Tina over email. Simon & Schuster were actually in the market for a meal prep cookbook author. She had a large following and the publisher knew that eating healthy and meal prepping was a trend that they wanted to follow. She took time off to focus on writing the book. [24:27]

Links mentioned in this episode:

• The Everything Healthy Meal Prep Cookbook
• Fit Chicks Cook
• Tina on Instagram
• @fitchickscook on Twitter
• Fit Chicks Cook on Facebook

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