Daylight savings gets me every time. Somehow this week is already getting away from me and it’s only Tuesday. Between upcoming deadlines at work and CrossFit on a regular basis, life feels busy. 

I wrote a post back in December about our experience with the Paleo Diet. It changed the way I look at food and how we eat and we haven’t really looked back. We’ve both seen some awesome benefits from cutting our grains so it just makes sense to stick with it. 
We also attempt to abide by some semblance of a budget, so we both bring our lunches to work daily (or at least we try. We’re mostly successful with this, although I give into lunch with the girls sometimes). I know this sounds like a lot of work, especially after I just said that life feels busy, but it’s actually not. 
A mostly Paleo meal we made for my parents

I don’t have some crazy secret or a tip you’ve never heard before. We honestly rely completely on meal prep and leftovers. Every night we make dinner at home so we just make a little extra so we can both have lunch the next day. It’s one of the easiest things. I’m fairly certain my mom would laugh and say I told you so if she were to read this. I can’t count the number of times she told me things like this.

Sometimes our planning doesn’t work out perfectly, so I also keep canned tuna and spinach on hand all the time so I can throw together a large salad if need be. (That’s what we’ll be eating for lunch tomorrow, in fact.) Every morning, I make a smoothie that we drink before we leave the house. I prep large batches of bacon that we keep in the fridge and we cook up some eggs to go with it once we get to work. This has become a habit but I still don’t always feel like doing any of it. Of course, I’m always pretty glad I did once I get to work the next day. How can you go wrong with leftover lamb meatballs or steak?

Lamb Meatballs and Balasmic Fig Compote
Another great “trick” I rely heavily on is meal planning. I’m not going to tell you this is something that I love or even remotely look forward to, but I find it pretty essential to staying on track. Sometimes it gets altered during the week and sometimes we end up going out still, but it’s incredibly satisfying not to have to worry about thinking up dinner that night. It takes me 10 minutes on Sunday and then we’re ready for the week. 
Wasabi Salmon “Burgers”
I’m not going to pretend we’re perfect. A lot of this is an experiment, but most of what we end up eating is pretty delicious. Don’t worry, we still eat out more than we should and go over budget sometimes (that bacon is expensive!). We’re pretty human in that way. For the most part I think we do pretty well, though and I’m proud of us for that. 
What are you tips and “tricks” to saying on your budget or diet?