Zack Arnold

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How to Systematize Meal Planning

About Episode

Post-production schedules are brutal and relentless, but one of the perks that many people have in our industry is having the option to order lunches and dinners every day at the office.

But is this a perk? Or is it because producers want us chained to our workstations?

And has anyone ever thought about what a steady diet of Chinese takeout, pizza delivery, and Hot Pockets does to your creative energy and focus?

In this episode I have a conversation with Allison Schaaf, the creator of Prep Dish, an online service that systematizes the process of meal planning, grocery shopping, meal prep, and cooking into an easy-to-follow package. If you love workflows and systems, you’ll love this service and this episode. We also jump into the rabbit hole of nutrition and food science as well. Check out our topics of conversation below.

Transcript

Zack Arnold: I am here today with Allison Schaaf, and she is the creator of an amazing online service called Prep Dish. And as people that have, as my audience knows, that have listened to the show for a long time, the quest that I have been on is how do I systematize making meals and eating healthy? Because with the amount of time we have in our industry to actually be healthy is nearly impossible, and it’s a challenge I still have not solved. But I am a lot closer to getting there thanks to this prep dish service. So thank you so much, Allison, for being on the show with me today.

Allison Schaaf: Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to it.

Zack Arnold: So one of the reasons that I wanted you on here is not just that you have created this great service that we’ll talk about. So people that are wondering what is prep dish, I want to talk about where the idea came from, what the service provides. But the other reason that I really wanted to have you specifically on the show because there are a lot of other meal planning services and meal delivery services and food delivery services. Not only do you have a bachelor’s degree in culinary nutrition and a master’s in nutrition communications, but you also are a registered dietitian? So most people have one or the other, where they have a really solid background in nutrition, or they’re a chef, but they don’t have that strong combination of both. And that to me is really cool because I’m a food science geek. I have no certifications, no formal education, but I love to learn about food science, and I’m also teaching myself how to cook and how to systematize it. So you just magically appeared in my life at the perfect time.

Allison Schaaf: Great, thank you.

Zack Arnold: So what I want to start by talking about is just give me kind of the the background story for Prep dish, where it came from, and what’s the origin story before we go into what it actually does.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, well, when I first started my own company, I started a personal chef company where I would go into people’s homes and prep their meals for the week. So I would say go in on Monday morning, prep some meals, put it in containers, and leave instructions on how they should finish it out throughout the week, that’s sort of where I got my start, and I had a lot of fun with that. I actually still have that company. I just have another chef that does the cooking now. The problem was, is you know, after about five clients, I sort of maxed out because you can only you know be so many places at once, and I started realizing there had to be a better way to reach more people. So that’s sort of where I came up with the idea of prep dish, and it was also the fact that when I got home after these long days of cooking, I didn’t have any food in my fridge, and the last thing I wanted to do was start from scratch and make this whole meal. And at the same time, I felt pretty strongly that I should be eating healthy and that I should be eating just as good as my clients were, so I started doing the same system for myself that I was doing for my clients, which was spending a few hours kind of prepping all my meals ahead of time. And then that’s when it sort of hit me like, wow! Like more people would do this; it would make meals easier if they would be doing this, spending two to three hours prepping everything ahead of time, so that’s where the idea came from, really.

Zack Arnold: So that being the case, why don’t you kind of give my audience an overview of what Prep Dish actually is and how it works?

Allison Schaaf: Sure. So it’s an online meal planning subscription. When subscribers sign up, they’ll get an email, and on that email, it has links to PDFs, which are meal plans. Those meal plans are split up into three sections. The first is an organized grocery list, so it’s how to get in and out of that grocery store as fast as possible. The second is prep day, so this is where we’re different than other meal planning sites. It’s specific instructions for, say, Sunday afternoon on how you do your prep work ahead of time, and then that third piece is what I call dish day, and that’s just sort of the day of instructions, and they’re usually really fast and simple because the food’s already been prepped. So it’s just how do you stick everything in the oven or you know heat it in a sauté pan. But those instructions are the night of ones are really quick and simple, just how to finish things off.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that’s what I really, really love about the service and the idea of it is the systematization of it, and that that’s basically what I’ve tried to do with the majority of my life, including my workflow on the television show that I work on, is that I try to make as much of it as brain dead easy as possible, where you just kind of batch things all at once. Like for example, you know, one thing that I talk about when I speak about productivity is the idea that you have to batch process your email. That’s kind of you go on in productivity sites. That’s you know productivity one on one is you don’t check your email every five minutes. You batch it, and the analogy that I use with people is that you kind of treat your email like your laundry. You’re not gonna you’re not gonna go and you know wash one pair of underwear in your washer and your dryer at a time. It’s not efficient. It’s not time efficient. It’s not energy efficient. So what I like about the service is you’re kind of doing the same thing with cooking, where rather than saying, “Oh, God, it’s 5o’clock What’s for dinner? What am I gonna make? and then. You kind of start to scramble around, and you’re exhausted. You’re doing the work for you, and I’ve I’ve heard you talk before about why 5o’clock is the worst time to start meal planning. So let’s let’s talk a little bit about that because that that’s me. That’s what I do. I mean, I’ve started to change that, but that was me for the first 36 years of my life. 6o’clock opening the refrigerator, head against the wall, saying, “Oh my God, I have to make something to eat now.

Allison Schaaf: Yes, do not wait until five or 6o’clock to decide what you’re going to have for dinner. That’s when bad decisions are made. So, yeah, definitely having a plan ahead of time, whether it’s prep dish or something else, that’s the best way to avoid bad decisions. But when you’re when you’ve already gone through a decision, if you think of your course of your day, you’re making tons of little decisions, and there’s a point where you kind of reach this decision fatigue, and you just can’t really make good decisions anymore. So that’s where prep digitized comes in, and it’s like you don’t have to think about it because it’s already done. And after a busy day, that’s sort of you know awesome because you don’t want to have to make another decision at that point. Yeah, definitely having a plan ahead of time is the key.

Zack Arnold: Exactly, and what what I had started doing probably a month or two before I found out about your service is I did start bulk cooking on Sundays or on Saturday. I would go out and I would do all my food shopping, and then on Sunday I would usually spend two to three hours cooking with my kids. It’s it’s now kind of become a fun family activity for the weekend, where my kids are like, “Oh, when we get to start cooking? But my knowledge of meal planning and recipes is like next to nothing. I mean, it’s almost like, “Oh, I’m going to make more quinoa and beans and vegetables and chicken, like that’s it’s kind of the basic stuff that I can do. So what I want to do is start to break down the science and the art behind how you actually design these, because it’s not just I’m going to email you a meal plan and you go food shop and you do this or that. Like you really have these dialed in systematically, where you have you’re making sure that you’re not wasting food, and you’re doing in a specific order. So let’s break down the science of how you’ve actually designed these, because that to me I think is really important. And because my audience is so driven by workflows and systems, they’re really going to be able to geek out on this because everybody wants to be able to apply that knowledge to food and diet.

Allison Schaaf: That’s yeah, that’s a great question, and it’s funny, there is a lot that goes into these, and but no one’s ever asked me that. So thanks for asking. So one thing is, in terms of the order that they’re you eat them throughout the week, there is definitely a trick there. And one is I always have seafood, so I usually have one seafood dish a week, and that dish is always your Monday dish because you don’t want salmon sitting in the fridge until Friday, or something that’s maybe been already cooked through or prepared with like a lasagna or a soup or a stew. Those are usually the like Friday dishes because they’ll last longer in the fridge. So that dish day is very specific in the order that it’s in, just to make sure that the food is as fresh as possible. Another, like you mentioned, making sure all the ingredients are used. So I don’t like to leave a leftover half onion in your fridge because I know, like, what are you going to do with that onion? You’re going to you’re going to throw it away

Zack Arnold: Two weeks later, like I always do.

Allison Schaaf: Exactly, like you won’t throw away right away, but once it’s like old and moldy, you’ll have to throw it away. So I try and really plan it out. If I know I’m going to have a dish that uses half of something, or a lot of times I’ll do something like if I’m you’re going to make some pesto, then on Monday I’ll have like a pesto crusted salmon, and then on Wednesday have a spaghetti squash that’s like tossed with pesto. So that way you kind of get a double use out of your sauces, and I actually even encourage people to go ahead and go a step further and make even more of the sauce, and you can freeze some to use later. But if you’re going to make it once, you might as well make it for two meals. So that’s another thing that I do. I really look at it too in terms of balance. I try and make sure each week there’s a seafood dish, a chicken dish, a red meat dish, which is like you know beef or bison or lamb, and then a lot of them I’ll try and get a veggie dish on the paleo plans. It’s a little tougher, but on the gluten free plans, there’s a vegetarian dish each week. So I kind of have it balanced that way. And then so when I make these, I don’t look at one week at a time. I look at 52 weeks at a time when I’m planning these out and make sure that you know I have a mix of flavors. You know, if I have one Asian dish and the other one sort of Mexican or Mediterranean, and kind of mix up the flavors as well. So I really try and make sure that nothing’s repeated. There’s a lot of variety, both for to keep your taste buds happy, but also the more variety you have, the more nutrition you’re going to get. You know, if you have a lot of colors on your plate, you can be pretty sure that you’re getting a good variety of nutrients.

Zack Arnold: So, if I wanted to apply this to just let let’s say that I were just going to run out real quick this weekend and say, “Oh, I love this prep dish idea, but I’m listening to this on a Sunday morning and I’m going to the grocery store now. What are just some. Really basic systematic ways that you can start thinking about your food shopping and your cooking to be able to do kind of a smaller, simpler version of this is kind of a starter to say, “Wow, I love doing things this way. Now I want to do it the real way because that’s the way that it worked for me. Is I said I it was just this random idea I had is, well, what if I just tried bulk cooking to see what would happen, and then I said, “Ooh, I love the system, but I don’t have the knowledge to do it. But what’s kind of a few pieces of information somebody could put together and say, “I want to try this, and if this concept works, now I want to jump into prep dish and do it with the pros.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah. So the first step would be don’t go to the grocery store until you have a plan. Don’t try and figure out your plan at the grocery store. That’s sort of like the same rule as don’t wait until 5o’clock to decide the meal because at that point you’re going to start getting kind of bombarded with all of these decisions to make. Whereas if you’re just sitting at home with your list, you can be a little more thoughtful about it. So definitely have a plan going into the grocery store. So with prep dish, I only plan out four days of meals. I find that even when I was a personal chef and doing 100% of the cooking for people, sometimes in the beginning they’d say, “Oh, I want you to do you know seven days of meals. Well, life gets in the way. No one eats at home seven days a week, and if you do, you might have some go-to recipes that you’re doing. So start with planning out like four or five days for your week, just to not like overwhelm yourself, and also you don’t want to leftovers that you’re not going to be able to eat through. And then just kind of, you know, if you’re starting for the first time, use recipes that you’re familiar with that are easy, so that way you’re again not overwhelming yourself.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I think that the top one that really resonates with me, in both a bad way and a good way, because I’ve been on both sides, is the idea of planning your list before you go to the grocery store. Because I used to be that person that would say, “All right, well, I need milk, eggs, and bread, and I’ll figure out the rest when I go there. And then you go to the grocery store and you get your milk and your eggs and your bread, and then 40-seven other things that you don’t need.

Allison Schaaf: Yep, you’re

Zack Arnold: Like, what did I do? And I came home, and I have all this food, and I have no idea when I’m going to eat it, which one I’m going to eat. Like, it was there was just no system, and I would just eat crap all the time. So, for people that are new to the show, thinking, oh yeah, well he eats all these healthy foods and eats clean foods. I used to eat horrible, horrible foods all the time, and I had a terrible diet until I realized how it was affecting me as a person, affecting me creatively. The fact that I never had any energy, I was had brain fog all the time, and a lot of that stems from every Sunday when I would go food shopping with no plan. So what what I will do now? What I’ve gotten down to a science, I haven’t figured out the cooking part, and that’s where where you’re coming in to help me. But what I have systematized and turned into a science is the process of preparing a list and knowing what it is that I’m going to get. And not only does it make grocery shopping way easier, but it also makes it cheaper because I’ve developed the discipline to just say I need this, this, this, this, and this, and I always to say, all right, well, you know, if there’s one or two things that I want to randomly try out that aren’t on my list, that’s fine, but I’m not spending $100 on random things I don’t need. But what I’ve done is I use a tool called Trello. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Trello or not. Yep. I live my life on Trello on a work basis and now on a personal basis, and what I’ve actually done is I’ve created this giant checklist of every single thing that we have in our house on a regular basis. So whether it’s foods in the refrigerator, foods in the pantry, supplements, like any, and I have it broken down my category on a template card, and I have a list of everything that if we had every single piece of food, drink, flour, whatever it is, is on this list, and I will take five minutes every Sunday or Saturday, and I’ll just go through and I’ll check off things that I do have. So it’s kind of the opposite of the way that most people do a grocery list, where they say, “Well, I’m just going to write down things that I think I need, and then you go to the grocery store, and then you come back and you’re like, oh man, I needed this and I didn’t put it on my list, even if it’s something that you regularly have because you’re always you have to consciously be making those decisions. Whereas I just took half a day, wrote that entire list out, and now I don’t have to think about it. I can literally be a zombie and say, yep, I’ve got this. Yep, I’ve got this. Nope, I don’t have this. And then now I have my list of things that aren’t checked. Those are the things I need to get, and when I buy them, I check them off. So that’s how I never miss anything that I need. And it literally takes five minutes to put my list together, and there’s probably 100 items on it. And I’m usually only buying 20 of them.

Allison Schaaf: No, my husband is if he’s listening to this, he’s gonna love that idea because he’s always talking about how we need a household inventory, so he’s gonna. I’m gonna have to talk to him about. And that’s what

Zack Arnold: I did. I just made a household inventory on Trello, broken and also broken down by where I buy it, because I do a lot of my shopping at Thrive Market. I do a fair amount of it at other online places, like I buy some foods in bulk off Amazon. So it’s not just broken down by produce or. Or you know vegetables, or you know canned foods. It’s broken down by where I buy it, so I can say, “All right, I’m going to go and thrive for 15 minutes. Here’s everything on my list. I’m going to go on Amazon for 15 minutes. Here’s everything on my list. Now I have to go to Trader Joe’s or I have to go to Target, wherever it is, and I know exactly what I’m getting where. So now I put no thought into grocery shopping, except when I decide what is it that I want to make for the week. And what I would do is I have a whole list in Evernote. Like if I just see a random recipe on a website, I’ll clip it to Evernote. I go through my recipes and say, “Oh, what do I want to make for the week? And I would make two or three different things, and it would be a disaster because there is no system. And I’m like, oh, I’ll just make these three recipes, and then I’m sure that this is something you hear all the time, where you know one of the recipes will be a stuffed baked potato, but because I have no system, I’ve been cooking for two hours. I’m like, oh, I’m gonna make my baked potato now. Oh wait, it takes an hour and 20 minutes. Well, that was dumb.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, no, actually, and that brings up another really good tip is if you’re going to be doing meal prep, make sure the things that take the most time get started first. So back in my days of personal chef, I was always trying to figure out how to get in and out of the house as fast as possible, and that’s what you do. You have to look, okay, what am I going to prepare today? What needs to be started first? What needs to go second? And what things are just chopped and it doesn’t matter, but anything like rice or baked potatoes or spaghetti squash, those things need to start right away. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: And the reason that I brought up the idea of trying to systematize it and find a simpler version on your own is because I want people to realize that it’s not easy, and that’s why I wanted to have you on the show because I’ve gone this route, and I have wasted a lot of food because I will be really ambitious on a Saturday morning. I’ll pick four recipes that I would love to do, and then I make them all. Usually, it takes me six hours instead of three because I do stupid things like don’t know when to put the baked potato in because there’s no system, and then half of them won’t even be any good because I’m trying to cook too many things at once. So I have one thing going on this pot, one going in the oven, something else over here that I’m mixing. I’m like, oh crap! I should be doing this. Oh wait, no, I’m. Oh man, I just burned that. And I’m sure that you you see this or you know hear stories like this a lot. And frankly, it would be a really entertaining reality show to just watch me try and do my own version of prep dish. I know that there are other people that have gone through that, and that’s why I’m really trying to emphasize that you’ve solved so many of those issues. And I do eventually want to transition into more of your your background as a dietitian and a nutritionist. But before we do that, the last thing that I wanted to look at is kind of going back to the systematization again.

Allison Schaaf: Okay,

Zack Arnold: If somebody is listening to this and they’re saying, “I know how to make toast and hard-boiled eggs, that’s it. I know for a fact that they would look at this and say, “Well, this is a little bit intimidating. So, what can you do for for somebody that has a very very small tool set, both figuratively and literally? What are some of the steps they can take if they say, “I love this idea, but I just feel really intimidated. I don’t think I can make pesto chicken or what is spaghetti squash? I’ve never even heard of that. Like, you know, because when you look at the meal plans, you’re like, “Whoa, this stuff looks really tasty, and I wouldn’t even know where to start. So, what are some tips for people that love the idea of the system, but frankly, just don’t feel like they have the chops (pun intended) to be able to do something like this.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah. So there’s a few different tips and ways to go here. One is you don’t have to do it on your own. So if you have a spouse, I know a lot of couples that do it together. I think you said your kids like to join in and help. So kind of make it more fun that way, and if you really don’t have any knife skills, doing just a basic knife course is like the key because it requires chopping. Like if you’re going to be eating, you can get some veggies pre-chopped, so like look for that, and if you can find pre-chopped veggies, do that. But you know if you’re going to eat whole unprocessed foods, it’s going to require some chopping, so look into a basic knife skills course, and that will get you pretty far. Most grocery stores, like I know here, I’m in Texas, and so like Whole Foods and Central Market, a lot of the grocery stores offer just basic knife skills courses. So I would look into doing something like that. Another option, I know some people will hire it out, so they’ll get on, you know, Task Rabbit, sort of like a Task Rabbit or Handy, one of those websites, or you know, even if they have like a babysitter or nanny or an assistant or something like that, and they’ll have them come in and pay someone else to spend, you know, that two to three hours doing the prep work. So depending on sort of what’s an option for you, I know some some of the subscribers do that. They sort of delegate it to someone else if they really have no desire to get in the kitchen, and then also, you know, if you are just starting out, we do have a Facebook group page. So if you’re on Prep Dish, you can always get on there and talk to us and say, hey, like, how can I make this week more simple? And maybe it’s, you know, you skip the pesto and just do like. A basic roasted salmon with salt and pepper that week, and we’re happy to give suggestions on sort of how to pare it down a little bit. And the best part about that group page is other subscribers give; they’re always on there and talking to each other, and a lot of times they’ll have better ideas than I do. So,

Zack Arnold: Well, that’s actually that’s very encouraging for me because I’ve looked at a meal plan before and said, you know what, I don’t have the money in my budget this week, or I don’t have the time to do all of these. But there’s one of these that looks great. But then I almost feel like, well, but you’ve put the system together. I’m almost afraid that I will end up wasting a bunch of stuff because I know that you’ve put so much time and thought into making sure that this works as a system, but does does that mean that I can actually go through and say, well, you know what, I would just like to do this and this and kind of cherry pick. Will it still work that way?

Allison Schaaf: It will still work, and we have a lot of folks that do that. And the best one, if you’re going to skip anything, I always say the desserts the easiest one to skip because that usually doesn’t use you know cross use products. But yeah, a lot of folks I know you skip the dessert. I kind of have a breakfast, so everything on the meal plan is numbered throughout. So it’s really easy to just go through and skip all the like number eights, which is the dessert, or the number sixes, which is the breakfast option. So you can go through and skip things, and there’s a lot of ways you can customize it and make it your own. And I know after kind of doing it for two or three weeks, people sort of then start to oh, I can you know do this that or the other to really make it make it their own.

Zack Arnold: Well, that’s all very encouraging for me personally because I’m I mean part of the reason that I have you on the show is just completely self serving has nothing to do with my audience. That just I saw this I’m like oh I want to do this, but I really need help getting into it because I’m very intimidated. So I was just, well, I’m going to have a podcast with the creator of it. I’m just going to learn myself. We

Allison Schaaf: Have some really exciting things coming up for January. We’ve started to offer because the recipes are all built into this prep day, but we are starting to separate out the recipes because we have a lot of subscribers ask for that. We also have some fun features coming up with maybe some speedier meal plan options, and yeah, we have a lot that’s going to be coming out to make these even easier. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: And that that’s one thing that I really appreciate about you is you’re very connected with your audience and your customers, and it’s not the kind of thing where somebody signs up and they get an automated message and then that’s it, and they never hear from you again. Like you’re reaching out, you’re saying, “Listen, how can I serve you better? What, what, what are the things you’re struggling with right now? How can I improve the service? And that, to me, is so important because in this world of just these giant mega corporations, I seek out small operations with people that are very passionate about what they do, and it may mean that there’s a premium on the cost because you, if you had a million customers, you would most likely be able to drop your price or be able to do more, whatever it is. But because you’re doing it the way that you are with your own small business, there’s a lot more love and care that goes into it, and a lot more personalized service, so I try to surround myself with that as much as possible. So if somebody’s feeling like, “Oh, this sounds great, but I kind of need my hand held a little bit, your hand can be held. You know, between the Facebook group and between you really trying to figure out what people want. That’s exactly the service you provide, and I love that that you do that.

Allison Schaaf: Oh well, thank you.

Zack Arnold: I’m very excited to hear that you’re talking about doing more kind of broken down plans because that’s a real one of the big things on my list too. As far as meal prep is concerned, before we jump into the the segue into diet and nutrition, go down that giant rabbit hole. The one other thing I want to talk about, which is something I’ve just been obsessed with but never have really moved forward with our freezer crockpot meals.

Allison Schaaf: Yes,

Zack Arnold: I love, and I know that’s something that you offer as well. It’s kind of one of your your bonus items. So let’s talk a little bit about the genius of the crock pot and how you can batch make a ton of food, put it in freezer bags, and have food for months, and what the process is to make that happen.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah. So what I have is it’s basically a crock pot prep day. So it’s the same concept behind the prep day. Only instead of prepping meals that are just going in the fridge for that week, you’re prepping meals that are going into the freezer that you can then pull out at any time over the next month or two to use in the crock pot. The way I look at those meals are, you know, people that are still doing prep day, but then they have a day where they, you know, need something to fill in, or maybe they have a week that they didn’t get to their prepping, and so they have those in the freezer ready to go. I’m just a big fan in general of always having food in the freezer, so that way, if you do have a day at 5o’clock where you don’t know what you’re having for dinner, you can just dig into your own freezer versus you know calling takeout or going to the store and all of a sudden being bombarded with all these choices that maybe aren’t ones that you’re wanting to make. So, but yeah, the prep ahead crockpot meal plan-it’s the same thing. You spend two to three hours do all the. Divvy it up in freezer containers and label it. Stick it in there, and then they’re ready to go. And it’s funny that you ask about that because just yesterday we were testing around two of crockpot meals. Those are really popular, as you can imagine, especially among all the busy moms out there. And I know with school schedules and nighttime sports and all that the crockpot meals are definitely in high demand. Well, and the

Zack Arnold: The other reason that it’s so interesting to me personally is that my wife does not like cooking. She doesn’t have a background in cooking, but there are plenty of times where I will say I’m going to prep meals for the whole week and I’ll spend four hours cooking, and then my kids just don’t like the food, and I’m like, oh man, like I just spent all this money and all this time, and then they end up eating macaroni and cheese because they didn’t like you know whatever food it was that I made for them. But the the idea behind the crockpot meal is if you can turn a dial, you can open up a Ziplock bag and you can plug something in, you can make a meal. Like that’s it. That’s all you have to know how to do. So the reason I’m drawn to those is because I can do the prep work, throw it into a Ziplock bag, and she can say, “All right, well, there’s nothing I eat tonight, so I’m going to open up this bag, throw it in the crock pot, and then you have a meal that will last for two or three days. It’s really, really good. Yeah. No. And and you don’t have to like you mentioned. It’s not you know if you miss it by five or 10 minutes, there’s kind of like a window of a few hours of when the food’s ready, or even more. So, you don’t have to have timing exactly right on the crockpot meal. Yeah, and that the other reason that the crockpot meal, I think, is something that people in this specific industry should really pay attention to, is because that’s an option that you can have ready to go at your office, and that’s something that I’ve done. And this is a trick that I got from a woman named Jessa Greenfield, who is the wife of Ben Greenfield, who I’ve had on the show twice, and is one of the top personal trainers in the country. But she talked about how you can bring a mini crock pot to your office and make your meals there, because in our industry, on average, most people work at least 60 to 70 hours a week. Like my general week for me is about 60 hours, and in order to keep you at your workstation, they bring you food, and that that’s kind of the trade-off as well. We don’t want you taking lunch breaks, therefore we’re going to get you takeout twice a day, and as you can imagine, as a dietitian, that will destroy a human being, literally. Like it, I’ve seen that it has literally killed people and heard stories about people that have keeled over heart attacks. Like it’s not just, oh yeah, let me take out again and blah blah blah. It’s like no, it’s it’s really really really horrible for you as a human being, and this is a way to eradicate that. Last year, I actually went a step further, and I brought a George Foreman grill to my office and put it in. What it was nice until everybody started complaining about the smell. So that experiment had to stop because they’re like, “Why are you cooking chicken breasts in our kitchen, which is next to our writer’s room? And I was like, “All right, I’ll stop. But but the crock pot is different because, like, ooh, something smells really good. Yeah, it’s always a good

Allison Schaaf: Smell that comes from the crock.

Zack Arnold: Exactly. So rather than being charred meat, it’s actually something that. But it’s something you can do. You can just have a ziplock bag. You can bring to work, throw it in the freezer. Say, all right, well, I’m going to throw this in in the morning or whenever it is, and then you have meals that are ready to go. But it’s super, super easy, and you don’t have to have the Thai and the Chinese and all the other junk. Because I, I just got to the point where I just tell them, you know, you can send me the menu. Nine times out of 10, I’m not even going to order. I’ll either just not eat, or I’ll just have brought my own food. And this is one technique that people can use to be able to do that.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, I love the idea of a crock pot at work. I hadn’t even-I don’t think I’d heard of that, but it makes sense. It makes so much sense. It’s very

Zack Arnold: Doable, and the the mini one that I have-I mean, literally-is maybe I don’t know six, eight inches in diameter. It’s not one of those giant ones. Yeah, this little one where you can have a single serving, throw it in there for an hour beforehand, and you have lunch.

Allison Schaaf: Nice. Yeah, I like that.

Zack Arnold: So now that we’ve gone through talking about the systematization of cooking, now it’s time to take the red pill and jump into the rabbit hole of nutrition. Okay. As you know, this is a very hot button topic for a lot of people, and I know that you mentioned for several of your meal plans that you were talking about chicken or fish or red meat, and you even used a word. I believe it was paleo, and these are hot button topics right now. Where if you’re in the the food science world, there are very vehement opinions either way about the way that people should be eating. And I’ve decided that I’m going to take the stance of I don’t care what your diet is as long as you are putting healthy foods into your body, but even the word “healthy, what does that mean? What does the word “natural” mean? What does this word “organic” mean? Like it is so confusing, and the amount of just self-education that you need to be able to feed yourself is so overwhelming that most people just give up. So because you’ve chosen. A specific niche when it comes to food, you’ve basically said I’m going to provide you with foods that are paleo friendly and gluten free. The first place that I want to start is gluten because I literally in my edit suite on a TV show that has nothing to do with food, I have heard heated arguments about gluten.

Allison Schaaf: Okay, which

Zack Arnold: I mean it’s like why would there be heated? And it had nothing to do with me. People are saying, “Oh, well, it’s because Zack’s the fitness and post guy. I had nothing to do with it. I was standing in the back of a room, and two people started fighting about gluten. Like, what is going on here? So let’s talk about gluten, and can you definitively clarify why eating gluten is not just a fad? It’s not just the latest catchphrase. What scientifically is actually going on in our bodies when we eat gluten, and why is it something that everybody needs to pay attention to, and not just somebody that actually has been diagnosed with celiac disease?

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, and I think so. I will do my best to answer that question. I don’t know that it’ll be definitively. I think there’s still a lot of questions out there. I don’t think all of there’s all the answers that we need just yet. I can say for me personally, I took it out of my diet for like a month, and ever since then, if I eat it, it’s very clear to me that gluten does not agree with me. It makes me very sick. I can’t eat it. I can’t tolerate it. And in general, with diet, I think that’s one of the most important things: is figuring out what works for you and how your body reacts to foods, how foods make you feel. I think a lot of times, and you were talking about this earlier, like people are just eating and not even putting two and two together. That hey, what I’m putting into my body is affecting my life and who I am and how I feel and my energy and there’s just so many things that are you know your whole life is impacted by what you eat. So in terms of gluten, though, it definitely is a problem for a lot of people, and it goes way beyond celiac disease. So it causes inflammation in the body, and this can manifest in a lot of different ways. So it can be GI symptoms like a stomach ache or you know diarrhea, that sort of thing. But then also, you know, it can present in a lot of different ways too. Like the main thing I’ve noticed is my immune system is much stronger. So you know, it can impact the immune system. It can cause acne. It can cause joint pains. I mean, there’s just a lot of different ways that it can cause issues. And in terms of figuring out if it’s an issue, I always say just remove it from your diet and see. Ideally, if you before you remove it from your diet, you should get tested to see if you do have celiac disease. It would be good to know. I know that, but unfortunately, when I took gluten out of my diet, I did not get tested. I just was in this whole state of I just didn’t believe that I had an issue with gluten, so I didn’t see the point in getting tested for celiac disease because I thought gluten wasn’t an issue for me when I took it out. To be honest, so I was probably in denial, I guess. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: And I think the really big thing with gluten and the the the place to go if you really want to dig into the science is go to the book Grain Brain. This is a book by Dr. David Perlmutter that walks you through what scientifically is happening to the body when you’re having processed grains, when you’re having gluten, and if if the argument is well, I’m just I’m not allergic to gluten. Like I’m I don’t have celiac disease. Great, that is one argument. But what people don’t realize is that the inflammation that gluten causes in your body, and it will cause this to to any human being. It’s not oh well you know I get inflamed or I don’t get inflamed. It it is something that causes inflammation, but it’s not acute. If you drink a spoonful of Drano, you’re going to know immediately how it affects your body, and you’re going to say, “Oh my God, this Drano made me throw up! Like, duh, I’m not going to have Drano again. And by the way, disclaimer: don’t do it, don’t drink Drano. But with gluten, it’s not the kind of thing where you take a bite or you eat something, and all of a sudden you’re like, oh my god, I feel so horrible. I feel so sick. It’s it’s something that’s going to create symptoms that are so subtle over the course of time that you just start to say, well, this is just how I feel. I’m just I’m kind of tired all the time and I’m kind of lethargic and I just I can’t think clearly. I’ve kind of got brain fog, and you you don’t really attribute it to anything, but a lot of times that’s coming specifically from your diet, and that’s why if somebody’s definitively saying I don’t have celiacs, gluten doesn’t affect me, gluten’s just a bunch of BS. Just take it out of your diet for one to two weeks, and then eat something with gluten, and then say whether or not it’s something that affects you. You can do this with dairy, you can do this with other. You can do this with grains. You can do this with sugars. When you say, “Well, these things don’t affect me, and what I found when I did this, because I was very much on the train of, well, obviously sugar and you know Bisquick and all these horrible processed foods are battering you, but gluten, really, like, come on, this is just a bunch of you know health fat BS. And I took it out. My diet, and I did start feeling better, but I’d done a lot of other things as well. Like just, I did. I made the mistake of making a bunch of changes at once and not being able to can’t

Allison Schaaf: Pinpoint.

Zack Arnold: So I was like, “Well, I don’t know which one’s making me feel amazing. But then I ate something with gluten, and I swear to God, it was just like a bunch of bugs crawled up in my brain. I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m so irritable. I cannot focus on anything. What is going on? And I now experience that every single time I have something with gluten. And there’s this funny post that we had in our Facebook group a few weeks ago, where my assistant and I were talking about how a lot of editors will either edit or do whatever their work is. They’ll do it either high or drunk, which is not that uncommon because our industry is so stressful and so high demand. And I made the joke and I said, I can’t even cut if I’ve had gluten. I don’t know how people do it if they’re on you know they’re high or drunk. I can’t even have a pizza in edit. But I’ve had that experience where I will go without like the when I’m on my diet, which means when I’m not cheating or making bad decisions, which is about 20% of the time, because I kind of follow the Mark Sisson’s 8020 rule, but the 80% definitely no gluten. And if I will have a pizza on a Friday afternoon, it will affect me for like 36 hours, and it’s not just ooh my stomach is upset. It’s God, I’m like I’m being meaner to my kids, and I’m I’m just not patient, and I can’t concentrate, and I’m forgetting things. That’s the inflammation. When you say, “Well, it causes inflammation in your body, the connection I want to make sure people understand is that your brain is not separate from your body. People think there’s the brain, and then there’s the body. They’re the same thing. It’s like, would you say, well, there’s my heart and there’s my body? No. Your heart is your body. Your body is your heart. The brain is the same thing. So if something is causing inflammation in your body, it’s causing it in your brain. And one of the symptoms of inflammation in the brain is irritability. It’s depression. It’s brain fog. It’s less cognitive function. So what I really try to emphasize in my program is not here’s a way to lose 20 pounds in 30 days. It’s here are methods to be better at what you do, to be able to focus on demand and be more creative. One of the ways to do that is to get gluten out of your diet because it is destroying your ability to focus for long periods of time.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah. No. I mean, I totally notice the same thing. It’s there’s a mood impact, an energy, an ability to focus, and and I don’t even cheat. Like it’s basically if when I eat out and I’ll accidentally get gluten because I don’t even eat it on purpose, and I won’t know that I’ve had it. But then the next day, I’m like, there must have been something in there because I can just tell it’s like way off.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, you just feel it. You’re just like, man. I just feel different.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah.

Zack Arnold: You know, if you eat a Twinkie, that anybody’s gonna feel that. Well, maybe not anybody, because if you have four Twinkies a day, you’re not gonna notice. But if you’re somebody that eats relatively healthy and you eat a Twinkie, you’re gonna be like, oh my god, that was. I totally regret that. But with gluten, it’s more subtle than that, and it accumulates over time, and then you just you you can’t see the forest through the trees, so if you’re thinking, well, there’s no way I’m going to drive to my doctor and get tested for celiac disease, just try a week or two where you don’t even eliminate it completely, but cut it down considerably. If you start to notice a difference, take a little bit more out, a little bit more out, cut it out completely, and then all of a sudden just gorge, and you are going to be like, “Oh my God, what kind of time bomb just hit my body and my brain? And you are going to say, “Oh, so maybe gluten is not a bunch of BS after all. But again, I will emphasize this twice: read the book Grain Brain if you are thinking, “Well, is there actually any science behind this? Yes, there is hundreds and hundreds of pages of science, and it’s all in a nice, neat little collection called a book. So that, sorry, I knew I was going to get on my soapbox. This happens every time I talk about nutrition, and we’re we’re going to get back to Allison and prep dish now. So so wonderful to have you here. So I apologize for that. The other area that I want to go into is the choice that you’ve made to provide paleo-friendly meals, because this is another. This is definitely the direction that I’ve gone with my diet is going paleo, and I actually had Mark Sisson on the show a couple of months ago, and I’ll put a link in the show notes to that episode as well, talking all about the paleo diet, why it makes you know what it actually is, how it works, and he’s one. He’s known as kind of one of the godfathers of the modern paleo movement, but why why did you specifically make the choice to go paleo as opposed to vegan or vegetarian or anything else?

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, there’s a few different reasons. One is with the personal chef company that I have here. I have I work. I don’t know if you know who Dr. Amy Myers is. She’s a functional medicine doctor that’s here in Austin, so I end up having quite a few of her patients that I cook for, and they’re all on what is essentially a paleo diet. And I’ve just seen the difference that it makes for them. Me personally, I what I call kind of paleo-ish. It’s it’s pretty much paleo, but you know, I’ll eat some rice. A lot of the gray area foods, like kind of rice and potatoes and stuff, I’ll still have in my diet. But yeah, it’s just I’ve seen the impact that the paleo diet can have on people in improving their health, and that’s enough to kind of make me a believer and incorporate it. The other piece is when I started dating my husband, I was not paleo; I was gluten free. But then, when I saw he was paleo, and when I saw the way he was eating, I realized that the way that I eat is pretty much paleo. I had never put that label on it, but because I eat really only whole foods and nothing processed, and that’s what he was trying to do. But really, in my gluten-free whole foods way of eating. I was essentially eating paleo, just not calling it that. So I realized with the meal plans, if I just stuck the label paleo, they were pretty much already there. I do have two versions of the meal plans. So one is gluten free and still includes things like quinoa and rice and everything, and then the other one is a strict paleo that’s completely grain free, no legumes like beans, and for that reason, I said I’ve just seen for people, especially those with like an autoimmune condition, that they really do need a strict, a stricter paleo diet. Whereas some people are okay. It goes back to what I said earlier: just listening to your body and knowing what you can tolerate and what you can’t, and you know, are grains something that your body does okay with, or beans okay, and just knowing that. So I like to have both options, so people can decide for themselves.

Zack Arnold: So then, if I’m going to move into more of a whole foods diet and take the paleo approach, and for for those that are unfamiliar with paleo and you don’t want to take the time to spend an hour and learn about it from the master Mark Sisson, the the very basic idea is that back in caveman times or Paleolithic times, that there were certain foods that people had access to, and they were not able to go to the the store and buy flour and processed sugar and Lucky Charms. So what they did, I used to have Lucky Charms for dinner, so that’s why I’m saying that. Like that was a staple in my diet. So that’s not some random thing. I’ve been very clear about my my sugar addiction and how I’ve literally sat down and had an entire bowl of fruity pebbles in one sitting. So, not ashamed to say it. Well, I am, but I’m not. But anyway, with with a paleo diet, the idea is that you’re saying to yourself, “Is this something that I could have found in nature 10,000 50,000 years ago? Which means that you would have gone out in the the fields and you would have killed a deer, or a bison, or a chicken, or whatever it was, or you would have pulled a carrot out of the ground, whatever the the item might be. But there are no processed foods; there are all whole foods. That’s the very, very basic essence of it. There’s a lot more to it, but for anybody that’s literally never heard the word, that’s kind of the basic concept. So if I decide I want to go towards a more whole foods diet that is paleo, that is gluten free, what are the actual health benefits I’m going to get from it that go beyond? Well, I want to lose 10 pounds because I always tell people that’s the worst way to set a goal is to say I want to lose X amount of pounds by this time. I try to give people the motivation to change the way they feel and change their habits for the long term as opposed to doing a deprivation diet. So for most most people don’t do paleo because they want to do a quick crash diet and look good in 90 days. They do because they want to change the way they feel. So what are some of the health benefits I would see if I transitioned to a whole foods diet?

Allison Schaaf: The number one is energy. I think you know energy throughout the day and having a sustained energy, so not this like oh I eat some sugar and then I have energy and then I crash and so just sort of a stable amount of energy levels, more sustained like there’s not as those like hunger pangs that happen. It’s more sustained satiety throughout the day. The biggest thing I’ve noticed in giving up gluten, I think specifically, is my immune system, and that’s just that’s overall health. Like I used to get probably three to four colds throughout the year, which I sort of just thought of as normal. But then in the past three and a half, four years, I’ve had one cold. So you know that’s a big difference, and that makes a big impact on your life and how much you can enjoy life if you’re not getting sick all the time.

Zack Arnold: So then, if I decide that I want to make this transition, but it’s I don’t want to go out and buy 12 books, where is the place that you would tell people to start? Because I kind of have a very simple protocol where I will help people and say, “Well, do X, Y, and Z if you just want to get started. But from somebody that actually has education and background in this versus me who’s self-taught, if somebody comes to you and says, “Listen, I have all the motivation and the desire in the world, and I have none of the knowledge. Just tell me where to start. What are the baby steps? If I want to take the first three steps towards going paleo, eating a whole foods diet, or even if I don’t want to go paleo, I just want to eat better and cut out all the crap in the standard American diet, all the processed garbage? Like, what what are the three baby steps that I want to jump into and start with?

Allison Schaaf: Well, I mean, you kind of set me up here, but the really the only. You need to take is go to prepish.com, and I’ve done it all for you. So, I mean, you know, I joke, but I mean, that really is. If you want to just eat whole foods, you can follow one of those meal plans because that really does cut out all the processed stuff. And when it’s already there in the fridge, you’re not tempted to go and eat something else because you’ve already spent all this time and effort, and it’s there, and so you’re going to be more motivated to eat it. And in terms of educating yourself, I think you know there’s some books out there you can read. I know you mentioned Grain Brain. If you have any autoimmune tendencies, I think Amy Myers she has a book called I think it’s called Myers Way, and that’s really good, and sort of describing benefits of paleo diet in particular, and also just like becoming familiar with sort of paleo cookbooks that are out there. I would say avoid the ones. I think a trap that people get into is they decide they want to, you know, eat more real foods or go paleo, and then they start focusing on well, what desserts can I make? And so I would say, stay out of the trap of like focusing on what you can’t have. We actually, so me and my sisters are all gluten free, and we had my mom try giving up gluten, and it was funny because this is what I always say, and I probably told this to her, but as she was like a week into gluten free, she said, “I figured out the key. I can’t focus on what I can’t have. I just have to focus on what I can have, and I think that really is the key. Is don’t sit there and think, “Oh, can I have this? Can I have this? Is there frozen pizza that would fit? Is there a this that would fit? Well, look at what you can have, and when you look at the list of all of these vegetables, you know, there’s sweet potatoes, there’s parsnips and carrots and fennel. I mean, there’s like a list of, you know, 80, 100 vegetables that you can have. And so start looking more at what you can have, and not focus on on what you can’t and how you can like bring that back in magically or something. Just focus on things that are naturally already healthy and tasty and good for you.

Zack Arnold: Well, not to play devolves advocate because obviously I’m I’m clearly on your side with this, but I know that, and I’ve been in this place before, where somebody listening right now is saying, “Well, right now my diet consists mainly of hot pockets, so if I decide I’m going to cut out hot pockets, what I’m assuming are not paleo friendly, you’re saying, well, they’re carrots and parsnips and all these other things-all that stuff tastes like crap and is so bland. And what I can tell people definitively is that when you start to make the transition, your palate completely changes, and you will get to the point now where if I haven’t had an immense amount of dark leafy greens by noon. I’m like, oh my god! I have to have my greens. I can just feel it. I’m craving it. I crave like having green beans and salmon. Like that’s my go-to meal. And I’m like, I’ve got 10 minutes. I always have frozen salmon in the freezer. I always have frozen green beans. I can make that meal in 10 minutes, and I crave it now. And taking a bite of a hot pocket, and again, I’m using hot pockets not because it’s some other random person. I used to live off hot pockets. The thought of even looking at one makes me nauseous. But if I had to eat one, I would probably throw it up because my taste palate has changed so drastically that now foods that taste amazingly good to me are the exact opposite of what they used to. So somebody’s saying, “Well, I don’t want to eat carrots and parsnips and sweet potatoes because that stuff is just bland and dull. It’s because eating processed foods and sugars and artificial sweeteners that’s destroying your ability to properly taste food.

Allison Schaaf: No, and that’s a really good point. There is sort of a transition period, and but like you said, after a period of time and you feel so well and all this, your body does sort of start to crave these healthy foods, but it does take it does take a little transition time.

Zack Arnold: Well, on that note, I think I’m going to let you go back to to building your your prep dish empire, and I did set you up specifically for that, by the way. So that was I was trying to trying to segue into a nice, easy plug for you, where somebody’s like, “Thank you. Can somebody just do all the work for me? Oh wait, that person’s on my podcast right now. Is this

Allison Schaaf: A little? Is this too obvious? No, it

Zack Arnold: Was it was meant to be obvious. That was the whole idea. But I wanted to thank you so much for coming on the show and helping an audience that I think otherwise probably would not find your service, which is why I wanted to bring it to them because I’m trying to build a program where I’m combining two worlds that just they they collide and the streams cross and they just don’t belong together, which are health and fitness and post production. And I’m trying to change that. So I I really am hoping that there are people that have now heard of your service and found it and said, “Oh my God! I never would have found this otherwise. So I’m very glad we were able to find the time to do this. And the the one other thing that I haven’t mentioned that I need to make sure to throw in there is that not only does this system work, the food is amazing. I’ve had my my assistant editor; she’s much more experienced than I when it comes to cooking foods. Like she has a really expansive background in cooking, and she’s brought some of the meals she’s brought in, and oh my god, this stuff is so good. So it’s not just here’s a system to be efficient. It’s if you want meals that are better than you can get in a restaurant, and you want to make them yourself, and you want to do it efficiently, it’s kind of the whole package. So you you not only know what you’re talking about with systems and with nutrition, but your stuff tastes really, really good. Thank

Allison Schaaf: You. Yeah, no, I always say that the taste. I mean, it can be as healthy as you want, but if it doesn’t taste good, it’s not worth making. So

Zack Arnold: Yeah, exactly, and that and that’s the incentive. That that’s what builds the the habit loop and completes it as the reward of actually eating food that tastes really, really good. Because once you’ve done that, then you don’t want to go back and have the hot pockets and the frozen pizza, and I just shudder at thinking of the kind of foods that I used to put in my body on a daily basis. Now that I eat this way, and this actually tastes better and it’s more enjoyable.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah. All

Zack Arnold: Right. Well, for anybody that that hasn’t caught the name yet, it’s just PrepDish.com, and they can get everything they need right there. And you sign up and it’s a monthly service, and everything will literally come right to your inbox, and your problems will be solved.

Allison Schaaf: Well, and and I don’t know if you mind, but I actually have a special link that I can share with a free trial option.

Zack Arnold: Yes, I would love that. What is that link?

Allison Schaaf: It’s prepdsh.com backslash post p o s t, and because we were talking about it, and I know we have it, I can throw in that crockpot meal too. So if they go ahead and sign up for that free trial, throw throw in that crock pot handout as well.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, that would be awesome. Yeah, that would be fantastic. Okay, so again, you said the link is prepdish.com/post

Allison Schaaf: Yep.

Zack Arnold: Okay. Well, that’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, Allison, and I really hope that that I’m able to to throw some more people your way.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, thanks for having me. This has been fun.