When you’re eating using the Paleo lifestyle, you may find that you’re cooking a lot more than you once did. But weeknights, it can be tough to cook after a long day of work, errands, and obligations.

One way to beat this problem is to cook once for the entire week. And some people even choose to cook once for the entire month. That means preparing meals and then refrigerating or freezing them to use later.

It’s much easier to stay true to the diet when all you have to do is come home and heat up something that you’ve already prepared. If this sounds overwhelming to you, let’s break it down in a way that seems a little less intimidating.

All you need to do is take a look at your weekly meal plan. Go grocery shopping for everything on the list the night before you plan to cook. Then on cooking day, first do any chopping or other prep for vegetables and meats.

Next, start putting together the recipes and either putting them in a gallon size resealable bag to cook later or go ahead and cook them in the oven and reheat them later.

You can get an entire week’s worth of food prepared in three or four hours and be done cooking for the week. But what if that is still too much for you? Instead, you can just try to make each time you cook stretch a little longer.

Say you find a great recipe that you love. The next time you make it, double the batch. That way you can eat a meal that night and then you can have another serving of it later in the week or month.

All you have to do is put it in a container and pop it in the freezer – but make sure you label it so that you can find it again. If you do this a few times in a month, you’ll be able to get more out of the time you spend cooking in the kitchen.

Those extra meals are perfect for busy nights when cooking doesn’t seem doable, but you don’t want to grab a burger and go off of the plan.