MEAL PREP WITH THE PROS: Flexible & Forgiving – Finding Balance Without Losing Sight of Your Goals

October 4

By Rachel Payne

Meal Prep with the Pros featuring IFBB Pro & Online Posing Coach Meechka Marcelin
SMG Living Fit | October 2026

Some days, taking care of yourself fits neatly into the schedule. Other days, you’re juggling family, work, meals, and a workout that keeps getting pushed back.

IFBB Pro and online posing coach Meechka Marcelin knows that balancing act well. As a mother, business owner, and competitor, she’s learning how to keep pursuing her goals while making room for the life she loves.

In our conversation, Meechka kept returning to two ideas: being flexible with how you move forward and forgiving yourself as you learn.

For this month’s word, Balance, her experience offers a thoughtful reminder: your routine can evolve along with you.

Keep a Piece of Yourself

Competing has long given Meechka an outlet for the athletic drive she developed growing up playing sports. Returning to competition after becoming a mother brought new challenges—and a deeper understanding of why that outlet matters.

“You have to have your thing,” she says.

For Meechka, that means staying connected to something she enjoys and wants to pursue, even while caring for the people who depend on her.

It’s easy to put everyone else first. She speaks openly about having to remind herself that her needs belong in the picture, too. She also wants her daughter to grow up with confidence and trust in herself. Continuing to pursue her own goals is one way Meechka hopes to model that.

Find Your Own Rhythm

The routine that worked before motherhood doesn’t necessarily fit life with a toddler. Meechka has had to find a different rhythm, with room for her family, business, and competition goals.

That adjustment takes more than rearranging a calendar. It also means accepting that someone else’s approach may not be right for you.

“You can’t follow anyone else’s journey,” she says.

Social media can make that difficult. We see other people’s workouts, progress, and opportunities without seeing everything behind them. Meanwhile, our own responsibilities may require a different pace.

Meechka’s experience is a reminder to look at the life you’re actually living. What matters this week? Who needs your time? Where can you make room for your own goals?

She uses weekly resets to consider those priorities. That helps her stay connected to what matters as the demands of each week change.

Bring Your Family Into the Kitchen

During our conversation, Meechka shared that her daughter had recently helped her cook. It was a small moment, but one that shows how caring for yourself and spending time with your family can come together.

The kitchen can be a place to connect, get creative, and include children in everyday routines. For Meechka, bringing her daughter into the experience offers another way to share a part of her life.

That’s a meaningful perspective for Meal Prep with the Pros. Alongside the food itself, there’s the question of how preparing it fits into your household. Sometimes that means making room for a little helper and letting the experience become something you share.

Give Yourself Room to Learn

Meechka describes self-forgiveness as an important part of staying connected to who she is.

That includes forgiving yourself for what you didn’t know in an earlier season of life. It also means recognizing why your priorities or timeline may have changed.

A goal can still matter even when another responsibility needs more attention. Family, children, or a business may change how quickly you move toward it. Understanding that can help you make thoughtful adjustments without treating every change as a personal failure.

Meechka is still ambitious. She enjoys competing and wants to improve. But she also values who she has become through motherhood and the lessons that come with it.

Remember Why You Started

Meechka recalled feeling guilty about taking time to do cardio while her husband watched their daughter. Then her daughter came into the garage, excited to see what Mom was doing.

The moment gave her another perspective on that time: her daughter was seeing her pursue something she cared about.

For Meechka, purpose reaches beyond a placing or a trophy. It includes being herself, caring for her family, and showing her daughter that she can keep learning and working toward goals.

This month, consider where your own routine needs a little flexibility—and where you could offer yourself some forgiveness.

Give your goals a place in your life. Give yourself room to grow along the way.

Make Room for Food You Enjoy

For Meechka, flexibility extends into the kitchen. She loves food, loves cooking, and wants the meals she prepares to taste good.

“I don’t like eating anything I don’t like,” she says.

Finding ways to enjoy her food has become an important part of her approach to nutrition. She experiments with seasonings, fresh ingredients, and different combinations to create meals that fit her plan without becoming repetitive. Recently, that included pumpkin protein muffins she enjoyed enough to make twice.

But enjoying cooking doesn’t mean she expects herself to cook everything during every busy week.

Sometimes, she orders prepared meals and makes a few things herself in between. Having breakfast ready ahead of time also helps. She looks at the week coming up and decides what is realistic.

That’s flexibility in practice: planning for the time and energy you actually have.

Cooking has also become something she shares with her daughter. As her little girl has grown more selective about food, Meechka has found that involving her makes the experience more fun. Sometimes, her daughter’s job is adding the seasonings.

“You’re the spicer today,” Meechka tells her.

Those moments give them time together and, Meechka has noticed, can make her daughter more interested in trying the food.

For Meechka, cooking is creative and therapeutic. Her approach offers a useful reminder for our own kitchens: keep exploring flavors, make preparations that help your week run more smoothly, and give yourself permission to accept help when you need it.

From Meechka’s Kitchen

These are flexible meal ideas shared during our interview. Adjust portions to your needs and, if you’re following a competition plan, work within that plan.