How this chef got her body back -- and business idea -- through meal prepping

If you bumped into Ashleigh Easterling, you wouldn’t expect her to smile and say she lost 80 pounds in her early 20s. The 29-year-old professionally-trained chef and owner of The Green Bunny meal prep service at Area 15 in Optimist Park is tall, athletic and likely dressed in workout clothes.

When I met her, she was wearing spandex and a tank-top that read, “Do you even meal prep, bro?”

Meal prepping, paired with fitness, is exactly how she got her pre-college body back. While in college, the Charlotte native stopped playing sports and gained weight her freshman and sophomore year.

“But instead of freshman 15, it was like freshman 80,” she said. “I don’t know what happened. … It’s all fun and games until your pants don’t fit.”

She said she decided to get it together and, in her early twenties, she started meal prepping and working out with Heroic Fitness, which combines personal training, nutrition and accountability to meet transformation goals. Easterling, who has always loved to cook, aimed for a high-protein, low carb diet.

She shed the 80 pounds. She felt stronger, healthier and empowered.

And although she was working a corporate job, she pursued a degree from Johnson & Wales University and completed her Bachelor of Science in Food and Beverage Restaurant Management with a concentration in nutrition in 2014.

She kept meal prepping while she was a culinary student, for both herself and friends at Heroic Fitness.

So it was natural when she left her corporate job behind to start The Green Bunny meal prep service in 2015. She named the business in honor of her first entrepreneurial hustle: selling bunnies at the flea market as a 6-year-old. And she opened her commercial kitchen next door to Heroic Fitness on 15th Street.

As the sole employee (and boss) of The Green Bunny, Easterling customizes meals for clients based on their tastes, and health and fitness goals. The fresh (never frozen) meals feature a protein, a vegetable and a carb, and are based on nutritional instructions the clients receive from physicians or trainers. Breakfast, lunch and dinner options are available, from a Mexican Frittata to Shrimp Scampi on Zucchini Noodles.

Clients can order up to five days of meal prep (24 hours in advance) and pick it up at Easterling’s to-go window. Easterling also offers family meal orders, as well as a chef’s choice menu at the grab-n-go window for passing customers.

“All of the inventory comes in fresh in the morning,” she said. “The goal is to have it all out by the evening.”

Easterling dreams of eventually opening a farm-to-table brunch spot and turning her little commercial kitchen into a catering operation.

For now, she’s busy with appearances on WBTV and she’s gearing up to teach a Chef’s Choice class at Johnson & Wales Dec. 9 on “meal prep made easy.”

She still meal preps for herself, depending on what she’s cooking for clients. She also still cheats twice a week. And she’s cool with that.

“At the end of the day I’m a chef, so when a new restaurant opens, I’m there,” she said. “I want to taste it, I want to see what’s going on.”

The Green Bunny: 510 E. 15th St., Ste. A

Photos: Courtesy of Ashleigh Easterling, Katie Toussaint

This story was originally published October 10, 2017 at 11:00 PM with the headline "How this chef got her body back -- and business idea -- through meal prepping."