My Meal-Prep Strat
After 5 years of meal prep R&D, this is what you need to know about the life. My cadence, but also the mindset. Everyone’s different, & you ultimately need to find what works for you, but I have found that these recipes & tips help you out no matter your goals & lifestyle!
- I meal prep two batches on Sunday (8 meals) which keeps me fed through Thursday night. I know this doesn’t cover the full week, but I have a family dinner & a date night in there- and don’t like freezing meals! I firmly believe the best nutrition plan is the one you can stick to.
- 8 high-quality & healthy meals every week is super sustainable when you give yourself the grace & flexibility to eat out a few times each week! And my strat lines up nicely with having a couple great dinners & a few drinks on the weekends.
- Each of my recipes is designed to provide 4 servings, as you only have a safe window of 3-4 days to consume food once it is cooked (if refrigerated).
- But feel free to adjust the servings for each recipe as you work to find the tempo that works for you!
- Links to all the equipment I use can be found on the “shop” page, but it’s likely that you already have 90%+ of everything you need in your kitchen!
- Just know that the portions of my recipes are usually large & the big equipment I recommend means you can cook in fewer batches.
That’s basically it! Simple, but that’s what makes it so great. I’ve found it to be the most efficient way to incorporate healthy eating in my life. And look, I’m not exactly a fitness guru where this kinda thing is my career.. I’m the definition of a casual athlete. I like challenging myself & being healthy, but I also think balance & fun are super important!
My Nutrition Mindset
As far as the nutrition mindset goes, I think it boils down to some pretty basic rules across the board. You’ll see this on literally all my other nutrition training posts. I’m not selling you some carnivore, keto, “owl” diet nonsense, this is simply eating normal food with real ingredients. No matter what your goals are, this this is the nutrition priority list (in descending order):
- Hit your calorie surplus/deficit goal
- At the end of the day, 90% of weight gain and weight loss boils down to a math equation. If you are burning more calories than you consume, over time, you are losing weight. Literally vice versa if you are bulking. Consistent progress with a plan you can stick to gives you complete control of the outcome over enough time.
- Eat one gram of protein per pound of body weight every day
- When a diet is considered “healthy”, it is almost always because that diet is high protein. I linked one of many academic studies if you want to see some science. It’s just a fact. Now, don’t be crazy & take this to the extreme, because that would be dumb, but 1g per pound usually puts you in a nice 25%-30% sweet spot. This is where you’re gonna want to operate whether you’re bulking, cutting, or simply maintaining weight.
- Aim for a balanced macro spread
- Now that we’ve established you want to hit your calorie goal, & have your diet made up of 25% to 30% protein, I want to express to you how far less important this last goal is. If you’re new to this, I even recommend leaving this out until you’ve gotten into the swing of tracking your macros & meals. All I’m trying to say is, you can’t demonize carbs or fats. All three macronutrients play an important role for your body! But if it takes time to work up to getting this consistent, that is completely understandable.
I challenge any PhD nutritionist to tell me I am not SPITTING facts with this meal prep strat & nutrition philosophy. I don’t think eating healthy has to be rocket science. Just find something that you can make work & stick to it!
Now, I want you to think of this blog as a repository of a bunch of diverse recipes with one common theme- high protein. And think of me as a dude that wants to make it easier to hit your macro goals. Lets do this thing.
Also- please contact me with what macro tracking app you use! I use the free version of myfitnesspal, but really want to make macro tracking easier for everyone. If you tell me- I’ll talk to their people & make it so my recipes directly import to your app 🙂