Food Prep

Once you have a game plan for your macros, how do you prep your food?  The good news is with most macro plans you can eat foods from just about anywhere and get the numbers right on your app, so prepping isn’t always necessary.  What you will soon realize is that preparing your food will be much easier to control “all the variables” and make more balances macro meals.  What you will find is that you don’t need to spend all day Sunday prepping food with a few easy guidelines.

So how do you prepare food ahead of time with two kids, a full time job, hobbies, and other priorities?

Another challenge is when your children aren’t eating the foods you eat.  The first thing I would tell you is try to make kid friendly meals around the main foods you will be eating.  For example, the other night my wife and I had chicken with onions and peppers, jasmine rice with lime and cilantro, and some broccoli.  Luckily these are foods both our kids eat.  We left off the onions and peppers on the kids chicken but allowed them to taste the ingredients, and if they like them let them eat it!  They ate the rice and broccoli also.  Some nights if we have a chicken dish with other ingredients they may not like, like maybe pesto or spicier ingredients, we will add chicken in with some frozen cheese raviolis that just need boiled to cook.  Worst case scenario, we have Aunt Annies Organic Mac and Cheese on standby for the nights we can’t think of what else to make, throw some tuna or other meat in the mac and cheese, and add peas!

Now as for preparing beyond just that meal for my wife and I, we will just make four chicken breasts instead of one, and cook up a whole bunch of rice in our rice cooker (which you have to get!), and a whole bunch of broccoli also.  Then all you need to do is portion the chicken, rice, and broccoli up quickly in containers, throw it in the fridge, and then grab it in a hurry when you need it.  You can get creative with the seasonings, but lately we have been using salt and pepper on meats, while adding mushrooms, onions, peppers, garlic, and other fresh ingredients to the dishes for more flavor.

Now, of course I would pick the most basic bodybuilder food as an example.  This applies to just about anything else also.  Cod, salmon, steak, pork chops, pork tenderloin, spaghetti with meat sauce, hamburgers, turkey burgers, meatloaf, eggs, etc.  Any of the meats that would be our main protein source, we would just make more of during dinner and add to containers after preparing them.  The most important thing is to quickly measure them out either with a scale or measuring cup.  Once you get the hang of this in an “assembly line” fashion, then it becomes very fast and efficient and you don’t even notice pulling out your scale (other might notice still).  I have been known to take my scale with me to parties and other places when being very specific prior to a contest.

The most important thing is prepare foods you like to eat and don’t prepare the same things over and over.  Prepping doesn’t have to be boring!  Don’t forget technically having leftovers is food prep, just portion it out accurately and you are half way there.