Over the past few weeks I have received a number of emails from friends asking for help in achieving their results in the gym. The first thing I ask them is what is your diet like? Some people are so deluded by the fact that if they put all the time and effort in at the gym the results will happen. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. Nutrition plays a wider role than excersize when trying to achieve results.
When I start to question their eating habits this is what separates the weak from the strong, and the excuses start to come, an ‘excuse’ in my view deems a person not quite ready to commit to change. Change can be small in regards to nutrition and gradually increased, Rome wasn’t built in a day after all and steady and slow achieves results.
‘I couldn’t do what you do spend hours cooking?’
Let’s take for example a typical ‘soap fan’, quite willing to spend 2 hours of their life on aMonday Night watching, Emmerdale, Corrie, EastEnders and then Corrie again, sat on a couch doing nothing!! The ‘small change’ could be using that 2 hour time frame to cook and prep all your meals for the weekend while still catching up on the soaps?! This is called ‘Multi-Tasking’ – it’s amazing, you can achieve so much by doing it! Furthermore I find cooking an enjoyable and therapeutic experience.
I had no plans on Saturday evening, I had plans on Sunday and I needed to prep my food for the week ahead. I used Saturday evening as the time to prep my meals and what started as prepping for the week ahead turned out being prepping for almost the fortnight ahead! I made a grand total of 23 meals within 1 hour and 46 minutes.
How did I do it? simples. I looked through my recipe book to find recipes that had similar ingredients… which was Chicken Curry, Chicken Jambalaya and Italian Lean Mince.
1. Chopped up all the veg for the 3 recipes
2. Chicken Curry and Chicken Jambalaya, both pans were cooking the chicken, and these 2 recipes also require simmering for 30-45 minutes and done at the same time.. Once the chicken was cooked in both pans I added the veg… and then the different ingredients to each pan for each recipe. Whilst both were simmering for the 45 minutes I started my 3rd recipe.
3. The veg was already chopped as per number 1, so all I had to do was spend5/10 min browning the mince, added the veg and the remaining ingredients and then left simmering along with the other 2 meals. This recipe is 30 minute simmering which means it will finish the same time as the other 2 recipes.
4. Steamer on cooking all my veg for the week ahead for my evening meals and lunches. (20 minutes)
5. I have a big George Foreman and I cook 4 breasts each time throughout until 16 breasts are cooked, took me approx. 30 minutes.
The results were
4 Chicken Curry
4 Chicken Jambalaya
5 Italian Lean Mince
6 Chicken & Veg
Total 23 Meals and on top of this 7 Veg Bags for Evening Meals
I prepare my Breakfast, Snack 1 and Lunch on the day fresh (an example would be oats in the morning, turkey bacon and egg whites for snack 1 and lunch is chicken and vegetables with cashew butter) – I always try to make these 3 meals different each day. I leave my delicious meals for my Pre & Post Workout Meals. I don’t always use one of my recipes for my post work out meal, as I like to eat a lot of fish and veg in the evening but where I get abit bored of having fish then il have one of the recipes as a post workout meal.
Some people might question do I get bored? Well no I don’t because they taste amazing and I always make sure each day isn’t quite the same as the day before, so for example Monday I might have jambalaya and Italian lean mince, the next day I might have curry and maybe fish made fresh.
My point to this post is I gave up 1 hour and 46 minutes out of my week to prep all these meals, anyone who can’t find 1 hour and 46 minutes to do the same really and find excuses why they can’t find the time to do this are failing themselves.
For anyone trying to lose weight, and change their lifestyle (not competing in any sports) Flexible dieting is a great way to assist you in meeting your goals… where I don’t agree with ‘Flexible Dieting’ is when people choose this to fit in a mars bar every day or ice cream and make poor food choices! What is the point?! It completely defeats the purpose and you’re only going to feel hungrier because you have sacrificed some decent meals for a lousy chocolate bar… where as you could have made yourself a nice nutritious ‘clean’ protein flap jack that would have sufficed your craving!
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