What is going on guys? Happy Monday or Tuesday. Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. This is episode 189 and we are talking effective meal prep strategies. So excuse me, there's a couple things I want to line up about this episode before we dive into updates and then the kind of meat and potatoes of the episode. But a little bit of context that I want to add to this episode is the context of this episode will be focused on individuals. who want to have a greater degree of success with a dieting effort, or those who are currently struggling with their nutrition week to week. So we're going to cover some strategies for making that a little bit more routine, using various examples based off of various facets of life, right? Income, family dynamic, time, et cetera, et cetera. And then we'll also add in some you know, personal anecdote of what has worked with us through various phases of our lives as well. So that's today's episode. And before we dive in, Brian, what's the latest? Yeah, man, I'm excited for this episode. It's been a while since we've had a nutrition one. And I think that this has some solid practical application and also something that you're in at the moment. So a lot of personal relevance as well. Cool. For me, two really quick updates. I mentioned back in December when I injured my low back doing leg curls, this is like December, mid December, I talked to this podcast and a couple others how I think that I'm just done with RDLs that, you know, not RDLs weren't the thing that caused me the injury, but my low back was injured and RDLs seemed to just be a culprit that inflamed it. It's been something that's kind of caused me low back discomfort over the course of the years. And so from this injury being quite severe from the leg curls, I just kind of decided I wasn't going to RDL anymore. And I made it all the way until two days ago. So until like early May, about six months, I didn't do a single RDL, which I think is like the longest time of my entire 27 years lifting that I didn't hip hinge at all. And then back was feeling good. It's been feeling good these days, nice and strong. Still a little bit of residual pain in my QL, but I kind of think this is chronic now and not something that's related to the injury that occurred in December. two days ago, I decided to RDL for the first time in a while, intended on just kind of keeping it light. So I did two sets at 245. Those felt good. Did two sets at 295, those felt good. And then did a final set at 335 and that felt fine. I wouldn't say it felt quite as good as 295, but 335 moved. I did five reps with it, had a few reps in the tank and form was good. So I think I'm gonna keep RDLs in at least maybe on an every other week basis. Maybe for me it's not. you know, every week I need to be pounding RDLs, but maybe one week it's 45 degree hip extensions and the next week it's RDLs or something along those lines. haven't quite figured it out yet, but I do want to include them back in. And one of the things that I was the most, actually the thing I was the most surprised about from doing the RDLs, I thought that my glutes and hamstrings were going to be just massacred. And uh instead the thing that's been sore for the last two days has been my upper back basically like mid mid traps, rear delts, teres, like all the muscles that actually have to hold that load at the length and position more or less. It's kind of like an isometric for the length and position of the back, you know, as you're doing an RDL and it's just been wrecked. Like my, upper back has been so sore and there's like, you know, some mild soreness in my hamstrings and glutes, but, uh, I was really, you know, taken aback by how much of an impact that had on like the supporting structures of the. see. And then my last update is just that this weekend, actually in two days, I'll be leaving for Cancun. I'm going to reconvene with Anders, the guy, my college roommate who uh I started the gym with. Aaron is very familiar with our buddy Anders. He was on the podcast. So he and I are going to meet up in Cancun for a wedding for one of our trainers from when we had the gym about a decade ago. So really excited for all of that. And ah Try and get one more lift in here before I depart on Thursday and then have like a fun weekend just kind of hanging out on the beach and stuff like Is it in one of the like, uh like all inclusive kind of resort spots? Nice. inclusive, but it's all inclusive with no kids. So it yeah, it's like it's a whole resort where no kids are allowed. So this will be actually my first time doing an adults only type experience. Mm hmm. Those places typically have like a pretty cool gym. Like I've only been to one, but I was pretty surprised at how good the gym was. I was able to get really good, legit training sessions and which I was pretty pumped. Yeah, I mean, this place is massive. It's huge. So it wouldn't surprise me if it has a good gym too. And uh with my new split routine, which I've discussed recently on some of the episodes, my plan is to do the the torso day tomorrow, which would be Wednesday. And then that would leave me shoulders and arms for one of the days while we're traveling, which would probably be like the perfect workout to do before hanging out at the beach. So I'll try to probably fit that in at some point. Yeah. So for me, I am in, I should really start learning this. I'm in week five, I believe, of prep. me double check really quickly. So I started pretty much the 31st right 123456 I'm in week six. I have like a journal I write down every morning, but I only have the days and I and I should really start putting like what week is because it's it's quite important. Yeah, I saw day 35 on your story last week, so I assumed that we were in week six now. Yeah, I got it. um I'm really enjoying it. just, I really thrive on structure and with the, you know, cardio in the morning and the, the heightened requirement to be on. And I'm like posing for about 15 ish minutes, like post-training, like I just have to be much more like work time efficient. And I'm just, really enjoying the days. I'm up at six 30 every single day when my alarm goes off. I've gotten to the point now where I'm up a couple minutes before the alarm and I even set my alarm. So I'll share this story. um Back in like probably right in the beginning of college, know when you like ringtones were a thing for like your phone and stuff, we're talking with the early 2000s, right? oh Yeah, like music, you can get like a U2 song or something like that. Yeah. I had this like flip phone and my ringtone was intergalactic by the Beastie Boys. And like for some reason, the ring, it was so loud and it would like go off and like scare the shit out of me and like my girlfriend at the time. And it was like it was just like this funny little piece of like history. ah She absolutely despised it. So when I was making an alarm, you know, when when prep started. I'm like going through and I'm like, oh, you can choose a Spotify song now for alarms. And like this idea just comes into my head and I'm like, I should just choose that intergalactic song again. Right. And so I have been like I've been I've been enjoying it. Like I get it goes off. And of course, the beginning of the song is like super silly with like the robot voice. And I just like get up and I'm like dancing and, you know, and I like listen to the song for a bit. And then I'm like off to brush my teeth and start my day. But I it's been I've really enjoyed like this little blast from the past of using this ringtone. or I guess song, I should say, for my alarm again. And it's just like, I start my morning off with a little bit of silliness and fun, and it kind of like sets the pace for my day. And I do all my morning stuff ah for like prep and everything. And I'm really, really, really enjoying the mornings and work and stuff right now, like much more so than I have in months and months and months. So that's really, really cool. Yeah, you finally have like a morning routine, more or less, which I think you kind of did not have during the the bulking stages of this experience. Yeah, it's been a little bit of. How do I put it like I guess I'd gotten kind of like, you know, like quote unquote, like fat and happy. You know, I very rarely would have like pressure for time and stuff, so I've structured my life to where, you know, my work hours are pretty flexible and stuff. And because it's just, you know, me, I'm not making food for the family. I'm not picking kids up, so I just had a lot of time. And when you have a lot of time, you can you kind of get lazy with it. And that's what would happen. And now I just like have some pressure to where I can't be lazy with my time. And I'm like, wow, my work's more efficient. I'm enjoying things much more. There's much less distraction. So I'm I'm very, very much enjoying it. And I'm going to think about like, OK, when prep's over, what's what new thing can I like insert in to like put some pressure in so that I can keep you know, I just I feel so much better about myself, my day. how I operate with like a little bit of pressure to perform on things. So it's been very eye opening in that regard. What does your weekly cardio look like at this point? ah Just yesterday as of Monday, it got bumped up to 40 minutes of fasted walking each morning. So it was at 30 minutes. So I literally, we have like a pretty big living room, you know, here with like the villa and I literally it like living room and kitchens kind of all in one. And I just walk laps around it and respond to clients on my phone, check my Instagram messages, respond to people. And I literally do that for 40 minutes in the morning. And that's my cardio. Sometimes I found like a new park, you know, a few kilometers away. And sometimes I'll go there in the evening around sundown and do like an extra like two or three laps if I'm like bored or something like that, just to get out a little bit, but no actual like cardio in right now. Is there a plan to increase that or at this point it's just kind monitoring body weight and things like that. Yeah, it's it's kind of as as need. um So Jackson has said, like, I dare I say I'm having like a lot of fun right now. Like this has not been hard whatsoever. And I know I'm probably going to like eat those words in like five or six weeks when I'm like struggling or something like that. But he's very much in the in the camp so far of like bodies responding. We're getting leaner and leaner as the days go by. Like, let's not needlessly put extra fatigue on the body while we do not need to yet. and keeping tools like in the toolbox for use if and when are needed. Yeah, no, that makes total sense. Um, I have a question. Are you, are there any substances that you're using, any exogenous substances that have changed since you've gone into the deficit from what you were taking prior? Yes. one came out, Boldenone came out and Mastron came in. um So from a very, I would say a very, to put it as like easily to understand Boldenone is an aromatizing compound so you can hold a little bit more water with it. um And then Mastron is, you know, quote unquote, a dryer. compound where you're not going, it won't aromatize, but it also competes for the androgen receptor with the testosterone in place. So it's like drier, you will hold less water. And then typically, your ratio of aromatizing to non aromatizing compounds, as you get closer to stage, you know, shifts in that manner to try and remove any uh lower estrogen and remove excess water from, you know, water, right, quote unquote, sort of thing. So, yep. um use a clenbuterol in this space? Yep, so I'm on 40 micrograms per day. That started last week. And that has been I take it right after I finished brushing my teeth at literally like 632 in the morning. And that has been effective thus far. So the first two days I felt a little bit like jitter. It was it was obvious like something was added into me or to my body. And I had to I can only do I'm only doing one coffee right now too, as I want to be very conscious of. I mean, just what do you what do you call it? What are those? um What are the like? What's caffeine? They're called stimulant. Yes, thank you. I just want to be very cognizant of stimulants and not use them until I need them. So I only have one little espresso in the morning and I feel perfectly fine. But I know once food eventually starts getting like chunked down to lower degrees and stuff, I want more tools to be able to be to use I want to be able to like training starting to suffer. I'm going to put pre workout in you know, but I don't want to do that until it's like necessary for energy levels, performance, etc, etc. Yep. Cool. And last question is where the body weighed at right now. 227 this morning, but I'm a little bit inflamed. I've been in the 226s all last week. um It's been very new in that body weight isn't really changing, but I'm getting leaner and it's just like with the, the PEDs change everything. And it's almost like I'm a newbie who doesn't really understand again, but like scales staying the same. significantly leaner than I was like nine days ago. So it, you I guess maybe I'm adding some muscle as well. Hard to really say. Yep. kick us off. Take us through the episode. Okay, cool. So the one thing I do want to start with a little bit of like a professional anecdote, I would say, I have found over the years that my most successful like dieting clients, um again, the level of your ambition to relative to your goal dictates how on top or not on top of things that you need to be like, for example, if you're just Hey, I'm a healthy body weight. I like lifting. I like eating healthy because it feels good for my body. You can get away with a lot more because the goal isn't grand or ambitious. The goal is to stay pretty much where you are. So you have a lot of flexibility and operating capacity. But if the goal is rather ambitious, I want to get to the next, you know, appearance visual body fat percentage level like down or like I said earlier in the episode, I don't have a good relationship with like food and nutrition or health and I want to put these practices in. This is where a lot of that episode is going to lead into. So I have found that my most successful clients write various facets or factors included in that. They typically tend to eat the same breakfast day in and day out and the same meal post training. Be it like way a bagel, half a bagel, something like that relative to their macros and it can fit in. They rotate through a handful of different lunches. And then dinner really varies on the situation, right? If you're a bachelor living by yourself, that's a lot different than like a Brian situation with a wife, know, young children, et cetera, et cetera. But that's the kind of, know, if I were to boil down the entire episode to a little bit of like a snippet that I would say is the snapshot that I find has the widest. range of success for most people. Yeah, I agree. think that man, the last time that I did a very structured diet like this would have been 2022. And ah I was actually like reviewing these pictures last night before this because I was thinking back trying to reflect on what were the practices that I was instilling during that last cut. And they're very similar to the way that I handled my cuts in 2020 2021 as well. ah But that was definitely one of the staples is that the first two or so meals of the day and maybe the snack were more or less always the same. And so it would always just be the dinner at the end of the night that would change. And that would only change within the constraints of what my protein source and what my starch source were. Whether you know it's rice, bread, potato, oatmeal, et cetera. And whether it's like chicken, turkey, beef, et cetera. But basically the general composition of having a protein and having a starch and having a fruit veggie type thing was pretty much standard across the plate. Yeah. And I think one thing that I think is also important to point out before we dive into it. Very often people get hung up on on on variation, right? And while I agree that it's, that it's good, I wouldn't, it's hard to say, right? We know that variation for the sake of variation in terms of like uh having the most diverse gut microbiome humanly possible, like we know that is pretty factual. At what levels does seeking those really, really high ends of variation start to cut into your ability to achieve a body composition related goal, your time, your ability to prepare a lot of these things. It's different for everyone's situation. But a lot of us like have a a preference, right? For example, like something like berries. I love berries. Do I like blackberries and raspberries? Yeah. But if you give me the option of blueberry, strawberries, I'm never gonna buy a blackberry or a raspberry, right? Because I have just so much of a stronger preference on the first two. um And for this to be a longer term and like sustainable thing, some level of finding an enjoyment in it and having a preference, I think helps with the consistency that is needed to be able to be successful, right? So I often... Oftentimes I find people kind of put the importance on their variety and variation before the goal itself, which I think is backwards. So I want to make make it clear that I'm not saying variety isn't important. It should be, in my opinion, right. Other people might disagree. Goal attainment first, variety on the back end, not. variety and then if goal happens great if it doesn't also okay and I would say that we would extrapolate that to a training program right if every single time you go in the gym you never repeat any movements and just do new things your rate of progress objectively will be slower because of the extremely high preference on variety Yeah, I mean, I think it goes back to the old saying or the old thought pattern that when you're seeking body composition, it's sometimes at odds with health. Actually, many times it's at odds with health. But, um you know, you don't need variety. You don't even need micros to to optimize body composition. Like, in theory, one could fill themselves up on foods that literally have no fruit or vegetable in them. The benefit of the fruit and veg is likely that it fills you up and makes you more satiated, making the whole process easier. But I for sure have known people that have literally just eaten like meat and starch, not had a single fruit or veggie and been able to achieve the body composition goals that they want. So to your point, it's more about finding the consistency and the structure and the pattern that allows you to progressively, you know, decrease the body weight, maintain muscle. more than it is about worrying about the long-term impacts of health implications down at it. Yes. uh For acute pursuits sort of thing. And, and I guess what I'm really getting at is I think there's a lot of like rules around nutrition, right. And oftentimes, they are rules that are generally quite positive. But sometimes it gets a little bit like muddy in the middle, when things are taken to extremes. For example, right, this is a really wild example. I recently had a client who was having a lot of recovery issues. Just not recovering from training and pretty lean, not a lot of body fat to lose, something like that. once we dug into things, he was eating six pounds of cauliflower a day and only 300 grams cooked of a sweet potato. So like the overwhelming majority of his carbohydrate intake was coming from vegetable that he would like cook down. And then he said to me, he's like, you're the only person who's ever told me to eat less vegetables. And I'm like, Six pounds. I ran the numbers multiple times. Like I have to be missing something. No. over 2,000 grams of vegetables. And usually it's considered a pretty hefty dose if you're in that seven to 800 gram range. Yeah. I said around that 7 to 800 grams. was typically around like a ceiling there. So, okay, so kind of shifting back to the the structure outline of the episode today, I want to start with kind of two pathways that are probably a little bit uncommon. But this is honestly something that I approach with clients, especially as I'm kind of aging, I get clients who are typically my age, you know, or older. And what often comes with that more career stability, more stable finances, like, et cetera, et cetera. So one of the things that I ask, I will say, in terms and I'm clear, we're going to need to eat a majority of our foods, like at home to have the most success. You know, we're not going to able to bounce around from restaurant to restaurant. And I say, we either going to throw our money at this or we throw our time at this. And like, realistically, what do you have more to throw at this time or money? Simple as that. And sometimes a client will be like, you know, a CEO or something like that. And he's like, I literally have no time to dedicate to cooking and preparing. So I'm going to throw money at it. I'm like, perfectly fine. Right. So going down that route, we outsource our food preparation. You could do something like a hundred percent from a meal prep company. I don't like this approach. I tend to recommend. at least post-workout is still handled uh under your own accord because of how simple it really can be. Like I said, it could be like a way, a banana, half a bagel, something like that. Like that's, there's no preparation to that. um We can do like half cooked meal prep companies and half at home. In full transparency, that's what I'm currently doing. I make my breakfast, which everyone knows I absolutely love. I've been very vocal about that for years. I prepare my pre-workout, is literally a rice puff cereal, banana and whey. And I prepare my post-workout, which is cream of rice, banana and whey, both take all of five minutes. And then my lunch and dinner are provided by a local uh restaurant here. For me, Bolli's a little bit different. I would argue it's probably about the same price to cook meals at home versus get them made. um But here, like we don't have grills oven, anything like that. So you're cooking everything in a pan and it to me, that's time prohibitive. And I'm like, I'm not, if it saves me $5 per week to cook all of my own meals, like I'm not, I'm not doing that. I'm going to, I'm going to spend the extra five bucks or whatever and have them made. Now, the other option that comes with that is like a private chef. I've had clients use this before. I have some clients use it right now. Everyone's a little bit different, but typically it's either they have like an ongoing relationship with them. You provide like macro targets. They give you some options that can kind of fit in that. And we have like a cyclical rotation of meals where even private chef comes into the home, cooks like once or twice per week, packages your meals up, puts them in your fridge and they're like there and ready to go for you. So Of the meals out, those are the ones that I have seen get used most often. um A little bit of a caveat there. I would be personally... weary is the term that comes to mind. I don't know if that's perhaps the best term to use of like the local food prep company that constantly rotates meals. um Just because someone's a cook doesn't mean they understand macronutrients, especially in relation to fat loss and additional oils and fats and how those add up, right? If I were to use this route, I would have, I would personally vet a company and be very, very vocal and get specific information around macronutrients, how it's calculated, et cetera, et cetera. Or I would use one of the national change that ships frozen, especially one that has a kind of relationship with the bodybuilding community. The one that I have clients use currently, I will use sometimes when I fly to the States is Mega Fit Meals. oh They've just been around for a while. have decent options and have world, not worldwide, nationwide distribution. There's numerous others like them, but that I would say is the likelihood of you getting more consistency out of a company of that scale is likely higher than like the local mom and pop place. Yeah, no, think that makes a lot of sense. And it's also exactly why it becomes so complicated to try and eat out at just a standard restaurant when you're in a deficit of this sort, uh where like I can imagine, you know, during my deficit, Kim and I would go out once a week to have our date night or whatever. And I would try and be as diligent as I could say order the eight ounce sirloin with a side of veggies and then I'd have some small starch source, whether that's like one piece of bread or like a side of potato or something like that. But even when you're trying to be as diligent and precise as that, like you said, you still don't know what oils the food is cooked in. And you go and try and estimate this stuff and you have to at least add another like 10 to 15 % fat on top of what you think is in there at a minimum. just because there's certainly seed oils and other things that these items are cooked in, or there's butter on the vegetables or whatever. And even if you ask for it not to be, it's likely that it still ended up with some sort of oil on it from the other things that are around it. So yeah, I just think it complicates things and provides more credence for why using these really bodybuilding specific food prep companies or simply just doing the food prep on your own at home probably makes the most sense. Yeah, it's a hard pill to swallow, but the more eating out that you do in a deficit, the less success you will have. that is, you cannot argue against it, unfortunately. I really wish it were not true. And I like what you said, in most situations, I like to try and keep in one date night per week, know, sort of thing. But it has to be progress dependent, right? Typically, you what I do with a lot of clients, um but I try and build that in because I do think it's important for many more reasons than just the pursuit of the goal, obviously. Okay, so we've covered throwing money at our problems, and if we cannot throw money at our problems, then we need to throw time at our problem. And this is the most common, right, because in many places, unless you're just that bachelor who's now in his late 40s or whatever, you know, Uber successful spending $300 or $400 per week on your private chefs, probably a little bit cost prohibitive. The first thing I have here is the less decisions you have to make daily, the more successful you will be because there is less that can go wrong. A comment I will make with with clients often is fat loss is effectively a controlled experiment that we're running, right? And like any good scientists, what should we do? Reduce our number of variables. uh Far often people have way too many variables in their fat loss and there's just way too many opportunities for leaks and places for things to go wrong. So uh most often when we're speaking about this, we're talking about. the mom, the dad, there's a family or even the busy executive manager, something like that. There's a lot of decisions that already need to be made. We don't want to be trying to wrap up our call at 11 p.m. We have another call, or sorry, 11 a.m. We have another call at 11 45, run into the kitchen, chop up the chicken, put the rice in the rice cooker. We don't wanna be making things day to day. for all of your meals because it is incredibly time prohibitive. Now, the next part of this is I like to speaking about finding a preparation schedule that works for you. um And for me and what I used for a number of years and what I literally plan to go back to is shopping on Sunday and prepping on Sunday. And I like to prepare through Friday afternoon at the very, I would say, least. Right. um The other kind of opportunity, or not opportunity, but option is we do some sort of like shop prep on Saturday or Sunday. Maybe you want your food a little bit fresher. That's a higher preference for you. But then every Wednesday, let's call it Wednesday, maybe Wednesday is a rest day. You don't train. On the way home from work, we stop at the grocery store. We re-up on supplies and we recook for, let's call it Wednesday through Saturday or something like I think what's most important is what is realistic for you and your schedule. And I just personally know I'm not gonna fucking go to the grocery store again on Wednesday and cook again. I just wouldn't do it. Yeah, I actually relate to this model of prep much more than the one for people that have no time and have all the money in the world, I guess. But uh I actually don't think that this method is that time consuming. And I think that people oftentimes get overwhelmed by the thought of doing their food prep, thinking it's going to take up an entire day or something along those lines. But like, you know, the grocery shopping, OK, grocery shopping is half hour forty five. minutes, whatever it is, you need to do that. That's time consuming. But once I come home and you preheat the oven, you throw 10 or 12 chicken breasts on there, you start a crock pot with some rice or however, whatever starch it is that you want, potatoes, et cetera. uh And all of that gets kind of cooked simultaneously. You cook up a ton along the same time. You could cook your chicken and your veggies at the same temperature. So I could I put out an entire tray of like broccoli and cauliflower and peppers and onions and just throw those into the oven for more or less the same amount of time as the chicken and all of that kind of cooks together. And then it comes out and it just gets packaged into separate kind of takeaway containers or storage containers or whatever. And I honestly don't think that whole process of cooking it and packaging it takes more than an hour. So if you add in the time for grocery shopping, maybe you're at like 90 minutes, 100 minutes, something along those lines, but to have the peace of mind of knowing that your meals are just ready to go and when you need to, you can just pop up microwave something for two minutes and boom, you have like a fully healthy meal ready to go. That was always kind of the approach that I would take throughout the years. Yeah, mine was very similar. Anytime a client, typically like newer clients and they're like, I just did my first, you know, food prep. It took me like four hours. I'm like, hold on, what are we doing? Why is it taking us this long? And something that I found that people do is, It's both a blessing and a curse, right? Like in the world of like Instagram and Pinterest and things like that, there's this really cool cooking things and like a lot of these like macro friendly meals, but they're, they look glorious on Instagram. They are very time consuming because you're preparing these like low calorie sauces from scratch and a lot of that stuff in the time just really adds up. I would strongly encourage everyone to focus on simplicity, right? especially if this is a endeavor that you have failed at in the past. We just need to get our feet into the water. We don't need to go in chest deep with commitment of making sauces from scratch, et cetera, et cetera. There's especially in like the United States or something like that, where we have numerous companies now who have these very low calorie sauces like the G Hughes barbecue. There's the noble foods. oh Some of the companies are making like sugar-free ketchups and stuff now. Like there's no real need to make sauces from scratch, especially when you're strapped for time, you know? So I think that's a really important facet is keep things simple. Once you have your routine down, like Brian said, you're hot lapping the oven, the meats on the grill, something like that, rice is in the rice cooker. Then you can get fancy once you're becoming much more time efficient. Another thing that I'd like to add here is invest in some, what would you call it? What would you call it? Like a rice cooker? Would that be like an appliance? I feel like it's a small appliance. Invest in things that will make your life easier. I cooked rice on the stove in a pot until I was probably like 27, 28 years old. And I fucked it up constantly because I would forget and then it would like burn in there and. The rice cooker is so brainless. It's the easiest thing in the world. It does everything for you. You just put one-to-one water to rice in there and you just press a button and walk away and it's done sort of thing. So I would strongly encourage these things that allow you to make larger quantities but also significantly reduce the amount of investment of your time and skill into preparing things at an adequate level. Yeah, absolutely. The rice cooker has been one of the best and you said you didn't have it till 27. I didn't have it till two years ago. So was like 40. I was literally just cooking cooking rice stovetop all the time. I never forgot about it and messed it up, but it's definitely less efficient than using the rice cooker for sure. Yeah. Okay. Now moving on a little bit diving in a little bit deeper. One of the things that depends on on you as a person, I am much more of a fan of food prepping as opposed to meal prepping. And what I mean by that is I'm typically going to recommend like bulk cooking, two different meat sources, two to three different carbs sources, and like two to four vegetables. for your like prep duration, whether that's, like I said, Sunday to Wednesday or Sunday to, you know, Friday, Saturday, whatever that is. And then putting those in their respective larger containers and then maybe the night before work, the morning of whatever works with your schedule and when you have time, weighing out what you need for that meal, whichever it is, and then going from there. I don't love the pre-packaged. You know, here's my Thursday lunch sort of thing in the fridge. It provides very there's no there's no room for flexibility in that when they're partitioned as such, because maybe Wednesday night you come back. I don't know. Your husband surprises you. You got a promotion at work. He's taking you out to dinner or something like that. And I'm big on these little, you know, things being celebrated as well. With when everything's perfectly prepackaged, you cannot pivot. where it's significantly harder to pivot. Whereas when we have things bulk-weight out, we can pivot a little bit more, and it's just less time consuming on the front end ah there. How do you typically do it? Yeah, I, you know, I actually don't tend to cook multiple sources at the same time. I guess when you talk about the time commitment to doing this, that's one of the big factors where if you're cooking multiple types of meat, and multiple types of starch, I feel like you start having to double up the time that you're doing because it's unlikely that you're able to kind of cook everything at the same time. So you have like your 30 to 40 minutes for this one thing, and then you have to take it out and 30 to 40 minutes for the next thing and whatever, or like one meets on the grill, one meets in the oven. uh I tend to just look at so I do a, I would do a Sunday and a Wednesday or a Saturday, Wednesday type thing like you suggested. And the first half of the week, I would usually use one starch one protein combo. And then in the second half of the week, I would use a different starch and a different protein combo. And that just seemed to work the most streamlined for me. Yeah. question because what I'm what I'm alluding to is I think at the end of the week we're going to end up with effectively the same amount of things. So let's say with your approach, you know, Sunday to Monday, Sunday to Wednesday or whatever would would lunch and dinner be nearly identical? Let's call it like chicken, potato, chicken, potato and veg. So in theory, mean, maybe if I was living alone, that would be the case. But given that there are family and other people that depend on me, I'm primarily prepping for lunch for sure, and then possibly making that into a second meal that isn't dinner. So maybe it's like I'm preparing chicken, rice, and veggies in the oven on a tray, whatever. And that becomes a meal at, say, 11 AM and at or 3pm. So I'm eating the same thing, those two meals, but then dinner is kind of up in the air. And that's one that is variable based on what my family is having. an example there might be like, Hey, the kids want cheeseburgers and, and so I'll call it mashed potatoes or something along those lines. And so I'm like, okay, well, I need to cook cheeseburgers and mashed potatoes for the kids. So for me, what that becomes is a burger with likely without a bun, likely without cheese, but it really depends on where we are in prep. Because I've also talked about this before on previous podcasts where the beginning of prep or even call it off season might have two burgers with cheese, with a bun, with mashed potatoes and whatever. And then as prep goes on, it's like the two cheeseburgers with the bun become two cheeseburgers with no bun. Then it becomes two cheeseburgers with only one piece of cheese on the two burgers and no bun. And then it's like, Okay, two burgers with no cheese and no bun, and then it's two burgers with no cheese, no bun. And instead of mashed potatoes, it's a baked potato. And like, so there's these different kind of processes that you go through eliminating the things that are adding extra calories that aren't providing you a bunch of benefit. And so what those precise prep meals look like, gonna change over time as the need for calories decreases. So in that case of the family eating burgers, of course it would depend where I am in the prep. but it's likely that if they're having cheeseburgers for me, I'm cooking the burger up. At some point I'm not having the bun. I may or may not have the cheese and then the potato source needs to get modified. So the mashed potatoes, I probably will still eat mashed potatoes. Like I'm not gonna cook a separate type of potatoes, but maybe I extract my potatoes out before adding the butter and the milk and all of these things. And I, for me, it's like, okay, I had a little bit of skim milk and maybe like. tablespoon of butter or something like that. Whereas the rest of the mashed potatoes has like three tablespoons of butter and whole milk or cream or something along those lines. So I think you just you can take the meal that you're creating for the family and you can kind of pair it down to make it fit whatever your needs are. Absolutely. I'm really glad that we paused there for you to for you to explain that because you did so very, very wonderfully. What I was originally getting at in my question, which I'll just cover something that I would typically do was to like two meats, two starches and two to four vegetables. My lunches Monday through Friday would be the one one of those. And my dinners would be the same. But if we wanted to be a little bit more time efficient, and only cook one thing at a time. We just have the same lunch and dinner Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Let's call it chicken rice, broccoli. then Thursday, what comes after Thursday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Let's say we do like a sirloin rice and whatever, whatever, like kimchi, something like that. At the end, by the time you get to Saturday, you're still having like six meals of this, six meals of that. It's just whether you do the same meal. two times per day change after three days or, you know, one per day over six. right. Yeah. So I think like, I don't think either is better, right? It's like I said, right now I'm personally doing the, what would be the latter, having the same lunch and dinner, but for numerous years I would do the former, right? Where I would have a different lunch and dinner, but consistently, you know, throughout the week. So I think it's whatever works for you, you know, what amount of variation you need to keep your head in the game. And then I would say no more than that. uh while you have again a lofty ambitious, you know, body composition related pursuit. Yeah. I'll just throw one more example in. Cause a lot of times, you know, I've had people friends that be comment and be like, wait, you're dieting and you're, you're having spaghetti bolognese or something along those lines. And it's like at home, we might make the kids are like, Hey, I spaghetti bolognese for dinner. And so I might make up a huge, uh, tray of beef, a ground beef and throw, you know, some, some calories, some tomato sauce in there or something like that. And then when I serve it to the kids, it's like a little bit of beef. and a lot of pasta and like some butter on there and like some Parmesan cheese and whatever. And it's like the whole thing that you would want for me that turns into a huge portion of beef and tomato sauce and maybe some pasta like dry pasta with nothing on it. And so it's like, it's not perfect. doesn't, it doesn't satisfy necessarily the precise nature of exactly what you would want if maybe you were living alone without kids and a family and stuff. But given the constraints of what you have, being able to take a larger portion of call it 96 for 93, seven meat with some tomato sauce, which is for the most part, just water and tomatoes. If you're not getting one that's like high in sugar or something like that, then then yeah, I mean, you're able to make that meal into something that is compatible with your goals, even if from the outside, it might look at like it wouldn't be. Yeah, and I think the ultimately the most important thing, right, that we're breaking down here when people will say things like that. What are the results that you are that your approach is currently providing? Right. We all know what an optimal let's let's say an ideal range of fat loss per week is or what we will use as a proxy, which is half a percent to one percent total body mass reduction per week. If you're falling within that threshold, and your approximate rate of loss per week works with your timeline by the time you want to be done, et cetera, et cetera, then leverage flexibility to your nature, right? Like Brian's using here, but I bet Brian, right? Let's say you're dieting and you're not meeting your minimum threshold rate of loss, right? It's not working. Are you going to be like, well, I'm going to have the pasta tonight, you know, even though my body weight hasn't gone down in like nine days, you wouldn't because you're like, I wouldn't. this endeavor that I'm after, my current approach isn't working, I'm just gonna continue doing the same thing, like no, you would pivot. So it's like almost everything we always talk about, contextually dependent in this context upon results. Yeah, where you are in your diet and then what's required of you at that point. Cause like to that same example in the beginning, I may have been able to have more pasta, maybe some Parmesan cheese on it, et cetera. But over the course of the diet, the Parmesan cheese goes, then the amount of pasta goes and still the meat portion more or less stays the same because we know when it's diet, when we're dieting that it's really important that you hit a minimum threshold of protein. Exactly. Now, one thing that I think what we'll touch on next is because I think it's really relevant at this point. Another approach that sometimes people use is we're making dinners fresh, very similar to like Brian said, but with him and his family. And then we cook extra. And then we have lunch the next day that was the same meal as dinner the night before. Like that's pretty common. We just call that like leftovers, right? um I don't particularly love this approach because there's too many variables, right? We don't know how much leftover there is going to be. Maybe the kids are hitting some growth spurt and they start eating a lot more. And now your lunch, you're short on your protein by like, I don't know, 30 grams, something like that. And it leaves us leading back to one of the first things I said at the beginning of the episode, more variables. and the more decisions we need to make in a day, the less successful we will be over time. So it's an approach that people commonly use, but I think it unfortunately doesn't work out as well as people think. And it's literally because of just extra variables every single day. Can I throw in a question that wasn't on our outline real quick? So what strategies do you use with clients when they're kind of deeper into this process and they have their structured meals that are planned out, but they're finding that they're getting really hungry between meals. uh know, it, is it, know, try and ignore it and drink some water, see if that will fill you up, you know, have an electrolyte drink with some element. go for a walk, like kind of what are the top strategies that you use to kind of curb some of that hunger when people are deeper into the dieting stage? So I would say it depends on our, really how lean we are, right? um If we're pretty lean for a male, let's call it like we're 11%, you know, for like lifestyle lean for a woman, let's call it about like 20, something like that. um The first thing I'm gonna start doing is shifting around foods to more voluminous foods. So if someone's still having a banana, I'm like, you don't have a banana anymore. Now you have strawberries, right? If someone's still eating rice, you don't eat rice anymore. We eat quinoa or a boiled potato or a winter squash or something like that. If someone's having carrots, you don't eat carrots anymore. You eat squash now. So like, that's the first thing I'm going to typically comb through is what medium to high density foods are in the diet that we can replace with like low density foods. One of the things I found effective is to just snack on vegetables between meals. And I know you just kind of food on carrots. But like, one of the things that I would always find effective is shit, there's like three hours till my next meal, I'm really hungry, let me knock out like a carrot or two here or like make a pot of broccoli or something along those lines. And I'll just have these extra calories, maybe I'll cut them off of the meal when they come. Or I'll just be like, hey, I had a few carrots, it's like 20 or 30 calories, like I'm not like super stressed. Yeah, I mean, I think something we said like a lot earlier in the episode when we were talking about vegetables around that, like seven to 800 gram threshold. Anyone who's really at that threshold in the diet and eating that much, unless like. Unless you're like getting on stage or something like that, if you're actually eat, I mean, let's let's say we have let's let's make it pretty simple, three meals per day, plus like a post workout, right? We're not having vegetables in our post workout. So we're taking that 800 and we're dividing it by three, right? That's what to like 275 ish grams of vegetables per per meal You're gonna be rather satiated unless you have like an insane amount of Cardiovascular activity or something like that. But then again, I'm gonna look at like rate of loss. Are we cruising on a rate of loss? Let's put some more food in there are certain times where like hunger is just part of the game, you know, and, and I hate to say this, but just dealing with it. But there's kind of like the two sides of hunger, there's like the psychological hunger, and then there's like the actual physical, like that that pointing feeling like that digging into your stomach that you can like feel inside. um It's it's a feeling. But one of the things that's very strange with hunger, I mean, Maybe I shouldn't say hunger is a feeling. think hunger is a sensation, right? And I'm, you know, could be a little bit wrong. There's oftentimes we have feelings and or sensations that do not need to be acted upon, right? Like I'm sure at work, right? One of your coworkers pisses you off and you have like a feeling that you hate them and want to tell them like how fucking stupid they are in front of the office. But you don't do that because it would be like, Culturally unacceptable for you to do that and your job is probably at stake But hunger is one of these weird kind of things where it's like fuck. I'm hungry. It's bad I need to do something about it where Oftentimes it really isn't I mean eventually it will get there. Don't get me wrong like hunger can get Incredibly high. I I mean you can fucking die from it, right? But it's also typically corresponding with a very good rate of loss as long as food is adequately selected. Yeah. I actually. I like to think back and try to get in touch with the evolutionary side of where we came from and thinking about all of the famines that have occurred over time. And I sort of just try to embrace hunger. it's not something that everyone can do, but I think one of the things that's really helped me is that I've done a series of three-day fasts throughout my life. I've done it a few times. If you ever do that, or it's just like a three day water fast, what you'll find is that the first day is really, really hard and you feel awful. The second day is maybe even harder than the first day. And then the third day is like a state of euphoria and you're not like hungry at all anymore. And you have this insane energy and it's crazy. And going through those first two days kind of allows you to put things in perspective with hunger. Like, first of all, we're in for most part, the first world or at least some sort of country that has access to food. So it's not like we're going to die of hunger. So I think embracing that hunger and being like, hey, this is something that I am going to prove that I am stronger than this and kind of reframing the way you look at hunger instead of like, I'm hungry, ping, ping, ping, go get food immediately. It's kind of like, okay, I am hungry. Let me accept that I am hungry. Okay, I've accepted it. now let me kind of just move on with life and be hungry. And uh it seems subtle, but being able to change that framing I think really helps as well. It's like an acceptance thing, right? Like there's not every single aspect of life is sunshine and rainbows, right? And there's often things that there's, I don't even want to call it that struggle because it's, feel like that's, struggle is like a bigger term to use, but if you have a lofty or ambitious goal or you're trying to get somewhere new in life, like there's typically some sort of obstacle that you will need to overcome to get it. More often than not, dealing with that discomfort and achieving that goal will give you immense more satisfaction than succumbing to the immediate response of, I'm hungry, I need to do something about it, and then being unhappy with your decision two hours later. Yeah, there's self-efficacy in it for sure and being able to kind of accept it and overcome it. And then also just remember that it's temporary. Like it's literally not as if we're in the times of Pharaoh and there's legitimate famine where you're going to potentially die. Like you are hungry and it's okay that you're hungry because if you're really feeling like you're gonna die, there's probably food in your cupboard that you can go eat. ah it's not the end of the world. And one uh final part on this, because I do want to get to like a couple more bullet points. I don't want this to sound insensitive at all, because I by no means do I mean it as such. The more body fat that you have. The better that you are literally physiologically prepared to deal with that hunger, because that's why it's stored there in the first place. Like going back to Brian's evolutionary standpoint. When you have body fat, it's there as a surplus energy source. in time of when there is not adequate energy intake. So you are very well prepared to deal with the hunger with your adipose stores. Okay, some of the final parts I have here, how much time your schedule dictates that you need to be away from home directly correlates to how much you need to plan, prepare and take with you. um For example, let's say you're someone like I know people, government contractors, they don't work eight hour days, they work 10 hour days. So it might be like work is from 6am. to 4 p.m., we leave work, we train around like five, we're home at 6.30, 6.45, like dinner at seven. You're gone for 13 hours of the day, right? So we need to take, let's assume we're gonna eat breakfast in the morning, we might need this meal structure breaks down a little bit from the one we talked about throughout the rest of episode, but you might need like a late morning snack, lunch, and then you're probably gonna need like a pre-workout something because training it, What did I say? Five, five, five, 30. When you ate at noon, probably too much of a time period in there. And you're going to need a amount of food and preparation to be successful because of that sheer duration of time that you are gone. Mm-hmm. Um. And think that was actually the last one I had. The final one there was a note that you added. yeah. Yeah. I was just gonna say, let's share our personal anecdotes and how we go about our own kind of food prep. And I think I've more or less shared like my kind of views on that. Yeah, I mean, I try not to interject my personal preferences too much in this because I am very well aware that I am an external outlier. Like I am a food professional, a nutrition coach. My fiance is a food professional, a nutrition coach. We never eat meals together. um I am hopeful in the future when we have a family, we can kind of circle back on this, but... um It's different. don't think it would be overly helpful, right? And I've said this on the podcast before. Years ago, let's call it like 2019, 2020, whatever, I made the decision that I will sacrifice those desires and pleasures of food or whatever to become very successful in my coaching business. And then at some point in the future, I will fix whatever disorder you know, sort of things that I've created through my pursuit of having a stable career, providing for a future family, et cetera, et cetera. So I just I don't know how helpful or realistic some of mine are um because of that. Right. Like my my world revolves around food, kind of. But it's very like transactional. Like I would never like I'm hungry right now. But there's no way I would ever go eat something else. Right. Like one thing I told to myself with this prep is The days that we are home, the days that we are in control, they will be perfect days for four months straight. And I would never expect that of a client of mine, but there's no doubt in my mind that I will have four months straight of absolutely perfect days. So, um and I guess one final thing that I would say there. The reason that I do that specifically is so that there is no room for interpretation or justification of anything. Because the second you justify something one time, you open that door, right? Or it's a dam and there's a little bit of crack in that dam now. The second time you come back to that situation, how do you decide whether to justify it again or to not justify it, right? And like I was explaining with a... client who was like a friend, you know in the PB days and I was like, know me like you've spent years with me my What do you call it? The fuck is that called? It's not wherewithal it is Willpower sorry, it's willpower like my willpower is not I do not have some special willpower like you You saw me during the CrossFit days and stuff like when workouts got too hard that I would fucking quit It's a certain thing like I'm not special in that regard um I Save myself from my what would you call it? My like inadequacies through black and white sort of thing like there's nothing in those house That would tempt me because I don't want to have that That internal battle so like I'm able to be successful through completely removing things that would deter me otherwise Yeah. I think the last thing I'll add is just that doing something this specific and potentially aggressive being the right word here changes your relationship with food a little bit. And where I am now three years out from the last time I did something this aggressive, my relationship with food is so different than it was during those periods of time and the way that I think about when I can eat and what I can eat, et cetera. And like one extreme example of that is like now I'm on a seriously intermittent fasting approach. Like I probably eat six hours a day on average. Like I eat from noon to six. It's kind of my plan. That is not how I would go about doing this. If I was doing what Aaron is doing, trying to optimize body composition to get as lean as possible and, and stand on stage or do a photo shoot or whatever that is. And so I've just kind of gravitated more toward this because it still allows me to eat large meals, which I enjoy. It allows me to eat some food choices that I wouldn't be able to eat if I was eating meals, you 12 hours a day or whatever. And so this structure has kind of come out of time. Like, you know, when I was doing the prep type stuff, Aaron was doing, I was eating from 8am to 7 or 8pm because I was having these small, very structured meals. And this new structure of intermittent fasting just seems to work with me and my lifestyle a little bit better. And I'm not trying to optimize anything. Like if anything, I'm just kind of happy to improve my cardio and maintain my weight performance and my muscle mass and things like that. And so the relationship with food and the way in which you go about incorporating the timing of your food consumption and your food choices will certainly uh change. perfectly put it's a very waxing wane along the ambition of your goal, right? And you get to a point where the goal's just like, hey, I'm happy, I'm healthy, I like how I look, and now I just wanna like enjoy other parts of life more, you're gonna flex with this a little bit and then you don't need to probably prepare 90 % of your meals. It can probably go down to like 70, maybe you meet up with friends post work. are on the weekends or something like that, but you have that, your ability to leverage that auto regulation, right? And then that's the most important thing. So like I said, in the beginning of episode, it's always contextual, right? um So hopefully this episode helps. Of course, as always, any follow-up questions, you guys can ping Brian or myself on Instagram. And will we record next week? You can be back from Cancun and stuff, or you're still gonna be traveling. I'll be back. uh I'll be back Sunday night. So we should be able to record Tuesday. We just need to figure out what we're talking about. Okay, easy, episode 190 coming next week,