my meal plan and some simple recipes

[xiang]

Hi all,

 

Recently I've been carefully tracking calories with myfitnesspal.com in an attempt to drop body fat from around 18% to a lean 8-12%. I've had moderate success, losing a bit under 1lb per week on a 3-400 calorie deficit. I'm also a diehard foodie, so there's this constant struggle to strike a balance between food that is satisfying and healthy. GB is the only fitness forum I frequent, and I've learned a lot here so this is my attempt to give back. I've been really happy with how my meal plans have evolved, and I want to share my experience in hopes that others can benefit. This might be a bit long-winded, but I love talking about food.

 

I'll preface by stating that I'm by no means an expert on nutrition; I'm just trying to adopt the best eating habits I can based on my schedule, budget, and preferences. Please assume that anything I say is just an educated guess. I have experimented with a fairly low carb paleo diet, and it didn't work out well for me. Now I aim for a sort of "semi-paleo" approach, with a preference for lean meats, vegetables and non-grain carb sources, with a few exceptions. My goal is to eat meals that are healthy, quick to prepare, and inexpensive. Here's an example of a day's meals:

 

Breakfast:

1 cup rice

1 stewed egg

50g stewed beef

 

Lunch:

1 cup greens

1 cup fibrous vegetables

200g boiled potato

200g lean beef

 

Workout:

20 grams dextrose

1.5 scoops whey

 

Dinner:

1/2 cup greens

1/2 cup fibrous vegetables

100g roast chicken

1 cup rice

 

This breaks down to roughly 1700 calories and works quite well for me. The lunch gets split into two servings, and it fills a 2 liter container to the brim while only providing about 700 calories. On non-workout days, I'll replace the workout nutrition with a light meal or snacks. I do all my shopping at the local farmer's market, which I visit once a week.

 

Anything that doesn't get measured by volume gets weighed on a food scale, and my macros are split fairly evenly, with a priority on getting at least 0.8 grams per pound of bodyweight every day. My approach is to cook everything separately to make measurements easy. Meat gets cooked by itself and heavily salted to flavor the carb source and the vegetables. Everything gets measured and then mixed together. My staple foods include lean beef, chicken legs, turkey legs, pork loin, all manner of vegetables, boiled potatoes, parboiled or brown rice, and low fat dairy.

 

MEAT:

 

Many meats can be cooked with the exact same seasonings. Aside from liberal amounts of salt, my two favorite seasoning blends are a mixture of garlic powder and rosemary, or a blend of garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, and chili powder. You can add black pepper or additional herbs to switch things up, but I like to keep things super simple. As for cooking, slow and low is the answer. The meat will be super tender and easy to chop up for measurement and mixing. Just season your meat, cover it, put it in a toaster/conventional oven at 275-300, and cook for 2-4 hours depending on the thickness of the meat. For both chicken and turkey legs, I peel the skin back, season, roll the skin back up so the meat doesn't dry out, and discard the skin after cooking. I find that large turkey legs take the longest, and I cook them for no less than 4 hours. Minimal prep, all powdered spices, set it and forget it.

 

You can do the same thing with a slow cooker. For pork loin in the slow cooker, I've had success with a mixture of garlic powder, soy sauce, mustard powder, and a bit of vinegar. My rule of thumb is to never use more than 3 or 4 seasonings. Keep it simple, and when you find something you like, stick to it.

 

For beef, I'm a purist. I use a technique that comes courtesy of Alton Brown's very first episode of Good Eats. Basically you cover a piece of steak with kosher salt and let it sit, which serves to both salt the meat and tenderize it. 20-45 minutes should do it, depending on the thickness. Then you wash the salt off, dry the meat, sear both sides on a hot cast iron pan and finish it off in a hot oven (I use a toaster oven). The oven bit works especially well for thick cuts like london broil, and the salting can tenderize even cheap, lean cuts.

 

Once it's cooked to your liking, usually 6-10 minutes, you tent it with foil and let it rest for 10 minutes. Then I take a sharp knife and cut it into small, thin slices across the grain to make it easy to mix with my vegetables. I have this down to a science, and it's perfect, tender steak every time. If you find unseasoned steak boring, a generous helping of brown mustard is perfect and mixes well with the vegetables.

 

CARBS:

 

I use mostly russets and parboiled rice because they're tasty and not obscenely high GI. I know there are better options than russets, but at roughly 4 bucks for a ten pound bag, they are an unbeatable value. Parboiled rice comes at a bit of a premium but I find it more palatable than brown rice and I think it's pretty similar nutritionally. If you eat rice, you really need a rice cooker. I get sick of sweet potatoes easily, but if I want to spend some extra money I'll get taro or boniato for a denser, more exotic tuber.

 

FATS:

 

I am still in the paleo camp here and I only cook with coconut oil or ghee. I use them sparingly since I get most of my fat from meat, but homemade ghee is glorious, fatty gold, and has a special place in my heart right next to bacon. It has a high smoke temp and tastes like croissants. I make it from organic butter from Trader Joe's, which costs about 5 bucks and will easily last a month if you're counting calories. This is also a great way to add fat to a seafood meal.

 

VEGETABLES:

 

I used to hate on frozen vegetables until I took Josh Naterman's advice, and I'm so glad I did. Any sacrifice in taste and texture is more than made up for in reduced prep time and convenience, not to mention cost, and because it's fresh frozen, they are nutritionally equivalent or even superior to the "fresh" vegetables in the produce section. I buy 2lb bags for $2.50-3.00 each and my favorites are turnip greens with turnips, spinach, california blend and stir-fry blend. Eating large amounts of vegetables helps fill you up without making a dent in your calorie intake. Seriously, eat your veggies!

 

ASIAN COOKING:

 

I also have a few tricks that I picked up growing up in an Asian household. They are decidedly non-paleo but don't quite fall into "cheat meal" territory. The first is the stew that I use for my breakfast meals. It's a heavily spiced, aromatic broth popular in some parts of China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_stock). You should be able to get the ingredients for this at an Asian grocer, and the beauty is that it lasts indefinitely so long as you boil it on a regular basis. Just add water as it cooks down. It does contain sugar but I think the amount of carbs it adds is negligible since you're just using it to cook other things. I use it to stew lean stew beef, chicken, and peeled, hard-boiled eggs. The eggs turn brown and after a few days of soaking they are amazing. I absolutely can't start a day without eggs, and this way I don't have to cook them in the morning.

 

My other Chinese secret is shacha sauce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shacha_sauce), which is marketed in English as "barbecue sauce" and is basically crushed shrimp and fish in chili oil. It should be relatively low calorie if you scoop out the solids and leave the oil. It does contain MSG, and it smells funky, but it's so good I don't care. If you're that put off by the idea of MSG, fish sauce is an option. Additionally, anyone cooking Chinese food should have, at the very least, soy sauce and shaoxing cooking wine (the brown stuff). There's really no substitute for shacha though, and I use it to make two very simple dishes:

 

The first is my take on beef and broccoli. Simply get some lean ground beef, cook it thoroughly (I like my ground beef extra browned), add shacha, soy sauce, wine, and chopped, steamed gailan (Chinese broccoli). You could probably use any dense vegetable, but I like gailan because it's cheap and easy to cook. Making mixed dishes is a little less convenient when counting calories, but you can use myfitnesspal.com to record custom recipes and just add all the ingredients you use. You can make this in 20 minutes and have enough for days. I usually top it off with sriracha, because that stuff is the bomb.

 

The next is pretty similar; just stir fry some chicken with shacha, soy sauce, wine, sriracha and cauliflower. I love cauliflower with sriracha and/or shacha. For chicken stir-fry, it's common to coat the chicken with a thin paste of wine and starch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velveting) to keep the chicken from drying out. If you're super paleo you can get tapioca starch instead of corn starch. I highly recommend giving it a try if you're going to do Chinese cooking. It works well, but it's not absolutely necessary.

 

 

CHEATS:

 

As a final side note, I should point out that I consume more alcohol than any fitness minded person should. I try to minimize the ill effects by increasing the low intensity cardio (incline treadmill, another nugget of wisdom from Josh) and eating mostly protein while I'm drinking. It throws off my measurements since the calories are non-nutritive, but I figure as long as I'm getting enough protein, I can sacrifice some food calories. It's definitely not optimal, but it is possible to lose fat and keep muscle even if you have a booze tooth. Obviously you'll do well to avoid heavy beers. I go for bourbon on the rocks, vodka/gin with club soda and lime, or red wine.

 

If you've taken the time to read this, I hope I've given you some ideas for making your meals more efficient or more appealing. I have a lot of other good recipes, but I think most people want the simplest, quickest, most cost effective approach, so that's what I've tried to illustrate here. Ultimately I think anyone should be able to cook food that is both healthy and personally satisfying without spending too much time or money. Feel free to ask any questions or share some ideas of your own.