Meal Prepping

Meal prepping sucks!!  There is no debating that.

It is a huge first in the path to getting results, but it is also one of the most time consuming steps.  Meal Prepping is also one of the most common trip ups when it comes to changing one's lifestyle.

I hear this all the time and I myself even have weeks where I just don't want to do it.  Some of the most common complaints are:

  1. Making a mess out of the kitchen and then having to take even longer to clean up.
  2. Spending hours on Sunday (most common) just to meal prep food.
  3. Making huge batches of the same food that you don't even want to look at anymore.
  4. Making too much food and in the end, just throwing most of it away.

We agree that you need to have a plan and be able to prep your healthy food in order to have control of your life.  So what steps can you take to counter the above complaints?

  1.  First, no one likes a kitchen that looks like a bomb went off.  Clean as you go.  Rinse things off, put dishes in the dishwasher, hand wash quickly before you start the next recipe or meal.  Even better would be to start cleaning while the next meal is currently cooking.

Meal Prepping Time

2.  To counter the hours spent meal prepping, simply make a time limit.  If you don't like meal prepping for hours, then don't.  Set the limit for 1-2 hours.  Do this 2-3 times a week and meal prepping won't be so time consuming and you won't feel like you are wasting an entire day.  I myself really struggle getting my veggies in.  I know this is an issue so I spend 2-3 nights prepping a head of cauliflower (or two) and some broccoli.  The prep does not take too long (about 30 min each), but I always have veggies at hand each day.

Meal Prepping Burn Out

3.  To attack the meal prep burn out issue, you really just have to realize that meal prepping does not mean you have to eat chicken, broccoli and rice at every meal.  Mix things up, add different spices, and make smaller batches of each.  Try picking a different recipe each week (or every two weeks).  This way you can have your fast and easy recipes at your disposal but you can still have some more elaborate (and tasty) meals that you can treat yourself with.

4.  Create meals with specific problems to solve.  For example, if breakfast is your most challenging meal to eat healthy, plan and meal prep 5 breakfasts rather then prepping for all meals.  My biggest problem (outside of veggies) is always lunch.  My breakfast is a fast and easy super shake and I am home for dinner.  During the day, I am at our Strive Fitness and Performance facility and have nothing for food except take out.  In order to counter this, my only focus is on getting a great lunch planned and prep for the week.

 

[EXPERT TIP]

One of the first steps to success is to figure out if you want CONVENIENCE, ELABORATE RECIPES or A MIX.  I 100% hate meal prepping.  My vote is for Convenience.  I break up my meals into macro nutrients (protein, carbs and fats).  If you don't know what these are, feel free to drop us a line and we can have a consultation.  Basically, I break up each meal into these three component and (with my goals in mind) I make my meals.  I pick one from each category and prep.

Maybe you want to make legit recipes.  Go for it!!!  Just make sure you are making good ones.

Others may want to mix this up.  Maybe you go for convenience for when you are busy and make elaborate meals when you have a bunch of time or are with your family.

The point of this expert tip is that whichever you choose, it needs to fit your lifestyle.  No one really wants to be making 3 different meals for 3 different people, each time you cook (all the mothers out there are shaking their heads right now in agreement).

 

Committed to your success,

 

Derek Ledwidge

Trying for weight loss is frustrating. For the overwhelming majority, it’s just beyond discouraging. After so many attempts, you give up. You lose hope. You accept your ultimate and imminent defeat. Here at Strive Fitness and Performance, we here this all the time and the truth is, people do not have to feel defeated when it comes to weight loss.

Weight Loss Diets are a joke. And if you think that trying the latest and greatest fad diet will finally be the answer to your weight loss journey, you’re wrong. Every diet does work to a certain degree, for a little while. They force you to monitor your food, your calorie intake, your macros, and even limit the types of food you can eat. In the short term, yes you’ll lose some weight. But there are reasons why you’ve failed, and why you keep failing.

Diets Are Unrealistic

You’re excited. You’ve decided that today is the day. You’re going on a diet. You’re going to prep all your meals so that instead of having cravings and hitting up the drive-thru on the way home from work you can start eating healthy well-balanced meals and finally start losing weight. This may last for a few days, maybe even a week, but what happens when you forget your lunch and Janet from HR brings in donuts or you have a family get-together over the weekend? You’ve got to eat, right? I’m guessing that this new diet of yours, probably doesn’t include donuts as a preferred food choice. And now that you’ve eaten three of them, you feel awful and BOOM! Your diet is dead.

The point – is that things happen. You get busy, you get stuck in traffic, you miss meals, you end up eating your kids' mac and cheese instead of your dinner, etc. And unless you’re a billionaire who has a personal chef and gets to eat organic chicken farm to table every day, with a side of garden fresh organic kale then you’re stuck figuring out whether or not you want to eat left over spaghetti, or a frozen pizza like the rest of us.

Diets Turn Into Binge Eating

The first step to an unsuccessful diet is creating a lifestyle you and your body is not used to. For example, if you don’t regularly workout and eat healthily, then going from grabbing the most convenient food when you’re hungry, to having to cook all your meals, and hitting the gym after work when you don’t know what you’re doing is doomed. Breaking bad habits can be hard. And breaking them all at once can be extremely overwhelming. If your body is accustomed to ingesting 4,000 – 5,000 calories per day of crappy food, going to an extreme weight loss diet of lets say 1,000 or so calories will get results for the short term.  Your body will respond with massive cravings and a slower metabolism to boast.  When you give in to those cravings, or even just start to eat a little more.  You will then gain weight, without even trying.

HELLO YO-YO DIETING!!!

There Are No Quick Fixes 

Calorie deficits or the exclusion of certain foods is how the majority of fad diets typically work. Restricting yourself to eating specific foods, and restricting others, can work, of course, however that will never work in the long run if you’re trying to live a well-balanced healthy life that’s actually sustainable. Read more about how "fad" diets fail for long term results.  By restricting certain types of foods like carbs, fat, sodium, chest, milk, or trying to keep track of everything you eat and replacing it with unhealthy alternatives, you’re putting a band-aid on a problem, that stems much deeper and that requires a multi-faceted solution.

The Takeaway

Taking small steps and hitting realistic milestones in your health and fitness, is the only way you can change your lifestyle, obtain weight loss and avoid making the mistakes you’ve made in the past.   Think of it.  If you aim for changing one thing at a time, more than likely, you will accomplish this and then probably two other good habits.  You think it is amazing (and it is) because you just did 3 things that you never thought possible.  Now flip that scenario and have a goal of changing 4-5 things.  You still accomplish those same 3 good habits.  This time however, you see yourself as a failure because you did not accomplish your goal of 4-5 things.  See where I am going here?

When we are trying to change our lifestyle and focus on weight loss, it is going to be very very hard.  It order to accomplish everything in the long run, you will need to have some positive results.  If you focus on accomplish and succeeding one step at a time, you will see all the positive and none of the negative things.  I promise!!!

 

Hidden Calories Destroy Weight Loss

Weight loss can be frustrating.  Many times you think you are following the plan perfectly but are not the results you want because of hidden calories that you do not even notice.

It has to be the diet right?

What do most people do in this situation?

Most end up stopping the lifestyle change all together or go back to their initially bad habits because they think nothing is ever going to happen.

You know you’re not eating the ‘wrong’ foods, and you’re sure that you’ve been hitting your fat loss macros.

So what gives?

You’re probably consuming hidden calories that you don’t even know about…

hidden calories

  1.  The ‘Un-Tracked Calories’

Have you ever been offered something to eat by a friend and thought, “that looks good, I’ll track it later” only to forget when you get home? Or upon reaching the day’s end with a slew of leftover macros, you decide to throw caution to the wind and eat roughly what you’ve got left?

Chances are, neither of these situations will make a huge difference to overall progress, but if you’ve hit a wall and you’re stumped and confused as to why you’re not progressing, then these untracked or loosely estimated calories could be the culprit.

“That looks good, I’ll track it later

This is why it’s so important to log everything, and not just rely on your intuition.  This is especially true the closer you get to your goal.

2.  You Eat Out Too Often

Eating out can (and should) be part of a flexible diet. After all, what kind of life is it if you always have to say no to friends and turn down invites to dinner?

But the thing is, there’s a lot of room for error when eating out. It’s not easy to accurately estimate calories at restaurants, and the larger and more junk-like the meal, the further off you’re likely to be.  Not to mention you have almost zero control or knowledge on how the meal was made, how much it was made with etc.  This is especially true with beginners (people beginning their new habits generally do not know how to intuitively eat just yet)

You’ve got strategies you can use to help you hit your macros when eating out, such as asking for sauces and dressings on the side, picking simple dishes to make estimation easier, requesting that meats be grilled rather than fried, and looking at nutritional data on websites. But chefs can vary in how they prepare your dish, and you still don’t have total control over how your food is cooked.

3.  The Macros are WRONG

Shock, horror! How can macros be wrong? Aren’t there laws about the information that goes on food packages?

When you learn that labeling laws allow for “caloric rounding”…

There are, but manufacturers are sneaky and there are loopholes they can get through. Take the popular sweetener Splenda for example:

While it’s listed as calorie-free, each packet actually contains around 1 gram of carbohydrate and 5 calories! This means that if you have a couple in your morning oatmeal, one pack in every coffee you drink throughout the day, a few more in some Greek yogurt, and so on, you can rack up an extra 15 to 20 grams of carbs and close to 100 calories.

The same goes for calorie-free sauces, spray butter, sugar-free jello, and similar items. The suggested serving sizes are often so small that even though the label says ‘calorie-free,’ but the actual amount you have is closer to 15 or 20 calories. While there’s no need to ban these items, you need to realize that they do still have calories. If you eat a lot of them (as many dieters do in an attempt to combat cravings) then your calorie count will start to add up.

Be on the lookout for sugar-free gum, diet drinks, and even some protein bars too, as these can often list ‘net carbs’ which is the total carb content minus the fiber. To hit macros precisely, you should be tracking the total carb content, fiber and all.

Hidden Calories

4.  Drinking Your Calories

Coffee doesn’t need to be counted in your macros if it’s black. If not, you’ve got to count it.

We’ll leave out coffees like cappuccinos, mochas, and frappuccinos that obviously have calories in them for the moment, but did you know your plain old coffee made at home can increase your calorie intake without you realizing it?

When you add anything to your coffee, be it milk, half-and-half, or other assorted varieties of creamer, that’s calories you’re adding in. These macros should be counted.

5.  Mindless Snacking

When people mindlessly snack, they really do not even pay attention how much they are eating.  They eat 2 oreoes here and a handful of popcorn there and so on.  This causes a massive amount of calories because everything adds up (not too mention, "snacks" are usually not that healthy).  Here at Strive Fitness and Performance we do not use the word "snack".  Most people think of "snacks" as an apple or a piece of cheese.

Instead we want to think of each moment we eat as a meal.

How would you make the "snack" into a meal?

By counting the macros in the meal.  Take the apple.  It is a carb.  So what is missing?  Fats and proteins are the missing component in the equation.  In order to make this "snack" into a more nutritious meal, we could add some peanut butter (fat) and a protein shake (protein).  Now not only are we getting enough food, but we are also more full, which eliminates cravings in the long run.

6.  You Are Eating From A Bag

We’re all guilty of this one:

You eat a handful of trail mix, nuts, chips etc.  No measuring, no portion control.  This may sound harmless, but

A.  You have no idea how much you actually just put into your mouth

B.  You never really stop with just one handful

C.  Think about how many mindless calories the many handfuls throughout the day will add up to.

 

Time to Get Super Strict?

So what are we saying? That you can never eat out? That you have to weigh your veggies to the precise gram? That you must enter every single packet of Sweet n’ Low into your tracking app?

No, not at all…unless you’ve hit a plateau.

Plateaus are going to happen during any fat loss diet, and the go-to step is generally to either reduce calories or add cardio so you stay in a deficit and carry on progressing.

However, if you’re already on low macros and struggling to see why your body isn’t changing in the way you want it to, the first step should be to make sure you’re being honest with yourself and not eating any hidden calories that aren’t being accounted for.

 

How To Make Your Own Effective Meal Plan For Fat Loss

You need a Meal Plan for fat loss.  You are on a diet. Whether you think so or not, it’s true. Your diet could consist of chicken nuggets, nachos, and diet soda. Or maybe it's a Muscle Milk for breakfast, pad thai for lunch, and frozen pizza for dinner. Whatever goes into your mouth on a regular basis is literally, your diet.

More often than not, people think that a diet is a resolve to all their health issues; that a 30-day challenge Detox or Strict Diet is the thing that is missing.  Many people believe that these challenges will finally get them the body they want (Read More HERE On Why This Is Not True).  They may survive this Detox or challenge and get the quick results. But what happens when the diet ends? If you are like most people, when the diet ends....The plan ends. You gain the weight back, you feel like shit, and you’re right back to where you started. I hear this same sad story over and over again. Most diets are just quick fixes. Limiting your food intake to grapefruits, high amounts of fat, or portion sizes that couldn’t feed a newborn, are unrealistic expectations and do nothing but set you up for failure.

Reaching your goals requires more than just a diet you practice intermittently when you feel like losing a few pounds. It requires an entire LIFESTYLE change, commitment, and most of all CONSISTENCY.

Watch the video below and read through this post to learn some helpful habits that you can instill easily into your lives and get the results you want without restricting yourself to insane limits.

 

1. Focus Your Carbs Around Your Workout

The Best Nutrition Meal Plan, starchy carbs

 

Over the last thirty years, the average American diet has increased by 500 calories per day, with nearly 80% of those added calories attributed to simple carbohydrates or sugar starches. The simple reason; packaged and processed foods are more easily accessible than ever and it’s cheap. Donuts, fries, pastries, pie, sodas, and chips flood grocery store aisles and provide a quick fix to your hunger.

So what should you do? Eat the right carbs is what.

Carbs can be distinguished into two main categories, simple and complex.

Simple carbohydrates are simply sugar and come in the form of glucose and fructose. Glucose raises blood sugar quickly and foods that are higher on the glycemic index (GI) has a greater impact on blood sugar.

Complex carbohydrates are the type of carbohydrates you should be eating. As opposed to simple carbohydrates, which is simply glucose and fructose, complex carbohydrates are composed of multiple sugar molecules that keep you fuller for longer. Foods like sweet potatoes, brown rice, whole-wheat grains, whole-wheat pasta, and butternut squash provide you with the proper nutrients you need to keep you satiated. When you’re full, you eat less.

Carbs help us have the energy for some awesome workouts and help with recovery after workout.  They are great for people looking to get that lean full look for summer.

2. Add More Quality Protein

The Best Nutrition Nutritonal Plan, Protein

 

Protein gets a lot of play in the media, for good reason.  Today, you are going to explore how protein is your friend when it comes to weight loss.

Protein helps you lose weight for a few main reasons:

3. Eat Less Starch And More Whole Grains

The Best Nutrition Meal Plan, Carbs

Starch is found in carbohydrates like white rice, white bread, and pasta. Starch is made of long chained sugar molecules, held together by a weak chemical bond. Once digested, they’re absorbed more quickly and will cause your blood sugar to spike, creating a roller coaster like we talked about earlier. The simple solution - replace them and eat more whole grains, complex carbs, vegetables, and fruit. Produce contains a ton of essential vitamins, minerals, and fiber to help your body function at a more optimal level. The average American intake of vegetables consists of just two well-known culprits; potatoes and iceberg lettuce. You need to diversify. Go to a local market that has fresh fruit and vegetables and try new things. You’d be surprised at how many pounds you can drop, by just cutting back on your starch intake and replacing it with quality sources of organic produce and whole grains.

4. Eat Your Veggies!!!

The Nutritional Meal Plan, Veggies

Greens, meaning any kind of “leafy” vegetable like spinach, kale, and lettuces, are awesome but you probably already know this.  Its our job to simply remind you 🙂

Greens are well known for being some of the healthiest foods on earth -- and there is good reason for this!

Studies show that eating 7 servings of these veggies a week can decrease your risk for cancer by 50%! While many nutrition experts disagree about which exact foods may be the healthiest, eating a lot of greens is the one thing that nearly all nutritionists agree on.

So with each meal, your focus should be on adding in a variety of vegetables (2 fists worth).  You may want to think about throwing extra greens in! Simple, right?

Greens...

 

Greens are high in VOLUME, but have a very LOW CALORIE DENSITY, so you can eat loads of them.  This means you can eat large portions of greens without consuming too many calories or gaining weight (which is ideal for any effective meal plan)

Greens (and all vegetables) help to “crowd out” other foods, especially junk food. For example, picture number of fries you could have for 100 calories versus the amount of kale you could have for the same calories.  Now, consider how full you would feel after eating each. This is an example of how your stomach responds to the feeling of “filling up” on high volume, low calorie foods. Your stomach works with your brain to turn off your hunger signals based on volume consumed, allowing you to eat fewer calories overall.

Greens of all kinds are definitely your friend. If you miss everything else in these lessons about nutrition, remember this: eat more greens! Add them to omelets and soup, toss them in a stir-fry, make big salads using them as a base, or cook them down and serve your other food right on top of them.

5. Fat Does Not Make You Fat 

The Best Nutrition Meal Plan, Fats

Out of all the macronutrients, (carbohydrates, protein, and fat) fat is the only one that does not cause insulin to release. Despite its villainous name, fat is only guilty by association. Most diet meal plans restrict fats and carbs all together (among other things).  Fat does not make you fat, carbohydrates and added sugars do. But with all the different types of fat, it can be confusing which ones you should include in your diet and which ones you should stay away from

Why Fats Don’t Make Us Fat?

One thing you may not know about fats is how they affect our energy, especially if we are training hard.

Omega-3 fatty acids are also considered a good or healthy fat as they help with inflammation, boost brain function, help fight heart disease, and even decrease signs of aging. Fish, walnuts, and avocados are great sources of omega-3 fatty acids. The easiest way to get your essential Omega 3 fatty acids is through supplementation. Opt for Fish Oil Or Krill Oil.

The Takeaway

Creating a healthier life to look good and feel great is more than just temporary change. All diets work to a certain degree short term. But the reality is that no diet is sustainable unless you make a complete life change. With so much misinformation on TV, the internet, and from misinformed friends it can be hard to pave a path through what’s good information and what’s just plain disinformation.

Rule Of Thumb:

  1. Protein and Veggies at every meal
  2. Try and Eat 4-5 Times a day
  3. Carbs After Your Workout
  4. Fats spread out through your meal....But watch the portions

If you want to know how to create your own EFFECTIVE  meal plan that is right for YOU!!! Watch the video below to create your own

Nutrition is awful.  It is confusing, frustrating and it is beyond annoying on how many different diets and nutritional theories there are out there.

As a nutritional coach, it is very hard to talk about nutrition here at Strive Fitness and Performance.  Why?  Because of all the new diets and fads coming out every other day.  The media has made it so hard for people to figure what to believe, people are willing to believe literally anything....See waist trainers...That is all.

Even though it is such a controversial issue in the world today, I actually love talking about nutrition with clients.  The main reason I love it, is because I can help people open their eyes a little at a time.

Below are the top 5 questions that I always get here at Strive.

 

Protein

  1. Do I really need that much protein

Well first let’s define “that much” because it is generally different on who is consuming it.  But more than likely the answer is yes, you do need a little bit more than what you probably had expected.

I would say about 75% of the people that come to Strive Fitness and Performance tend to be low on protein and high either in carbs or fats or both.

That being said, you do not need to be stuffing your face with protein every waking moment like a pro bodybuilder going through a prep.  A good recommendation from us here at Strive is anywhere between .7-1 gram per pound of body weight.  The more weight you want to lose, the lower you should be on the ratio.

Protein is huge when it comes to body composition change.  It helps us stay full while dieting, it has low calories, it helps us build lean muscle and it has the highest TEF (Thermic Effect of Food), which means it burns more calories during digestion (burn more calories by just eating).

 

Carbs

  1. Will carbs make you fat

Say it with me…Carbs are not the enemy.  They help with recovery and help you have kick ass workouts in the gym.

Here are my tips to follow with carbs…

  1. How many meals

How many meals fit into your life?  Perfect, eat that many meals and be happy.  Just make sure you are getting enough nutrients in.

The whole “you have to eat 6 small meals a day to keep your metabolism going strong”  is very false.  It turns out that the calorie intake a main factor in how your metabolism works.

This means you can help your metabolism go by eating 2 large meals, 3 medium meals or 5 smalls meals.  The biggest thing is consistency.  Whatever you can do consistently over the long run is what is going to matter for YOU.

Calories

  1. So How many calories should I be eating?

Sadly, this is a very hard question to answer over a blog, phone or email.  I would be a horrible coach if I said I had the perfect answer for you without taking the right steps.  Everyone we work with here at Strive is different.  They live different lives and they are coming to us at different states of mind and food intake.

If we are looking for a general approach on what should work in a perfect world, someone with a healthy metabolism would look like this.

Weight loss= 10-12x Bodyweight in calories

Muscle Gain = 14-16x Bodyweight in calories

In most cases, however, we do not live in a perfect world and many people have terrible metabolisms.

So most will tend to be at the 8-10x bodyweight range.  The important thing to remember is that we want to be at the highest range possible, while still losing weight.

This allows for more flexibility, better performance, better sustainability and of course better health.

The preferred option for us here at Strive is to start recording your intake either via food log or an app like myfitnesspal.  Do this for about a week but at very least 3 days.  After that time, you can get the average intake and see what your weight is doing during that time.  If you are losing weight, you are good, if you are gaining weight….eat less.

It is important to note, that with any REAL nutrition weight loss plan, it is a work in progress.  We will always need to make nutrition adjustments along the way.  One of the many reasons having a coach is so important.  Give use a call by clicking HERE and we can set up a free consultation.

  1. Can I skip Breakfast

To put it bluntly…If calories are in check, you do not need to eat breakfast technically.

There are some things to consider however,

If you have gone through the roller coaster of yo-yo dieting, if you “eat clean” but have plateaued and are starting to not see results.  Take control of your eating, nutrition and lifestyle  and set up a free consultation with one of our nutrition coaches.  No strings attached…Let’s get you started on the right path.

Strive Fitness is a Customized Training Program designed specifically for people over 30 years of age. A Personal Training Gym in Clinton Township, Michigan
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