Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Zach Coen on Easy Ways to Make Better (and Cheaper) Meal Plans

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey there and welcome to Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for an interview on how to make better and cheaper meal plans, a topic that I'm always getting asked about and I will always get asked about. How do I make better meal plans? And I brought on one of Legion's athletes, Zach Cohn, to share some of his favorite tips for making delicious meals and making healthy foods taste better and making them easier to prepare and saving money on them. And in case you are not familiar with Zach, he is a registered dietitian and nutritionist who shares recipes and educational nutrition content and meal planning tips on social media. He has a big and growing following over on TikTok and Instagram. And his content is mostly about how to incorporate foods you actually like into

Starting point is 00:00:55 your meal plans and how to make food planning and prepping simple and fun so you can stay on track and make progress without breaking the bank or breaking your palate. And in this chat, Zach and I talk about practical tips for snacking and how to incorporate more vegetables into your diet in an enjoyable way. We talk about making your own versions of certain store-bought items and pre-prepared foods. Zach shares some crafty shopping tips to save money. He talks about crockpot cooking, which is something he's really big on these days, fitness-friendly desserts, and what to avoid, and more. Before we get into it, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and want 125 of my favorite quick, easy, and delicious fitness-friendly recipes, you want to get a copy of my flexible dieting

Starting point is 00:01:54 cookbook, The Shredded Chef. Because here's the deal. You don't need to follow a bland, boring bodybuilder diet to get into the best shape of your life. You can eat delicious home-cooked meals you love without living in the kitchen, struggling with hard-to-prepare recipes, or overspending on expensive ingredients. And the Shredded Chef is the shortcut because it has 13 delicious and easy-to-make breakfast recipes like BLT Eggs Benedict, Huevos Rancheros, high-protein banana oat cakes, and more. It has 11 mouth-watering salads and dressings like a spicy Santa Fe taco salad, grilled Mediterranean salad with sun-dried tomato vinaigrette, creamy jalapeno cilantro dressing, and more. It also has 14 low-calorie snacks that

Starting point is 00:02:44 you'll actually want to eat like blueberry coconut pancake batter smoothie, maple walnut protein muffins, peanut butter protein swirl brownies, and more. There are also 16 succulent beef and pork recipes for savory lunches and dinners like beef stroganoff, one of my personal favorites, beef lo mein, parmesan crusted pork chops, and more. And then there are 18 tasty poultry dishes that you will love again and again, like curry chicken, Mexican meatloaf, which is killer, polo fajitas, and more. There are eight flavorful seafood recipes like creamy fettuccine with scallops, graham cracker crusted tilapia, seared cod with no-cook mustard caper

Starting point is 00:03:26 sauce, and more. There are 11 appetizing side dishes like crispy squash fries. Squash fries are so good. If you've never had them before, you're in for a treat. Sweet potato chips, roasted garlic, twice baked potato, and more. And finally, there are 10 delectable and macro-friendly desserts that you can enjoy guilt-free like peach cobbler, maple raisin bread pudding, triple berry crisp, and more. I also give for all of those recipes, cook time, prep time, servings, calories, protein, carbs, and fat, which makes meal planning a breeze. And I even went further and put all of that information into a spreadsheet, which makes it even easier to build out your meal plan. And you can get that as a free download when you get the book, part of the free bonus material.

Starting point is 00:04:16 And so all of that is why The Shredded Chef has sold well over 300,000 copies, has received over 3,300 four and five star reviews on Amazon, and has helped that I know of thousands of people build their best body ever. And you can find it on all major online retailers, wherever you like to buy books, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, Google Play, bn.com, even Audible. There is an audio book. And yes, some people do buy cookbooks as audio books who knew. And you can also find the shredder chef in select Barnes and Noble stores. Hey, Zach, thanks for taking the time to come and talk to me. Yeah. Thanks for having me, man.

Starting point is 00:04:57 Absolutely. So, uh, we are here to talk about meal planning. And as I was just saying offline, most people listening, they know the basics of, of good meal planning. And as I was just saying offline, most people listening, they know the basics of good meal planning. They know how to set up their calories. They know that you need to eat enough protein. They know that most people, they tend to do better on higher carb rather than lower carb as far as satiety goes. And they know to drink water and eat fruits and vegetables and so forth. But I wanted to talk to you to get tactical with meal planning and to get just some practical tips that people can use to make meal plans that are easier to follow, that are more enjoyable. Like, for example, we can just start with something that

Starting point is 00:05:38 people ask me about, which is they'll ask me, I'm not a big snacker, so I actually don't have great personal, I can share general advice, but I don't have great personal i can share general advice but i don't have great personal advice but i'll get asked for good low calorie kind of higher protein meal prep ideas you know like stuff that you're going to eat in between your bigger meals that is satisfying um that is maybe a little bit more interesting than just like a pot of yogurt or something, which is maybe what I would do personally because I'm boring. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, dairy is a big, a big snack for me. There's a lot of misinformation around dairy right now. I mean, but that's with every food nowadays. If you just combined like three or four four different ideologies you actually can't

Starting point is 00:06:26 eat anything like that's it yeah you can you can breathe air and maybe drink water maybe yeah i mean even even those now there's like these uh these guys that claim that the water we drink is killing us it's all right good so throw water out yeah or it needs to be special ionized alkaline water. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then, and then it probably needs to be, um, maybe ionized air as well. Yeah. And, and of course the water they want to want us to drink is 10 times the cost.

Starting point is 00:06:56 So, well, yeah, naturally, but you know, you have to pay for quality. You get what you pay for. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, I, I really like, um, uh, dairy snacks. you get what you pay for. Yeah. But yeah, I really like dairy snacks. But my whole approach is the best diet is one that you can adhere to. So if you're trying to fill those snack gaps in with things like veggie straws, and you absolutely hate veggie straws, veggie straws are going to be about the same amount of calories as a serving of Doritos. So if you really like Doritos, then make them fit into your goals. So it really just comes down to adherence. But I'm a big advocate for making your own protein bars. I love homemade granola bars.

Starting point is 00:07:36 They're super easy. Throw a few ingredients in a bowl, mix them together. You can freeze them, eat them in the future. What's your go-to recipe these days? You can freeze them, eat them in the future. What's your go-to recipe these days? So I'm big into anything with oat flour now, just blending the oats and almost making like, they're like baked oats, but you can put them out in a sheet pan and cut them into bars and just eat them like that. So it's basically like baked oats, but cut them into bars, wrap them up and eat them on the go. And so are you, you're cooking the oatmeal first or these are just the uncooked oats?

Starting point is 00:08:09 So you put the oats in a blender. So basically the way you would make baked oats, you know, usually blend the oats together with an egg, a little bit of Greek yogurt, a couple of scoops of protein, blend it up, make it smooth. And then you would typically pour it into like a microwave safe mug or ramekin and bake it up, make it smooth. And then you would typically pour it into like a microwave safe mug or ramekin and bake it like that and eat it. So you can actually pour them into like a baking sheet or a baking tray, make a bigger batch, of course, pour them in there. And then once they come out, it's almost like a big sheet cake. And then you can cut those into bars and eat them on the go. Yeah. I used to do baked oatmeal. I don't know,

Starting point is 00:08:45 probably for maybe a year straight, I was just rotating through different burnout on it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't burn out easily on food, but eventually I just don't look forward to it anymore. And I'm like, all right, now it's time to change it. Like, sure. I can continue to eat it, but why when I can, you know, and something else now, it just, just seems more appealing, but it takes a lot. It takes, it took probably a year, but you know, a nice thing about oatmeal is especially when you do it, do the whole baked in, I don't even know the term, I guess it was not a Dutch oven, but whatever, a baking pan of sorts. And I would try different fruits. I would try, you know, sometimes use milk, sometimes use milk substitutes, try different spices. And so I rotated through a lot of different variations.

Starting point is 00:09:32 Yeah. It's really versatile. I mean, you can make it however you like, whatever flavors you like. Yeah. It's quite good, especially with the right fruits. For me, it felt like a dessert, but it was also a way to get in a couple servings of whole grains and, and fruit as well. As far as, as dairy products go, what are your, are you a standard Greek yogurt or? Yeah, I really like a Greek yogurt. I love the Chobani flips. They're a little higher calorie, less protein than, you know, your typical tub of, of Greek yogurt, but they're a lot more enjoyable in my opinion. But I mean, you can make those yourself too, you know, with just a little bit of standard Greek yogurt, a lot of the stuff that they incorporate in those Chobanis you can, you can find in the baking aisle, like crumbled, uh, Heath bars, crumbled up Butterfinger,

Starting point is 00:10:21 mini M&Ms, stuff like that. And you can throw a little bit in there, you know, make it more enjoyable, make it more fun. But yeah, Greek yogurt. I really like cheese, string cheese, like the lower calorie, low fat cheeses, the pre-made protein shakes. I really like the Fairlife Nutrition Plan shakes. You got Premier Protein. I really like, obviously, the Legion stuff. I want to do RTDs. We're just not there yet. Oh, man, that would be amazing. I know, I know. It'll happen.

Starting point is 00:10:49 It's just, it's one of those things that it sounds so simple. Like, why don't you just do RTDs, dude? What's wrong with you? But the logistics are a bit more obnoxious than most people realize. It'll happen. But what happens with building a business, especially a bootstrapped business, so I haven't had any investors. And so you just have to pick and choose. You only have so much money and then also just execution bandwidth. And so you're

Starting point is 00:11:20 always trying to go after kind of the lowest hanging fruit, so to speak. And RTDs are just a little bit higher than some of the other stuff. For example, we're just now getting back up on Amazon UK to start being able... That will also serve as UK fulfillment because we have a lot of people, a lot of customers who they just buy bigger orders and they eat the customs fees over in the UK and in Europe. And so by getting up on Amazon UK, we're going to be able to better serve a lot of people, even though maybe it's a smaller percentage of our total customers, but we have a lot of customers. And so there's just stuff like that where I'm like, shit, I want to get that done before I go off and do these other things. And we'll get there. We'll get there. Yeah. The RTDs, I mean, there's a big calling for them just because they're so convenient,

Starting point is 00:12:09 as you know, just on the go, you grab one. Great for traveling. Yeah. It doesn't take long to make a shake, but those RTDs, they're great on the go. Have you tried Skier? I haven't even heard of that. Is it an RTD? Is it a brand? No, no. Going back to yogurt. So it's Icelandic. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. S-K-Y-R.

Starting point is 00:12:28 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For, for what it's worth for people listening, I prefer skier.

Starting point is 00:12:33 I don't eat too much of it just because I don't really have it in my meal plan right now for no particular reason. But if I do want to have something like that, I prefer skier over Greek yogurt for what it's worth. At least most of the brands that I've tried have both Icelandic provisions skier. Not that I'm not getting paid to say that, but I like theirs in particular. There's probably better out there, but I've tried a few and then really liked theirs and just stopped trying other ones. And so anyway, for people who are eating Greek yogurt, and if you've done a lot

Starting point is 00:13:06 of things with Greek yogurt and you're not really excited about Greek yogurt anymore, you might like skier because it's a little bit different. It's a little bit creamier, has a, I think a, a different kind of base flavor. I find that Greek yogurt in general is a little bit more acidic or bitter. Yeah. It has like that little, like tanginess bite to it. Yeah. Yep. Whereas skier has a little bit more acidic or bitter. Yeah. It has like that little like tanginess bite to it. Yeah. Yep. Whereas skier has a little bit less. So for whatever that's worth. Now, do you know the macros in comparison to like a traditional average Greek yogurt? Same.

Starting point is 00:13:35 About the same. Yeah. I mean, you can get the fattier, tastier skier if you want, or you can get the stuff that is a bit more just like, I would say, oh, I don't know, like a 2% Greek yogurt. So, you know, fair amount of protein, pretty low in carbs and fat. So those are always going to be tasty. Yeah. So you can just decide for yourself what you want to do.

Starting point is 00:13:57 What about like vegetables? What about ways to make vegetables more enjoyable, easier to eat? Butter. That's a good tip. In my experience, I've realized that people think that, you know, you, for whatever reason, you decide that, hey, I want to lose some weight. I'm going to start eating healthier, right? So they instantly switch into this all or nothing mentality. Like I have to eat healthy, no more butter, no more saturated fat, no more this,

Starting point is 00:14:26 no more that. And so they just become miserable trying to eat just plain veggies, no seasoning, no flavor when in actuality that's it's unnecessary. You know, again, it goes back to adherence. Like if putting a teaspoon of butter on your green beans makes it more enjoyable and makes you actually want to eat them, then go for it. You know, as long as it fits into your macros, your calories and your goals. But, um, I, I really like, uh, veggies in the air fryer. Crispy veggies are always, you know, tastier. What are your, what are your favorites, uh, in the air fryer? Um, I really like broccoli. It's kind of plain and boring, but, um, a little bit of

Starting point is 00:15:04 Parmesan cheese tossed in some olive oil or butter, a's kind of plain and boring, but a little bit of Parmesan cheese, tossed in some olive oil or butter, a little bit of salt and pepper. And you can either do it in the air fryer or even in the oven on a sheet pan, hit them with a broil at the end and they come out a little charred and crispy and they're so good. I can just eat those like chips. Yeah. Yeah. I really like Brussels sprouts as well. Prepared like that can be really good. And there's also a misconception that you have to eat organic. You have to eat fresh. A lot of people don't realize that frozen veggies are just as nutritious, sometimes even more nutritious than fresh veggies. They're frozen at the peak of freshness. So they say,

Starting point is 00:15:40 so all those nutrients are trapped in there. Their freshness is trapped in there. They might not be as crispy. So it really depends on how you're preparing them and what kind of dish you're putting them in. But frozen veggies, even canned veggies, they might have a little more sodium, stuff like that. So if you need to watch your sodium content, then be aware of that. But there's nothing wrong with canned veggies. There's nothing wrong with frozen veggies. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:16:03 I eat a fair amount. veggies there's nothing wrong with frozen frozen veggies yeah yeah i eat a fair amount like it's kind of a half half mix of frozen and fresh simply because frozen is fast and easy and yeah you know chopping a bunch of fresh stuff there there is a difference in in the meal but not that big of a difference not enough for me to care i still enjoy it the same so and actually our as a nation our biggest food waste comes from the home. And a lot of people, what they do is they go out with the intention of eating these veggies. They buy fresh because they think that's better. They get home and they just never get around to eating them or preparing them.

Starting point is 00:16:37 And they toss them out. Food waste is a big issue in the United States. Yeah, yeah. They'll open the fridge and then think, I wish I could be the person I believed I was when I bought all of this stuff. Let me go order a pizza. Yeah. Well, whatever. Any other veggie tips? Like I remember one that was kind of funny that somebody shared. He really doesn't like vegetables, but he understands the importance of eating them. And so to get in a serving of a leafy green serving

Starting point is 00:17:05 or two, he would just, he just get spinach and just eat it raw and just like, whatever, dude, and just eat, just eat two big handfuls raw and just drink water and get it down and move on with his day. I mean, if you can choke it down like that, then yeah, for sure. A lot of people don't realize that you can, you can blend veggies to throw them in your, in your shakes, smoothies, uh, make like a pasta sauce. Um, you're still getting all of those nutrients as long as you're not, um, actually like juicing and removing any of the, you know, fiber constituents. Um, you're still getting all of those health benefits from eating your veggies. Yeah. Yeah. What, what about soups? Do you do any soups? Um, I do, I do soups, um, usually around around like fall, wintertime, you know, more soup season. But yeah, I love soup. It's easy way to, you know, throw veggies in there. And going back to spinach, I found that chopping spinach really fine and throwing it in pretty much any dish, the flavor is so masked that you don't even taste it and you're

Starting point is 00:18:07 still getting all of the benefits of eating the spinach. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned pasta. That's a great, like if you have a, if you just start with a good, let's say tomato sauce base, something you like, you can put all kinds of stuff in there without spoiling the dish at all. Let's talk about costs. Do you have any, do you have any advice for people who are maybe on a tighter budget for, for their food and they do need to, to keep costs down? Yeah. So I am a big Walmart shopper. I know that, you know, there's a lot of controversy because, you know, they're a big conglomerate and, you know, they put small businesses out of business and stuff. But as far as costs, like there's not a whole lot of people that will be Walmart's basic cost across the field. I really like Aldi.

Starting point is 00:19:00 They have a lot of deals on like cheese and stuff like that. There's a lot of coupon apps out there nowadays. I use one called Ibotta. And basically you download it, link it to your bank account. You look for deals that they might have. Sometimes they have BOGO. Sometimes they have, you know, X number of dollars back if you buy this. You scan your receipt and you actually get that money back.

Starting point is 00:19:20 I'm in Florida. So we have Publix here. Publix has a lot of BOGO deals and they change like every week. So taking advantage of BOGO, getting a Sam's Club or Costco membership can really be beneficial if you can afford to do bulk shopping. So if you can buy like the non perishables in bulk, throw them in the pantry, the freezer, whatever you need to do. The bigger bulk items you get, obviously the cost is going to go down so you save money in the long run even though you are paying more money up front do you if you're if you're looking to minimize your food expenses are you staying away from generally pre-packaged stuff and looking for stuff that you're going to be preparing yourself?

Starting point is 00:20:07 I would say I kind of use a combination of both. It really just, I really do look at like the price per ounce, price per pound. A lot of grocery stores, I know Walmart does it, some others do it, but they actually have next to the actual cost of the item, they'll have a, you know, 39 cents per ounce. And you can compare that to different brands. Typically, obviously the Walmart brand is going to, you know, usually going to be the cheapest, um, unless there's some deal going on. But, um, I like to do a combination of, um, you know, fresh and prepackaged. Um, it really just depends on the dish with my audience and my followers, I really try to

Starting point is 00:20:45 appeal to the affordable side, but also the time management side. So I realized that, you know, I have a lot of single parents that follow me, people that are working two, three jobs, and they're just on a time budget. And so a lot of times using a prepackaged pasta sauce versus making your own from blending a bunch of veggies and tomatoes together, it might be cheaper to do, you know, your own, but at what cost, you know, versus the time taken. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's talk more about that in a second. Just one other question on the, on the cost side of things. People will often ask me about protein in particular. How to make protein a little bit more affordable? Chicken and eggs.

Starting point is 00:21:32 You know, they're king when it comes to lean protein. They're very versatile. You can put them in pretty much everything. The price of chicken has gone up lately. I know in Florida, it was a few months ago, $1.99 a pound. It's gone up to $2.99 a pound now. And that's at Walmart. I think Target and Aldi, they were all $1.99 a pound.

Starting point is 00:21:54 They've gone up too. But yeah, chicken, again, if you buy the bigger package, don't be afraid to take out the portion that you know you're going to eat soon and freeze the rest of it. The bigger the package, obviously the lower the cost is going to be in the long run. Yeah, that's exactly what I do. Just buy larger amounts and then kind of portion out what I need for the next few days, freeze the rest. Let's talk about this point of saving time, how to spend less time meal prepping, because that is a big obstacle.

Starting point is 00:22:25 Money is an obstacle. And then the time that it, that it can take if you go about it certain ways. Right. Right. So me personally, I, before I started doing recipes for TikTok and stuff like that, I would typically meal prep twice a week. I would prep six meals on Sunday and then six meals on Wednesday. So that would be three for me and three for my wife. That would get us through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then again at the end of the week. And then Sunday was kind of a free day. A lot of people have this misconception that meal prep takes too much time. And all you really need is one day or a chunk of a day dedicated to meal prepping. And you save so much more time throughout the week because if you think about it, you're going to have to eat

Starting point is 00:23:09 throughout the week. So it's a lot less cleanup because you're not doing dishes every single day, cooking every single day. So in the long run, I think it's great for time management. I really like crockpot meals. So the crockpot is something you throw everything in there, put the lid on, turn it on, and you can walk away for two, three, four hours and come back and, you know, portion it out and you're done. What are some of your favorite crockpot recipes? I just did a, uh, green enchilada pasta that turned out really good. Um, so I liked the way that the chicken cooks in the crockpot and you shred it. You can do a lot with shredded chicken, really versatile. But I mean, there's a lot

Starting point is 00:23:51 of crockpot dishes I really like. I mean, there are so many recipes out there for anybody listening. Like if you haven't done crockpot cooking, poke around online, you can find a billion different recipes. Yeah. And nowadays I don't have one, but a lot of my followers, what they do is they'll take my crockpot recipes and they'll convert the time over to the instant pot. So the instant pot is like the crock pot, I guess, but it's a lot, it cooks a lot faster. So that's even better for time management. If you don't want to come back in, you know, two, three, four hours and check the crock pot, the instant pot might be a good investment. Yeah. Yeah. And that's also coming back to

Starting point is 00:24:26 vegetables that can make eating vegetables easy too, because you throw everything in there, it cooks all together. If you have a good recipe, it tastes good, just makes it easy. Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general, and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even who might want to learn something new? Word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. What about kind of fitness friendly desserts, indulgences or some ways to satisfy kind of a sweet tooth or make dessert type foods a little bit lower calorie, maybe sometimes even higher

Starting point is 00:25:27 protein? So the food industry, it's kind of a double-edged sword. They appeal to our fears and our wants. It's the good and the bad. The good thing is that they know there is a calling for people that want to eat sweets and snacks and desserts, but don't want all the calories that come with it. So there's a lot of different brands that are coming out nowadays. I really like the Yasso Greek yogurt bars. I don't know if you ever had those. Those are really good. I get them for my kids.

Starting point is 00:25:56 They really like them. They're coming out with new flavors every day. I know a lot of people like the Halo Top ice cream. Fair Life just came out with an ice cream. So there's a lot of people like the Halo Top ice cream. Fairlife just came out with an ice cream. So there's a lot of different brands. You know, it really just comes down to, and I only recommend this to people who know for a fact that it's actually going to satisfy that craving. Because what I see as a registered dietitian with a lot of people is they'll go and opt for the lower calorie snack. It won't actually satisfy that craving.

Starting point is 00:26:25 And then they turn around and eat the full calorie, full fat snack after that. That's why I stopped eating the low calorie ice creams. I didn't like them enough. So I was doing them here and there. And then I hadn't had regular ice cream again in a while. And so I was like, I'm going to try Jenny's. I'm going to try some Jenny's. And I was like, oh my God, I forgot what ice cream is supposed to taste like.

Starting point is 00:26:47 What have I been doing with my life? Exactly. And that was the end of low calorie ice cream for me. It's just not worth it. I find personally, I find you take, you give me those calories. I don't even need as many calories, but you give me a couple hundred calories, let's say. And if I eat a couple hundred calories of like dark chocolate, I find that very satisfying. But a couple hundred calories of Halo Top, by the third bite, I'm kind of like, why am I eating this?

Starting point is 00:27:11 And I'm, you know. Yeah. So for me, my favorite cookie is a chocolate chip cookie. I honestly don't think, and this may suck to hear as any of my followers that might hear it. I don't think I'll ever do a low calorie chocolate chip cookie. I was going to say, the only way to, you need all the butter. You need all the sugar. Yeah. I would never do that to my favorite dessert just because I know it would never do it justice. So it really just comes down to making those snacks fit into your goals. And a lot of people

Starting point is 00:27:39 just don't understand what moderation is. And again, what I've seen as a registered dietitian is you almost need to create this abundance mindset. So a lot of people, when dieting and trying to lose weight, they shift to this scarcity mindset to where they absolutely cut out chocolate chip cookies, for instance. And the first time they get their hands on it, like you said, it might be two, three months down the road, they get their hands on those chocolate chip cookies and they just go nuts with it. They just binge on an entire box or package, as opposed to if you allow yourself to have one or two every single day or every other day, you're creating that abundance mindset to where you tell yourself, I know I'm going to have this again tomorrow. I don't need to eat the whole package as opposed to, oh man, I haven't had these in so long. I don't know the next time I'm going to have

Starting point is 00:28:29 these. I need to just destroy this package right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, that's a, that's a good point. It's something that I guess I haven't consciously kind of cultivated, but my birthday was a few days ago and we had a cake and it was super good. And it was just that point of just kind of pacing myself like, all right, I'm going to I'm going to eat as much of this cake as I want until I'm satisfied. But then I'll just stop there because I know I'll just eat more tomorrow and maybe then it'll be gone with everybody else. just for yourself or people that you work with, kind of good sweet tooth or kind of craving eliminators without having to eat the whole box or package? What I really advocate for is enjoying whatever it is in moderation. Because a lot of people with dieting, they don't realize that the restrict binge cycle is a very real thing. And it's a very real problem in our society, especially with, you know, the weight

Starting point is 00:29:30 loss industry. They shift into this all or nothing mindset to where they absolutely cannot have these foods. They finally get their hands on them. They binge, they feel defeated. They feel like a failure. They give up. They have that bounce back weight gain. They undo all of the progress that they made. And now they're even heavier than they were when they started. Which is even more demotivating. Right, exactly. And that's part of the whole yo-yo dieting. And it's really frustrating as a dietitian to see so much misinformation on social media demonizing so many foods and just really creates this disordered eating environment for people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, something I'll just add to that, just for example, for me personally, I don't keep ice cream simply because it's not a go-to for me because a couple hundred calories of good ice cream just isn't very satisfying for me. Like

Starting point is 00:30:23 if I can't eat at least half of the pint, I'm just not very, you know, to do a few spoons moderation, it just doesn't do it for me. I would rather take those calories and again, give them over to some chocolate or maybe have a, I don't have too much random stuff, but like a muffin would be more satisfying to me personally. And so, you know, I think it's just good advice for people to find what works for them. That's actually a good point though, because a lot of people, you can't just jump straight into, oh, everything in moderation. There are people who literally can't have these foods in their pantry because they can't practice moderation, at least not yet.

Starting point is 00:31:00 And so maybe if you love chocolate chip cookies, instead of buying a whole package of chips ahoy, maybe try, you know, the single sleeve package or I know in the Walmart bakery, they sell, you know, single cookies, you know, just if you don't have it in your house, you can't binge on it. So just incorporating these things into your lifestyle and your eating habits, however you can. And I always recommend if something is a multiple serving package, as soon as you get home, open it up, divide it out into either Ziploc bags or some sort of package into the actual serving size that you want. That way, every time you go to grab one, you know, you're getting three cookies is the serving size. I'll have it. I'll enjoy it. I'll move on. Yeah, that's a great tip because for most people, including probably you, me, just about

Starting point is 00:31:49 everybody, if let's say it's cookies and then we're going to sit down, especially let's say it's after dinner, we're now sitting down in front of the TV and we're supposed to have three. That's in our plan. But we have the whole box in front of us. I mean, you have a snack-cident. Yeah, exactly. Maybe we're not going to eat the whole thing, but on average, our intake is probably going

Starting point is 00:32:10 to be higher than three. But if you portion it out and then you have your little portion, it reminds me of, I think it was research that might've been later retracted. I know there was controversy, Brian Wancic, I believe, over there was research that suggested that even the size of the bowls than plates that we use when we eat can influence our eating habits, how much we eat. And again, I know that some of the research that this guy was doing did end up getting retracted. And there was some controversy. And I don't remember if the plate size bowl size was one of them. But regardless, this is a similar effect that we don't

Starting point is 00:32:45 need. We don't need research. Like we've all experienced that one. I've seen some that, um, yeah, I don't know if it was the same research, but it comes down to, I actually did a video on this, um, that I know my generation was raised on a eat everything on your plate, or you're not getting up from the table mindset. it really pushes us out of that intuitive eating just stance that we have towards food. If you give food to a two-year-old, they're going to eat until they're satisfied. They're going to get up and walk away. It doesn't matter how much is left on the plate. So a lot of times as adults, we eat with our eyes. We feel like we have to finish it because we're at a restaurant and we paid for it. And you know, if we don't eat it, it's somehow it goes to waste. Or we took a big bowl and loaded it up, even if it's at home.

Starting point is 00:33:29 And now we feel like we're wasting if we don't finish it. Or if you have kids, how many times, I don't know if you have kids, but do you have kids? No, I've got nieces and nephews. Okay. Well, if you've been around, you know, there's always stuff left on plates and you're like, Oh, I'll try it. Oh, I'll get rid of that. Oh, he didn't eat all his chicken nuggets. Yeah, exactly. What's another couple of chicken nuggets? But yeah, that's a good point. You know, that's something I keep in mind with my kids.

Starting point is 00:33:53 And it's been a little bit of a balancing act because when my son was younger, he was pretty skinny. I mean, not like grotesquely skinny, but he just didn't have that much of an appetite. And so my wife and I were always trying to encourage him to just eat a little bit more. We weren't trying to force him to finish everything we always give him. But, you know, when he would say that he's done, we would try to encourage him to maybe take another bite or two at least. And now he, we don't have that issue. And he's exactly what you're talking about. He just eats and sometimes he's more hungry. Sometimes he's less hungry. So he's nine now and my daughter's four and she is, I would say she

Starting point is 00:34:30 just looks normal. She's not overweight, underweight, but she will tend to leave a lot of food. And so it's the same kind of thing where we're like encouraging her to always at least take another bite or two because she'll say she's full, but have not really eaten that much, you know? So we try, it's, we try not to create that situation though, where you know, we want to encourage them to eat well, but not create this kind of enforced, which might come turn into some weird subconscious like compulsion to always eat everything, you know? Yeah. I think they call it the clean your plate club. So how funny one of the guys who works with me, he had an issue with that. Actually, he was quite overweight as a kid and his mom was very, she would, she would feed him

Starting point is 00:35:15 a lot of food and always want him to eat all of it. And on top of that would let him eat whatever kind of junk food he wants to eat. And so he was pretty big as a young kid and then lost a lot of the weight playing sports as a kid. But then as an adult, had to kind of rewire his relationship with food consciously because it did mess with him where he just ate in such an unhealthy way as a kid for so long that it was hard for him to change that. Yeah. A lot of people don't realize how much mindset plays into, you know, our relationship with food, obesity, dieting, all of those things. Yeah. Can you actually talk? I know it's a little bit off topic, but I think it's kind of interesting how there are psychological factors that are in play, right? There are environmental factors that are in play, cultural factors that are in play. in that direction, it actually becomes unproductive. But I have commented myself just that for people to understand that, um, some people who are struggling with their relationship

Starting point is 00:36:31 with food in some, in many cases, it's not as simple as others might think. It's not as simple as it necessarily has been for maybe you or me. Right. Yeah. I'm a big advocate for therapy. I know there's a lot of, not necessarily if you have an eating disorder, but even disordered eating, there's a lot of good therapists out there that can work on kind of digging and finding where those root causes and root beliefs come from. A lot of it stems from childhood. It can come from watching too much social media and just listening to unqualified individuals just demonize food. And it gets to a point where people think that, I mean, there's something that's bad, according to somebody out there, whether it's the water

Starting point is 00:37:26 we drink, the air we breathe, fruits, vegetables, there's always somebody that will demonize something. And somebody who is credentialed as well should probably add that, right? Because often this is just human nature, right? When we don't know how to determine the truth of a statement, we default to the person making the statement and often just default to credentials like, oh, they're a doctor. They're a New York Times bestselling author. They're you know, they have a bunch of fancy titles after their their name. I don't know who am I to say that they're wrong. Yeah. Appeal to credentials is another big problem. I won't drop any names, but there's a lot of doctors out there that, you know, just really use that doctor title to, you know, promote their bestselling book about, you know, don't eat this food.

Starting point is 00:38:16 This is the reason America is obese. And it's really just an agenda, not a lot of merit to it. It's hard to say don't listen to anything on social media because there's also good information out there. But I mean, it's really hard to deduce who to listen to and who not to listen to. Like you said, doctors are spreading these things and you have other doctors that say, oh, don't listen to that doctor, listen to me. So at what point, how do you figure out who to believe, you know?

Starting point is 00:38:45 That could be a whole podcast and discussion to itself. But I would say, you know, one example of a red flag is splashy contrarian marketing, like, you know, very noisy and saying things that are outlandish even, or that go against kind of some mainstream idea like eating vegetables is good. You know, oh, well, you have some, some massive juice head guy decide, you know, he's on Instagram eating, uh, raw bull testicles. And he, he said, he said eating vegetables is bad. You know, it sounds silly, but unfortunately what you'll find is a lot of the better marketing is in the dishonest camp. And, and some of that is just because, like, for example, contrarian statements get attention and a lot of marketing. I mean, it begins with getting people to say, yes, I will pay attention. Right.

Starting point is 00:39:54 But I would just say that if you look at it in terms of marketing skill, you have a lot more skilled marketers out there just selling nonsense because you have a lot of people who they're good at marketing and they don't really care about anything else. Whereas you have a lot of experts who are trying to tell people about the boring basics, really. because many people are, they're drawn to the marketing, they're drawn to the sizzle, they're drawn to brands, like where it becomes a whole ideology. It's not just kind of dry, you know, make sure your energy balance is supporting your goals and make sure you eat enough protein. Yeah. And, you know, I think a lot of it comes down to just self-accountability and taking responsibility. So nobody wants to hear that, man, I'm obese because of X, Y, and Z decisions that I made. You know, obviously there's other factors that go into obesity, but a lot of it comes from just overeating. I mean, in the end, that's what it is. I mean, we know why they're doing it. I mean, that's where it starts to get more complicated. Right. But everybody wants to hear that, oh man, it's not because of the choices I made in my life. It's because the government has been

Starting point is 00:41:16 spiking my foods with these preservatives that made me obese. It's because this person lied and this new research came out and this is why I'm obese. It really comes, you know, this person lied and, you know, this new research came out and this is why I'm obese. It, it really comes down to just almost an unwillingness to take accountability and responsibility for your, your own decisions. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. There is, um, I'm, I'm trying to find it here. I came across a clever little quote. Uh, it was, It was along the lines of like one line persuasion. Let me find it here. Okay. So here it is. People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies. And I think there's a lot of truth in that.

Starting point is 00:42:05 I think that's a good summary, actually, of a lot of this misleading kind of marketing that we see in our space. It's usually checking several or all of those boxes. Yeah, it's a form of confirmation bias, you know? Yep, yep. And I guess that's kind of a phase, maybe, that people need to go through and that's fine. It's just, you know, people like us are out there saying, hey, when you're ready to kind of level up, we're here. We're here.

Starting point is 00:42:46 point, the idea that actually the problem is eating too much and moving too little. Well, that was not palatable. And then you have to go through some of this other stuff until you then go, all right, none of that worked. Maybe Zach was right. Or maybe Mike was right. Maybe I am just eating too much food and not moving enough. Maybe I'll try that. But coming back to meal planning, are there any other just kind of general tips or best practices that we haven't covered that you want to share? It's okay to start small. I've talked to and interacted with a lot of people who just think that meal prepping and meal planning is just, it's too overwhelming. They think that they have to make 60 different meals on Sunday and that's all you can eat throughout the week. Even if you just prep five breakfast meals for the week, Monday

Starting point is 00:43:37 through Friday, prep your breakfast, see how you feel, see if it helps you, see if it aligns with your goals, your time management, your budget. And even if you're not prepping full meals, my content is all prepping full meals, but you can prep portions of a meal as well or parts of a meal. So if you feel like you just really hate cooking your protein throughout the week, you can prep your chicken on Sunday and just make a side every day to go with it. So you can prep just parts of a meal and just build that foundation throughout the week. But don't be afraid to start small. Again, it comes down to the all or nothing mentality. A lot of times when people start this fitness journey, I'm going to go to the gym seven days a week. I'm going to eat nothing but whole grains and fruits and veggies. Just start small. If you just are drinking 10 Cokes a day, I would

Starting point is 00:44:33 never tell somebody, cut out Coke, never drink it again. I would tell them, okay, let's try to cut down to eight Cokes a day. Once you are okay with eight Cokes a day, let's cut that down to six. It's all about baby steps and it's no different with meal prepping. If it's your first time and you're just trying it out, start with one meal, see how it feels and move up from there. Yeah, that's great advice. It's kind of the tiny habit approach, right? To use BJ Foggs where start with something that just in your mind uh produces no friction so to speak right where you're like oh yeah that's easy no problem i can do that so so just just segueing off of that then for people who let's say they're not doing any meal prepping

Starting point is 00:45:17 right now are there are there places where you find that people tend to succeed best with, um, if they start there, like, like for example, um, maybe prepping a certain meal based on kind of their lifestyle. Like if one, if, if they just pick one meal and just starting with that, you mentioned breakfast is, but, but for some people, uh, maybe it could be another meal for another reason or. Yeah. So I always advocate for lunch, especially if you work in an office environment, you, you leave the house. If you leave the house and that's where you're going to be eating lunch at work, you know, whatever. A lot of times what happens is say you work in an office and you have a lunchroom there that serves lunch. If they're serving the same thing and you absolutely hate the food there,

Starting point is 00:46:14 you might have friends that come over. Hey, we're going to such and such pub to grab some lunch. A lot of times those restaurant meals are not going to be conducive with your goals. You know, a big problem in America is restaurant portion sizes are almost double a normal portion size. And restaurant food is probably on average, double the calories of how you would make it at home. Exactly. So if you can make something that you look forward to eating for lunch, prep that meal, take it to work, let your friends know, Hey, not this time, guys, I have this, you know, awesome pasta recipe that's waiting for me in the fridge. So, yeah, that's great

Starting point is 00:46:50 advice. And, um, people who also are on the road a lot can like, if it's throughout the day, right. And then just to help prevent them from hitting the drive-through really, right. Yep. Yeah, for sure. Yep. Drive-throughs they they're they're very enticing they're easy they're cheap you know but if you know you have that that meal waiting for you you're not to say that you won't go to the drive-thru but you're less likely yeah last question regarding fast food what are your thoughts on fast food and um staying fit let's say or or getting fit? Um, I think it, it can still fit into your, your daily diet. I actually just posted a video, um, yesterday actually. Um, and under, I had two boxes and on the front of the boxes, I had the calories listed. One was 700 and one

Starting point is 00:47:38 was 730. Um, I asked my followers to pick which one they would choose for weight loss. I assume people would choose the 700. So under the 730 box was a Chick-fil-A grilled chicken salad. It was an avocado lime ranch dressing, which was probably about half the calories. But it just goes to show that, you know, just because it's a salad doesn't mean it can't be high calorie. And then under the other box was a McDonald's cheeseburger, a small fry and a four piece nugget. So a lot of people, when they think eating healthy weight loss, oh, I can't have McDonald's that's too high calorie. When in fact, if you pick and choose foods that fit into your goals, your taste preference, your, your budget, you can absolutely make it work.

Starting point is 00:48:24 your taste preference, your, your budget, you can absolutely make it work. Out of curiosity, just in your experience, working with people, um, have you seen maybe just common like patterns of, uh, well, here's what tends to work well. Here's what were people who do want to be eating fast food. Um, here's how they tend to incorporate it. Here's like the stuff they tend to stay away from these things and kind of gravitate towards these things or no? Kind of. It really comes down to a lot of people, what they do when they go to a fast food restaurant. They think, I noticed this a lot with males. They tend to go to McDonald's, for example, and, you know, hey, I'm a big guy. I need a large fry. I need two double cheeseburgers and, you know, a large Coke. There are some changes that you can make. You can do a diet Coke, zero calories. You can do a smaller or medium fry.

Starting point is 00:49:20 You can do, you know, a single patty, just, it really comes down to kind of reducing that portion size. And as long as it's not overly restrictive for you, and you feel like it's still going to fill you up and satisfy you to the point where you're not going to turn around and binge later, it really just comes down to kind of reducing that portion size to something that's more appropriate and conducive with your goals. Yeah, that makes sense. Similar to what you were saying with sweets and dessert type foods is finding something that really does satisfy you for a reasonable amount of calories. Right, exactly. Well, this has been great. This has been very informative. Again, I appreciate you taking the time to do it. And why don't we wrap up with where people can find you and find your work and if there's anything in particular you want them to know about?

Starting point is 00:50:10 Okay. Yeah, I'm on TikTok and Instagram mostly. I just started YouTube. It's at Zach Cohen, Z-A-C-H-C-O-E-N on all platforms. I do have a Patreon. It's $5 a month. I do a lot of additional recipes. I do monthly meal plans just to give people an example of how they can incorporate my recipes into their goals.

Starting point is 00:50:34 That's basically the only places I'm at right now. I don't do any one-on-one coaching right now. I'm really focusing on just content creation to help the masses. Cool, cool. Well, thanks again for, for doing this and thanks for supporting Legion as well. I really appreciate it. And we'll have to,

Starting point is 00:50:51 we'll have to see if we can brainstorm another one sometime. All right. Sounds good. Thanks so much, Mike. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful.

Starting point is 00:51:00 And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do

Starting point is 00:51:33 better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Zach Coen on Easy Ways to Make Better (and Cheaper) Meal Plans

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