Weights and Plates Podcast - #29 - Preparing for Success: How to Meal Prep Healthy & Delicious Food

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

It's been said many times on the show, compliance and actually executing your eating plan is the biggest factor in meeting your body composition goals. Many people fall short on meal prep, and tired and exhausted from a long day of work, parenting, and other obligations, end up hitting a restaurant instead of cooking healthy food at home.   Some basic meal prep strategies can help you avoid the fast food and restaurants, however. To that end, Coach Trent's wife Jordan joins the show to discuss her tips for building a well-stocked pantry, planning simple and easy meals, and making things more flavorful with a few simple sauces and cooking techniques.   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.jonesbarbellclub.com [e-mail]

Welcome back to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host who brought a guest today. I did. Yes. Not just me. It's Jones and Mrs. Jones. Howdy y'all. So yeah, this is like the, What was that guy that had the song? Me and Mrs. Jones. Oh, shit. I wish I knew. I should know this. Yeah, was that Billy? Oh, Billy Paul. Billy Paul sent me. Great song.

I think that song's about adultery, so maybe not the best example. I remember people... But this is my Mrs. Jonesones uh yes jordan is my wife welcome to the show thank you yeah people asked us when we got married if we were going to play that at our wedding and i was like i am also sure that song is about adultery so maybe not i've never sat down no i just hear it playing places not one of my favorite songs you know yeah right yeah i'm pretty sure it's about Mrs. Jones was not his Mrs. I think it was someone else's Mrs. But, um, but yeah, anyway,

on that note, uh, we wanted to talk about, we want to get kind of get back to the nutrition side of things. This podcast is going to be impossible to record because Santana, you know, I'll just have to narrate this since you can't see it, you know, dear listeners. But Santana is holding like the most ridiculously cute puppy ever in his hands right now. I am. So there's actually two guests on the show. Who do you have over there? I have Lady Lucy.

Lucy? Yeah. Lucy is a German short hair? German short hair pointer, yeah. German short hair pointer. Yeah. Lucy is a German shorthair? German shorthair pointer, yeah. German shorthair pointer. Yeah, okay. Yeah, no, we want to dig into meal prep today. As I sit here and play with my little pup, who's decided to cling on to me.

I just learned that this breed is clingy, which I'm not complaining about. She just wants some love. But yeah, let's talk about meal prep, because I get questions about it all the time. And it's one of the things that doesn't need to be complicated, like most of the things actually don't need to be complicated. We've been eating since the dawn of our species, so I think we kind of have a pretty good handle on how to do this. What's changed now is that probably for the first time in documented history, we have a problem of too much food. So we're not quite evolved for that. So if your goal is to maintain your waistline and not get too fat and eat a reasonably healthy diet,

unfortunately, now you have to think about the types of food you eat. Whereas I think for a long time, you really didn't have to because there weren't very many options, you know? Yeah, yeah. Not enough of it and not many options. And when there was more than enough of it, you just basically stuffed your face and tried to get a little fat so you could survive the lean times. Yeah. I mean, back then, the fear was, you know, dying of starvation or dehydration. Now it's, what, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, all these things that, you know, take longer to kill you. Right, right. So, yeah,

so meal prep, this is kind of one of those things that is, it sounds really boring. It can be boring. It doesn't have to be. But this is kind of where the, God, I'm going to have to, I have to use a cliche here. This is where the rubber meets the road. I hate cliches, but there's one for you. But yeah, this is meal prep is kind of where, I think this is where a lot of people go wrong. So we talk about like before in previous episodes, how eating out can be a huge problem if you're trying to manage your macros and your caloric intake. And especially if you're trying to lose weight, if you're actively losing weight, eating out just presents a huge problem for that. Well, why do people eat out? Well,

sometimes it's planned, but a lot of times it's not planned. And it's because, you know, you get home and you're busy. You've had a long day. You don't have a lot of time. You look in the fridge and you're just like, I don't know what to eat. Like, let's just go get out. Let's just order something. Let's just hit the Uber Eats or DoorDash or whatever. So meal prep is, you know, it's not the most exciting topic to talk about, but it's crucial because when you are there at 6.43 PM and you're starving and it's time for dinner, if you don't have a solid plan of what you're going to cook, then you're probably more likely to go out and eat, you know, get something to eat. And it's probably not going to be as healthy as it would have been if you had just

done a little bit of planning beforehand. Unless you've done this for a real long time, you know, which most of you haven't. That's why you're probably listening to us. I've been following some sort of structure over the last, I want to say, 10 years. And one of the things that I noticed before that, so I've had a pretty rock solid breakfast for 20 years, and I've talked about it on here several times. I eat an omelet with vegetables. At one point it was eggs. Now it's mostly egg whites. I eat an omelet with vegetables.

At one point it was eggs. Now it's mostly egg whites. The cast iron skillet has made it to where those taste even better now. So between that and the rainbow peppercorns, I'm fine with the egg whites. I don't feel the need to add eggs, but I used to. But either way, same general idea. I have an egg protein source, egg-based protein source, and a variety of vegetables. And right now my carb source is oatmeal, Fairlife milk, and a banana. At one point I was doing toast because I was on a toast kick for my carb source.

At another point I was doing berries, so I kind of cycled those through. But the same general premise applies. I have eggs and vegetables every day and have since I was 19. So the problem was when I was in college, the other meals were just as Trent describes. I was a young man in my early 20s and I'm like, well, fuck. Okay, now what? Lunch, all right. Where was the nearest fast food place? When I was in the dorms, they had dorm food. And at that point, I was just trying to gain a bunch of weight and get strong. I had maybe a third of the right idea. I was squatting and benching and dipping and chinning and just slamming a bunch of food. Got myself up to 197 for the first time and

pushed my lifts up. So I'd just go to the cafeteria and I knew I needed lots of pasta because I was a kid of the 90s. That's what all the bodybuilder guys would say, you know. It was the bottom of the food pyramid, right? Yeah, exactly. You know, I mean, it makes sense. I mean, that's how I would do it now. If I was a novice, an underweight novice, I'd eat a bunch of pasta or rice, you know, so I'd just, I'd go for the grains and then I'd probably, you know, if they had hamburgers, I'd eat those. I hated boneless, skinless chicken breasts. You know, I've gotten pretty damn lean in my day with diets and I've never done boneless, skinless chicken breasts with broccoli. So fuck those people. In fact, I'm actually, you know, I've been losing recently.

Unless it gets to the point where I'm just like, fuck this, which hasn't gotten there yet, I might have to look like an anatomy chart to make a point that I don't got to do that weird shit, you know? But, you know, I haven't decided where I'm going to cut this off. Some weeks I'm not on it. At this point, you know, some weeks I do it, some weeks I don't. It's just been kind of still going down. So that'll be for another podcast, but I'm determined to get ripped and not eat a single chicken breast. What about broccoli? Among other weird behaviors that people engage in, you know, but that's one of them, broccoli and chicken.

No, I never did that. So, you know, I would grab the red meat that they had, you know, either hamburger if they had it cooked, and, you know, I'd have like two trays of food. So, you know, that was different. When I got out of the dorms, I started, I wasn't eating like that. I was more like just, okay, I need three meals a day. I'm still kind of working out. It was just less serious.

And the second and third meal would be at like sometimes Burger King, sometimes at a fast food restaurant. Just shit that I would grab. Sometimes Subway because I was kind of health conscious, you know? Right. Because I did read about this stuff, but a lot of the time I was just grabbing stuff because it was fast and available and I didn't want to cook protein. Right, yeah.

I was 20, 21, I want to cook protein, you know, I drink milk. So I drank milk. I did stay on that. But like, I don't think I was ever getting like even 150 grams of protein a day back then because I just did not want to deal with the prep. Yeah, well, you know, I was just thinking about when I worked in the corporate world in the office, you know, it's like half the time I wouldn't I wouldn't go for the fast food. I would avoid the McDonald's and shit like that. But, you know, there'd be like a company cafe, you know, you get a sandwich or a wrap or something like that. And it's fine. But you know, it was also like it was kind of doused in ranch or some sort of like avocado lime thing. And you know, it's probably

loaded with a bunch of fat in it too. So maybe, you know, better than better than a lot of options, but still not that great. And the main reason was because, you know, and than, better than a lot of options, but still not that great. And the main reason was because, you know, and if I hadn't planned at the beginning of the week or before the week began to have some lunches available, then I was never going to do it in the morning before work. You know, I never had time for that. And then I certainly after work, you're thinking about like, well, should I plan for the next day? I was like, well, no, because I'm burned out from being at work all day. Same concept, yeah. So, yeah, it's easy to fall in that habit. And then if I did try to grab a protein source, I had no regard for how much fat was in it because this was what, 03, 04, 05, etc. You know, Atkins, low carb, that was like the

thing. So, well, if it's low carb, it must mean that i can't get fat from it so if it's a piece of meat therefore you know it doesn't matter what you know cut of meat it is um the open face italian sandwiches yeah exactly stuff like that you know um i didn't eat like a total piece of shit like i wasn't eating french fries all the time and stuff i just remember there was one point where i was getting those southwestern chicken sandwiches at burger king when i was 24. And it may have just been that item that I was into. I didn't go to McDonald's too often.

So you're the guy. Because I always wonder, who eats at Burger King? Yeah, my dad liked Whoppers. It's like people who drink Pepsi. I'm like, I don't believe anybody drinks it. I just don't believe it. They just put it on the shelf, but it's all an op, man. Nobody drinks Pepsi. I think I drank both growing up. I mean, it was Chicago. You're like, I had a Pepsi with my Southwest chicken sandwich at Burger King. No,

they had Coke. Burger King, McDonald's had Coke. Taco Bell had Pepsi. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's the Taco Bell crowd. Okay. Well, I believe that. I can believe that Taco Bell people drink Pepsi. I like going to Taco Bell for a Diet Mountain Dew on tap. Tastes better off the fountain. I guess that makes sense. You can buy Diet Mountain Dew, but that sounds wrong. Like Mountain Dew is just so horrendous by itself. Like, do we need a Diet Mountain Dew? Well, I don't drink any of this shit now, but back then I loved it.

If I'm going to rot my gut, you know, but it's sugar-free. That's one of the things. We should talk about extreme cutting at some point. So that's one thing. Like this last time, this recent drop that I had, I cut all that. I made sure no fake food in my diet. And I have not, I'm leaner than I was last time. And this is pretty lean for me.

And I'm not feeling fucking starved for sugar all the time. And I'm convinced it's because I cut all that shit out. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Probably. I think when, like last time I tried to do this and I got real low, I was drinking 10 of those flavored sparkling ice drinks a day and I was obsessed with sugar. And I thought maybe I'm like, maybe I just got too lean.

I don't think it actually had to do with that. I think it was the food I was eating. So no. So yeah, back then I didn't want to deal with the other two meals. I didn't think it actually had to do with that. I think it was the food I was eating. So no, so yeah, back then, I didn't want to deal with the other two meals. I didn't know. I didn't want to do any cooking. Then I experimented with stuff here and there.

But long story short, when I had been reading magazines, you know, Men's Fitness, Muscle and Fitness, Bodybuilding.com, I saw what people were recommending and eating. And it was either one of two things. The chicken breast and broccoli was one option, or these elaborate photoshopped-looking meals that look like they required a ton of time. And I think you and I talked about this the other day, but before we brought Dre on, we're talking about where did the bowl come from? Who prepared the

bowl? You know, those little bowls, those pretty little bowls in the cooking shows. Yeah, Rachel Rave. She's got like, she's like, oh, I have a quarter cup of onions and it's in a little quarter cup bowl. Like, who has that? Yeah, well, same thing with the diet meals that they put in these magazines and now on Instagram, all this food porn. They're making, what, these three, four, five, six, because they're saying six meals a day a lot of the time in these magazines. They're making six Photoshop-looking meals a day. Are you kidding me? Do you remember the P90X nutritional guide that came with it?

No. My brother probably had it. Did you? Yeah. Well, of course, being a poor college student, I think I had like a cracked version of P90X that was copied, you know, like six times. I remember it came with a PDF, though, and they're like,

okay, this is like, okay, what is Tony? What was the guy's name? Tony something. He something oh he's like okay well what is tony like he's pretty ripped you know it's like what this is what he eats you know because of course that's that's exactly what he's going to put in the pd oh yeah of course yeah and it was like uh meal recommendation number one was like salmon it was like wild caught salmon with a lemon aioli, asparagus. Yeah, who's gonna sit down and make this shit? And they're like, that's lunch. That's exactly what I'm talking about. I remember I made what at my mom's house when I was 18.

I was at the community college that year. I made one of the meals from men's fitness and I had to like mix like chickpeas and curry powder and all this weird stuff. The kitchen smelled odd. And it obviously, it obviously wasn't that good. I didn't do what the hell they did, you know, but I didn't do, I never did it again. I never tried to do that shit again. I'm like, I'm done. You know, I have a few things that I can make really well, but that they used to discourage me. I'd be like, I don't want to do this, you know? And then when I graduated and was going into my internship, I was carrying some extra weight then.

And then I dropped that off. It wasn't like a huge amount. It was like maybe 30 pounds or something. I'd put some weight on that year. I was just eating crap and just trying to graduate. And I just sat down and I'm like, all right, what do I want to eat? What am I going to eat, right? So this is where we get to the how-to stuff that our listeners want to hear.

First of all, you don't have to. This whole idea that if it tastes good, it's bad for you is only half true. If it tastes really good, it's going to be a problem because it's like drugs, right? So if you eat something that's very sweet, very salty, very savory, the first bite is no different than the last bite, meaning you still want more. So we're not talking about that. I'm saying that you could pick foods that, you know, that are palatable and maintain a pretty good diet, lose weight, gain muscle, do whatever the hell you're trying to do with your diet. It doesn't have to be chicken and fucking broccoli or this Photoshop looking meal with a bunch of ingredients, you know? Yeah, right.

Like I remember watching, we've talked about it in the show before, I think Pumping Iron. Yeah. Classic, classic, you know, documentary, mockumentary, documentary. I'm not sure which one, but yeah, you should definitely watch if you haven't. But there's a there's a scene where Arnold is eating breakfast with Lou. What's his name? Yeah, with Lou Ferrigno and his dad. And, you know, Lou's like he's like 23. So he's like really nervous because he's eating breakfast with like the best of all time. And right. But, you know, he's looking huge anyway. So they're like eating. There's like a huge plate of just like, don't know they look like blanched eggs like they're just like colorless just like plain like boiled egg it looks just disgusting and it's like they've just flopped like six or seven of them on a plate you know arnold just like chowing down and lou's really nervous so he's not really eating much and but that's what yeah i think that's most people's impression of like bodybuilder food. But yeah, to your point though, do you can do a little bit with your prep and how you cook things and add a lot of flavor to your food without necessarily

adding a ton of ingredients to it or a ton of shit to it that, you know, that we know is, is very high in calories. Like, you know, you don't have to add that avocado lime sauce or whatever with, you know, 26 grams of fat in it per serving. Um, so this is, this is the reason why I brought Jordan on the podcast is because I could sit here and talk about some of those things, but the reality is in our household, she does 99% of the cooking and she has all the expertise in how, you know, how to prepare food and what she does with her meal prep in our household. And so that's what I wanted to bring her on. Well, before you do that, I want to add in that when we say prep, that also doesn't mean that you have to have a nice organized system of Tupperware containers in your refrigerator either. That's a way to do it.

There are people that live by that, but that's not a one-size-fits- refrigerator either. That's a way to do it. There are people that live by that, but that's not a one-size-fits-all deal. That's a niche, first of all. I work with people like that. I'm not making fun of them, but I have never done that. I mean, I've done it for short periods of time, and I understand the draw to it,

and I understand what person that's going to work for, but I think there is this general stigma that when people hear the word meal prep, they picture Tupperware containers stacked up, nicely organized in the fridge or spread out on the table with, again, a picture probably on a 4K camera or video showing the entire spread for three weeks. No, that's not what we're talking about. You can prepare stuff on the fly too. And that's something that I'll touch on later after Jordan talks about the longer way. I also wanted to real quickly just point out why do we have to meal prep? And that is because so many of us

are working away from the home. And that's really a problem of both urbanization and industrialization. Like I read D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers this year, and in one of the main characters, he works in a factory, and everyone goes home for lunch. They didn't work so far away that going home for lunch was unreasonable. So it's a very modern problem that we have. So that might also be why in our society, we have not really addressed it terribly

well, because for most of our history as humans, almost all of our meals were in the home. Yeah, that's a great point. Which, you know, maybe for some of you out there, if you're, you know, if you've kind of been a part of this work from home revolution of the last couple of years, maybe this is a chance to kind of change that if you find yourself working at home one or more days a week. So I would say in general, when I think about the meals that we have, we don't have a lot of Tupperware. Tupperware is for leftovers. have a lot of Tupperware. Tupperware is for leftovers. We maybe have a few of those in the fridge at any given time, but we don't have stacks and stacks of it in like a whole week, you know, totally planned and frozen in advance or anything like that. But you do have a system for kind of how you prepare meals and like, and like the stuff that you keep around that's

important for preparing a meal. So can you talk about that? And like what, what kind of things you, you think about when, you know, in terms of like a prepared kitchen? For sure. And I will say we both work from home. So I do have a little bit more luxury as far as timing. You know, if you do have to go to an office, you're going to have to be a little bit more organized about this. I can think about lunch, I can think about dinner around lunchtime and pull out meat to thaw. You know, you're going to have to do that before you walk out the door if you have to go to an office. But for me, meal prep is really all about a well stocked pantry. So I can walk into my kitchen and I know I've got a freezer with, you know,

X, I like to cook whole chickens, but X number of chickens, you know, X pounds of beef, pork chops, whatever cuts we like to make. So I start with, okay, what meat do I want? And then what grain do I want? And if we want beans, I'm a big advocate of soaking your beans. So like, you know, if I want beans, I know I need to soak them the night before and then I'll cook them day of. But that's a big part for me. It's just under walking into my kitchen and knowing I have 10, 15 meals I can make off the cuff without particularly having to think about it. meals I can make off the cuff without particularly having to think about it. I also am a big crockpot lady. We actually have two now. And I'm big on that one. Part of the reason I like cooking whole chickens is you get a whole chicken and the farmer we buy chickens from, the chicken comes with the feet, which have good gelatin in them and the neck. So I'll cook that whole thing in the crockpot.

in them in the next. So I'll cook that whole thing in the crock pot. I get chicken. I can do whatever I want with, and I have stock. Yeah. And I'll put that stock into beans. I might make gravy or a sauce with it. Um, but that's a whole extra ingredient that took me no extra time to make that I can add flavor to everything that I make to go with the chicken. That's a great point because yeah, you do that a lot where, um, so I'm, I'm, I'm getting excited because later this summer we're going to be rolling into okra season and we make a lot of okra around here and it grows super well in Eastern Tennessee too. It's so good. And you know, we don't, we don't fry okra, although fried okra is delicious. Oh, that's the first exposure I had to it. Yeah. Oh, it's so good. Uh, but we'll like say we, Jordan will saute okra with our meals in late summer and early fall when we've got a ton of it. And you usually mix in a little bit of like chicken stock or, you know,

whatever stock you have that you've, that you've kept from the crock pot when you're, when she's sauteing that stuff. And it, it's amazing how much more flavor it gives that it's, it's like a huge boost of flavor. And you're just using, like you said, you're using an ingredient that you already have. You didn't have to make a sauce. You didn't have to buy an extra bottle of sauce. Um, you know, it's got a lot of good, you know, micronutrients in it too, because you're taking stock that's coming from a whole animal. macronutrients in it too because you're taking stock that's coming from a whole animal for sure and if i think beans like doing a crock pot or just a regular pot of beans in particular are great or you could make you know do a whole stew um obviously in a crock pot as well with meat

already in it but um one of the great things about doing like a roast or a chicken in a crock pot and getting that stock is if you don't use it all, you can save it and you can cook your beans with that. Like I think good beans need good stock to start with, like cooking beans in water is a little bit of a sin in my book. Like they ain't going to be good. Yeah. And that, yeah, I think that's a big thing, um, that I've noticed is like a lot of people that I know that don't cook very much, they also don't know how to cook with flavor. And yeah, and that's a big deal. If what you eat is really bland, you're not going to want to eat more of it. But you really, it doesn't, but cooking with flavor doesn't have to involve

19 ingredients or really exotic stuff either. Okay. So I think I got, I think I got sidetracked from like timeline. Let's say you want dinner Monday night and you want for Monday night, you know, you're going to want like chicken with beans and a vegetable. So Sunday night, you know, put your beans in some water, enough water to cover and let them soak overnight. And well, this is dependent on you having two crockpots. Sorry, If you don't have two crockpots, I'll back that up. But, you know, you get up Monday morning, you put your chicken in the crockpot. If you have a second crockpot, put your beans in the second crockpot. If not, you can cook them when you get home. So you could soak them in the morning instead. But then when you get home from work, you have very minimal, you really just have to take care of the vegetable and putting everything together.

And then you should have two or three meals, depending on how big of a hoard you're feeding yeah and that's like literally the crock pot it's beautiful like you just put it in there like what do you do with the chicken right you put the chicken in there and you fill it with a little bit of water right and usually half an onion and a carrot if i have a line around yeah and then you just hit the button you just just hit like go. That's it. And you come home and it's done. I used to do that. Yeah, that's it. That's it. That's pretty damn simple and it's delicious. You can also, if you like pork chops,

I'll always buy bone inch pork chops and you can cut the bone off and then either freeze the bone to use later or just go ahead and throw it in a crock pot with beans while you're cooking them and that will make a really nice stock with your beans as well. So yeah, so one thing that, the thing you want to really think about when you're prepping, whether you're using a lengthier method or more elaborate method or a simple method,

is what are you looking for? Like you really shouldn't need to refer to a meal plan or an app to figure out what you need each day. You might need to do that in the beginning if you don't know how to portion things out. It's like training wheels on a bike. I think I've said this before. But typically, you've heard us mention protein, right? So I make fun of the chicken and broccoli, right? So it's a protein and a vegetable. And then she just mentioned chicken, onion. I heard the word carrot in there, right? So you want to look for certain food groups. So obviously you want a protein source because you need plenty of protein, especially if you're training. And if you're not training,

you still need a good amount. If you're older, you need a good amount. You want vegetables, they're full of micronutrients and they're also high in fiber or they add up, I should say. I don't think one vegetable serving is very high. I think it's overrated as a singular fiber source, but, you know, combined, they do add up. And, you know, we've talked about beans. You know, beans have protein and carbs and fiber. So those are an option. There are tons of different types.

But you're really looking at a protein, a vegetable, a high carb source, you know, for lack of a better word. So like a starch or fruit, obviously something that's high in fiber, you know, not just, you know, Skittles. And, you know, if you have the calories in your diet, you could throw, you know, a fat source in there like avocado or something. Or if you're cooking in fat, you know, you can add that to it, you know, but ultimately that's how you're building a plate essentially looking for a protein, a starch or a fruit and, you know, fat source. And that's really about it, you know, it's quite simple. So when you've done this a long time, I mean, I can go on the road right now with nothing and I can find a way to plug all those slots in, you know, a few times a day, you know, if I'm at a gas station and I'm

desperate, I'm probably going to grab some beef jerky, those, you know, those apples that don't taste the greatest, but I know they're not going to get me sick. And, you know, maybe one of those milk bottles, you know, 2%, you know, I'm going to get a little extra fat that day. Or, you know, or I might go to the subway, you know, that's attached to the loves down here in the Southwest, you know, when I'm driving through these states. I might just get a subway salad and then go to the gas station, you know, get some fruit, maybe a protein, ready to drink, protein drink, call it a day, right?

So I'm thinking of this as plugging in those slots, you know, the protein slot, the carb slot through fruit or starch that's high in fiber, and the vegetable slot. But if I typically stick to those three, we're good to go. And then I'll replicate that three to five times a day, typically three because I can eat more food per meal that way, and I tend to be fuller. I'm not thinking about food as much. That's the other rule I broke. This time I dropped, I didn't do no, you know, oh, I'm going to have a shake after my workout or

during, and I'm going to eat six times a day. I didn't do any of that. Three times a day because I don't want to think about food all day, you know? Yeah, right. If you start having symptoms of hypoglycemia during a workout, then carbs could be helpful in keeping your blood sugar up so you're not dizzy while you're training. If you've been working all day and not drinking a lot of water, electrolyte carbohydrate beverage, a Gatorade or something similar is pretty good, not because lifting is a big endurance activity, but because if you go in there partially dehydrated, it's not going to feel good. That's why I have my gummy bears with me when I lift. Got to have my gummy bears.

You're not actually using the sugar during the workout. You're using that sugar to hydrate primarily and keep your blood sugar up. I just take it. I don't actually eat gummy bears. I just take a shot of maple syrup like a man. I have a girl in the gym that does that. I don't know if it's me. It's probably she has honey, not maple syrup. She just drinks it. Yeah. Just takes a shot of honey. No, I like

how you, you laid that out. I think some people think about meal prep and they're thinking like actual like recipes instead of meals. Exactly. They're thinking, they're thinking like, okay, so Tuesday we could do the spaghetti and meatballs. Wednesday we could do the chicken cutlet. And then Thursday, what do I want to do on Thursday? Tacos? No, that's actually missing the point. It could be that, right? It could be that, but it doesn't have to be. You don't have to get that complex.

And I think one of the problems with thinking about meal prep in that way is that it requires a lot of ingredients that if you forget to get at the beginning of the week and you don't have time to grocery shop, you'd be like, well, we can't make tacos tonight because I forgot the taco shells or I don't have tortillas. So, you know, that kind of, it's easy for that plan to fall apart if you're not really on top of all the ingredients you need for those specific recipes. Instead, you could just think of slots like you're talking about. And then it's like, you only have to have a handful of things at any given time in your kitchen. You know, you only need a couple types of meat, maybe, you know, some rice and beans for your carb sources.

And, you know, some vegetables, it doesn't have to be any one thing. And then you can just assemble a meal from there. You know, you're not tied to a particular recipe. Yeah. It's kind of the same problem people suffer with, with training. You know, they think they need all these movements when you really only need a handful of them. Yeah. But it's the same thing. You know, you're just, you're filling these slots in. And then when you eat out and, you know, want to go have some fun, you're probably going to eat less at home. Because we've talked about this in pretty much every diet episode that we've had, especially the restaurant one. You're going to get a ton of calories at the restaurant.

That's baseline assumption. So trying to meal prep and balance numbers. And the numbers, you don't even have numbers, you know, more than half the time. Most of the time you don't have numbers available to you and if you do they are bullshit so you're not meal prepping for a restaurant you're managing your choices so that you don't eat like a total asshole and feel like shit the next day yeah i also think looking looking at like your behavior and noticing what parts of cooking tend to get in your way and doing what you can to streamline those is really important. So like generally if you want to do whole grains, so like rice or beans, carbs take a little more work and then protein can take a little more work because generally you got to at least thaw the meat and then figure out how to cook it.

So having, you know, if you do have a tendency to be like, I just don't want to do the effort, you know, having some quick and dirty dinners that are, you know, better than eating out available. So then you're like, well, I can make this in five minutes. So you don't have the excuse to go hit Taco Bell. That's right. I actually really like, you can buy just powdered mac and cheese powder and it tastes really good with just white rice. So if you have a rice cooker, you can just cook some rice, mix in powdered mac and cheese powder, and I'll do like a can of tuna and frozen peas. You know, there's your carb, protein, vegetable. Yeah. Bam.

There you go. It takes two seconds. You can do ground beef also if you have the energy to, you know, thaw a pound of ground beef and cook it. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. you know, thaw a pound of ground beef and cook it. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. Sometimes I've done this when, you know, on the other end of the spectrum,

when I'm trying, same thing else, piggybacking off what I said earlier, if I'm, you know, doing long distance drive and I'm wanting something quick, sometimes I'll just go in the canned vegetable aisle and get like peas, no salt added or green beans, you know, and then I'll put like condiments on the, put like pepper on there or something, or I'll salt it myself, you know. What was the other one that just jumped out? I mean, there's tuna packets there, you know, I've thought of that, you know, there's your protein. But the thing that I've done recently is if I'm short on vegetables, I just get the bag of baby carrots and kill it. And I'm like, there we go. I've had a bunch of vitamin A today.

I'll get the rest of them tomorrow or the next day, you know? Sugar snap peas are my favorite for car trips. I've done that too, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah, those are great. Plus, they're entertaining to eat, you know? Like when you're on the road, you just need something to kill some time.

They're kind of expensive, so I won't buy them normally. But yeah, on a car trip, I'm like, well, that's better than me hitting the Cheetos or whatever. Yeah, right. Well, the one that I like is with protein. Again, as a child of the 90s, and even today, there's people still say this, although Keto's kind of reversed a lot of it. There's something magical about red meat being red that makes it worse for your health than white meat. White meat's much healthier than red meat, you know. And, you know, I think it has to do with the fat content

if you actually try to dig into the nugget of truth with it. But when you go to a real lean red meat versus a real lean white meat, it's not that much difference. You're talking about, what, four to five grams of fat versus one to two per three-ounce serving. I mean, it can add up if you're eating several pounds, but it's fine. And I remember calling out my nutrition assessment instructor about this. I'm like, is it the color of the meat that makes it bad or the saturated fat content?

Oh, and then she had a look at me and she didn't want to say it, but she said it. She's like, fat content. And I'm like, thank you. So, you know, every time I've lost weight, I've had 75% of my protein from red meat and the other 25% from either eggs or dairy. I don't eat white meat. I don't eat pork very much. I don't eat chicken. I hate chicken. And yeah, I mean, I'll eat fish if it's there. I don't really want to prepare it.. And, yeah, I mean, I'll eat fish if it's there. I don't really want to prepare it. I mean, I pretty much live off red meat. And I eat the lean stuff.

When I go out to eat, I'll get something fattier, obviously, you know, on purpose. But in terms of my day-to-day, I'm completely fine eating 96% lean ground beef. And I have no problem with that. But chicken breast and broccoli, I'm not fucking doing that shit. just not it's not happening here it's not happening too short yeah it's too short my mother hated cooking and she made chicken breast you're gonna hate me for saying this on the air but i'm gonna say it and she made that damn chicken breast probably four days a week you know at least because it was easy. And I hated it. At age seven, eight years old,

I'm thinking of where we lived at the time. I was about eight, you know? And I remember just, I'd come home, chicken, I fucking hate chicken. And then I bitched about it into high school. Then I, when I found out these bodybuilders ate that shit, I could not go more in a day. And I'd see guys like eating four or five at a time, these bros in the cafeteria.

I'd be like, how do these guys eat this? driven my brother my stepbrother he's like you know for my dad's second marriage he's like oh I like it because it's dry then I'm like no you don't you have an eating disorder I think this is no this is good like no continue where I think we're really uncovering something here deep in your childhood. Tell me, how did it make you feel? Psychotherapy. Do I need mental health assistance? I feel like this is that scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where they're describing the white boyfriend and they're like, dry toast. Yeah, man.

We grew up in a weird era, man. After 2000, it's like everything's bad, you know? Yeah, right. Bread's up in a weird era, man. After 2000, it's like everything's bad, you know? Yeah, right. Bread's bad. Red meat's bad. Sugar's bad, you know? I have an article on sugar that's almost done. I need to finish it so I can post it. Oh, excellent. Yeah. Quote-unquote sugar. Quote-unquote sugar. sugar as a we've made friends with more farmers and like people that raise animals also i find it very strange how like little of animals we eat too like people will go their whole lives just eating chicken breast and i'm like there's a lot of more chicken to experience in life and it is

delicious listen listen no the the chicken breast the chicken breast is the um the ambrosia of chicken. Everything else is awful. Dear listener, do not listen to Trent. He will not eat dark meat chicken. The man is broken. Okay, but to your point. I'll eat a thigh. Yeah, I'll have a thigh every once in a while.

Rudgingly. Yeah, it's not my favorite. But no, to your point though, when we cook the whole chicken in the crock pot or whatever, man, it just, it adds so much more flavor to everything that you make. And, uh, and I, I, I think that point gets lost because I don't see, I just don't see very many people cooking with, uh, stock or bones or things like that. And if you just, you know, maybe this is, this is something where it might take a little bit more effort to, um, find some different sources of meat in your area. You know, maybe if you can find a decent butcher shop or you've got a farmer's market where people sell meat

direct, um, you can get cuts with, you know, more fat and with more bone in that you may not be able to get at your average supermarket. And it's worth doing if you have access to that, because, you know, with no extra effort, you can have all this extra just flavor producing goo that you can store in the fridge, you know, and every time you cook something, you've just got a little bit of stock you throw in there. You ever cook in a ham hock? Oh, I cooked a ham for Easter. The amount of fat that came off that bad boy was impressive. I had a collard greens ones my friend made and he cooked them in a ham hock. Oh yeah. Right.

So good. That is not low calorie. No, no. So yeah. So I think, you know, in our household, I've talked about this before on earlier episodes, but sort of like, especially when we were busier, you know, now that we both work from home, we have more time to cook and, you of our go-to meals, it was the meat bowl or the rice bowl, however you want to think about it. Oh, yeah. It's basically, yeah, it's just like, so every dinner or most dinners, I would say was some form of like rice that we cooked in our Zojirushi rice cooker, which I've also talked about. I'm waiting for the endorsement Zojirushi, by the way. Do you got a promo code? Yeah, I need a kickback. But anyway, so yeah, so we cook it in that.

So the rice is ready to go and you get home, it's already warm, it's already cooked, it's there. And all you've got to do is brown some meat and, you know, ground beef is super easy. So you just pop that bad boy in the skillet, brown it, throw it on your rice, which is already ready. And then you just need a vegetable. And, you know, a lot of times we would just do, especially when it was super busy, we would just take a head of cabbage out of the fridge and just chop some cabbage up raw, throw it on there. It has a nice crunch to it. And then you just need,

you need some sort of flavoring. Um, and you can do, you know, we've talked about all the stock and stuff, but even if you don't want to do that or you can't do that yet, um, you can get all sorts of sauces that are pre-made that are also low calorie. So, you know, you could get a soy sauce, you can get various Asian sauces, fish sauces, you know, spices, sriracha, there's a million of them out there. And you can throw that on there and easily add some flavor to it. And you've kind of hit all of your slots there. You've got meat, a carb, a vegetable, bam. I think too, what's nice about cooking like a larger portion of meat, like a chicken or a pot roast or whatever is it is multiple meals. So like that's you going through the motions of making a meal but then you're good for two or three days depending on your leftover tolerance

and if you do have different sauces lying around like you could have a barbecue sauce an asian sauce you know whatever then it feels like a different meal even though your macros are pretty much the same yeah per meal yeah you could make your meat bowl with the ground beef. It could be a taco bowl one night, and the next night it could be an Asian fusion bowl. And the night after that, it could be kind of like, you could do some greens maybe, get a little bit fancier and put some stock in there. And it could be sort of like a country soul food kind of bowl.

So yeah, you could take the exact same thing and just make it three different ways very easily. Yeah, I think the bottom line is that when you're preparing these meals, you really want to think about, you want to just, you want to think about how to fill in those slots, obviously, and in a way that makes sense for you, you know? So what you guys do over there is a lot more elaborate than what I do. I'm just dealing with myself here, and I'm, what did Rip say? He says I don't like food, that I won't seek it out.

There's probably some truth to that. I'm easily satisfied when it comes to food. There's very little that I don't like, but I'm not going to go and hunt stuff down or need to make elaborate meals. But the point is you want to be consistent in what you do. And I think that people tend to overestimate their need for variety. And I know that because I've worked with people over the long term that aren't interested in changing their habits. And this is what clinical dietetics is. You're dealing with people who got sick and are forced to hear your spiel that they aren't interested in. That's what clinical nutrition is. Unless you're an outpatient,

which is a minority of the field, but if you're in an inpatient setting or even outpatient dialysis, a lot of these people are there because they're sick. They want medical attention. So it's great learning about people who have no intention of doing what you're asking them to do. So my expectations are always low going in. And what I saw was they eat the exact same shit all the time. You know? Yeah. And these are the same people that, you know, some of them do decide they want to make a change. I need variety. No, it means that your first choice was not very good. So that's what that, if you feel like you need variety, that means whatever diet you put together that you saw on Instagram doesn't work for you. So swap the foods out and put things in that you actually like.

Like for me, I wasn't going to do the damn chicken breast and broccoli, which was in every fucking magazine in 2002. So I eat the 96-4 and I pay good money for it because I'll keep eating it, you know, and I've eaten it for years. So you don't need a ton of variety. That's mythology that's in your head because the same shitty junk food you've been eating for 30 years is the same shitty junk food you've been eating for 30 years. Not a lot of variety there. You've been eating the same donuts at the same donut shop, you know. You go to the same McDonald's, you know. You eat at the same restaurants. Right, right. Probably get the same thing there, you know.

Most of us are creatures of habits. We don't need 75 permutations of food to eat. We're not wired that way, you know. We're not wired that way. At the same token, we're not wired that way, you know. We're not wired that way. At the same token, we're not evolved to refuse food. And, you know, I try to look this up. I need to research this more, but Christy had mentioned that she learned somewhere that we eat in units, meaning we eat the food that's presented in front of us. And I believe that, you know,

I haven't verified where that's from, but I believe her. She's a kind of a walking encyclopedia at times. Uh, was your family like a clean plate family? Like, did your, when you were a little kid, did your parents be like, nope, you're not leaving until you clean your plate? Yeah, they were moderately like that. They definitely were like that, but you know, I wouldn't get, I wouldn't have to sit there at the table for an hour if I didn't eat it, but they would, I would just do it, you know, I wasn't. Yeah. So fuck you, Rip. I do like to eat, you know, but, but no, I would just, I would finish the plate at the, but like, yeah, no, we eat in units. And the problem is the units today have way more food than we need.

And we're not evolved for that. We're evolved to eat what the hell's there, then eat as much of it as we can because the next famine might come. Well, there's no famine now. I mean, there might be. Shit might change. We're living through some crazy times. But at least in the last hundred years, we haven't had that problem here in the States and other developed countries.

Our homeless people are fat. We're in a very strange point in time when it comes to this. So the response to that's a little bit different than what we've been involved to do. We have to turn certain things down. And that's not an eating disorder. For some people it is. That's not an eating disorder. That's just facts of life.

If you don't want to get fat, you're going to have to think about what you're eating because the things that are available are shit. And people are going to invite you out to eat. We've been eating out for centuries. Food's a social event. Again, now, things are way more packed with shit than they were a long time ago. So you have to make decisions there as well. There is an element of this that requires you to think about what you're doing, something that a lot of us don't like to do, especially with our food. And then there's just a lot of options. I think in the Starting Strength Radio podcast I did three years ago, I asked Rip, I'm like, okay, when you were, he was born in the 50s, I'm like, when you were young, what was the difference between the

grocery store then versus now? He's like, fewer options. He's like, now you have a million types of whatever, just name your food. And have a million types of, you know, whatever, you know, just name your food. And back then there was only a few things, you know, you didn't have all these aisles with rows and rows and rows of shit. Yeah, right, right. You know? Yeah, absolutely. It's a good point. I think there's one more thing we should touch on. And this is something that Drea hit on in her episode, but it's worth covering again, is part of meal prep, I think, is also how you are preparing food.

And you don't have to be a Michelin-starred chef to do this stuff. But there are a few things that we've picked up over the years that I think have made a huge difference in just the flavor of the food that we get. Again, without doing anything special, just kind of having the right equipment. So for instance, if you're going to have leftovers, I remember growing up, like I kind of hated leftovers because if you, if you stick like, you know, a plastic Tupperware full of, you know,

au gratin potatoes and you shove them in the microwave and you blast it for 30 seconds. Like they don't look very appetizing and they don't smell very appetizing. And like, there's just, it's somehow like sucks all the flavor that was there the first night you had them when they were fresh and it's just kind of gross and I don't want it. But like Jordan, you've cooked a lot of stuff. Like, so first of all, you never use a microwave we don't own one yeah we don't own one microwave now nice and and i think that has been a big deal in terms of like preserving the flavor of our leftovers um what are some of the other things that you like that you cook with that you've noticed have improved the flavor um i think for the most part not being afraid of salt

we have this weird thing in america where like we go out to eat and have overly salty food but then when we're cooking at home i think a lot of us are children at least a good chunk of the listeners are maybe children of the 90s and their parents were influenced by like the american heart association or was it the adkins diet too like everyone was very scared of salt oh yeah oh yeah do not be afraid yeah sodium bad. Don't be afraid of salt and pepper. Like, it should, if it doesn't taste flavorful, you probably don't have enough salt in your food. I'm just saying. I like to do it myself. I don't like pre-processed shit because I've talked about this in other episodes.

Saltier, sweeter, or more savory something is, the less less satisfying it is you just want to keep eating it and that's a problem for some people you know yeah definitely well for sure and i'm talking about like things you're cooking yourself yeah if you if you're opening a box of something that was made then like yeah that probably has enough salt in it or sugar in it yeah and i think that's what more people mostly people are worried about because i'll say oh i don't salt my food then you do an inventory of what they're buying and it's like well you don't have to it's already fucking right you know absolutely i think having a i like having an array of hot sauces too so i really like vinegar based hot sauces but um asian hot sauces one of my favorite one of my favorite really lazy like

asian style sauces is i just mix rice vinegar soy sauce and then the um the hot sauce that comes with the chili flakes in it i just whisk all that together it takes two seconds really tasty sauce oh yeah yeah and it's and it's yeah it's really cheap that little chili sauce it's like it's got the green lid on it yeah it's way cheaper than buying a pre-made asian sauce which i do like those and i keep those occasionally but like i can buy rice vinegar and soy sauce and you know chili sauce and mix it up yeah and and that stuff lasts forever so you know it's not perishable yeah you can buy a big old thing of of soy sauce and the rice vinegar and the chili sauce and it's like it's not gonna it's not like the the pre-made sauces that are sometimes that go bad after a couple weeks um you can have that for months in your

fridge and it's it's fine you also cook a lot of, and you've been doing a lot more of this in the last year or two, in cast iron. And I think that even if you're reheating leftovers, there's something about cast iron that just imparts more flavor into the food. Well, that's been life-changing for me. I cook everything in cast iron now. It was funny. I actually didn't know where my cast iron set came from. I thought it was my grandmother's. And I was talking to my mom, and I think it is actually my great-grandmother's cast iron set. So I'm a little lucky to have inherited the family black gold, as it were. Oh, yeah, literally. Yeah.

We got to bring Dre on. I'm sorry, sister. My sister's out of luck. I got it first. Trent, we should bring Dre on and talk about types of things you cook with. Like, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, cause, cause you think about it, like if you, you know, the average, the average person probably has like some sort of like Teflon coated. That's what I had. Yeah. You know, and it's, it works, but like, it's, it's from a flavor perspective, it's completely

neutral, but so you could, but you could take like some chicken that you have and some greens or whatever and heat them up. Just literally what you put in the fridge from last night's meal. And you can just heat it up in cast iron and it tastes delicious. Also, right now, all of you listening, go to your kitchen. Go open your pots and pans, pull out those nasty nonstick pans that are scratched at the bottom and throw them away. They're no good once you get them scratched. I agree.

Don't make me come get you. You'd be horrified at this baking pan that my parents had. It was like the Teflon was just gone. It's completely scraped off. And, you know, I'm probably gonna get cancer now. Yeah. So, you know, I think that's an important part of, of meal prep. You know, it's not technically part of the meal prep. It's, it's when you're doing the meal prep, but it's when you're cooking the meal that you've prepped. But I was frankly pretty surprised once

we started using things like cast iron or just you know these like basic just sort of flavorings and and salt and how much more flavor we got out of our meals and again this is really low effort stuff it sounds fancy when we're talking about it but it's really not like this is i mean we cook pretty simple stuff over here. What it does is, in addition to making it taste better, we're going to say that it makes it taste better. I don't think it makes it taste worse unless you're using some weird seasoning maybe. But I think that the reason to go into that topic, and that we'll dedicate another episode of that and try to bring Drea back on for that is because it will help maintain those habits. You know, like my omelets, which were already pretty fucking awesome. I stand behind them. I can give any restaurant a run for their money and a fraction of the fucking calories and make a good ass omelet. And I've had people that don't

necessarily eat healthy, say the same thing about it. So I stand behind that product. But since cooking it in cast iron, it's gotten, it went from really good to really fucking good. It's like really, it's dramatically better from making it in cast iron. And the vegetables, when I switched over to cast iron, making cast iron vegetables, like I look forward to eating them even more now. Before I would have to like add more stuff to them, you know. And I don't have to do that now because just the baseline flavor is just fine i mean i throw some pepper on there maybe but a lot of the time i don't even put anything on there i just like the cast the flavor of cast iron vegetables and you know the whatever spray i use i think i use

avocado oil when i make mine but uh yeah like the method that you use to cook it could help ensure that you stick with this, you know. And if you're microwaving shit all the time, I mean, there's not a whole lot of incentive, you know. Like I'm at the point now, I said it recently, I went back to a restaurant I used to have breakfast at all the time. I'd rather eat my own omelet than go anywhere for fucking breakfast. I mean, that's really where they make their money, by the way. I mean, if I go out to breakfast because I'm going out with somebody now, like I used to go out because I liked having breakfast at a restaurant, but that cast iron omelet, man, that I make now is completely satisfying. So that's another thing that does for you when you buy the right equipment, you know? For sure. And to go back to your point, Santana, about, you know, kind of having those slots you fill

every day, you can create a ritual, you can create rituals for each meals for yourself. So like, particularly if you have to pack your lunch and go to the office, but it would take you 10 minutes to sit down and write out, you know, what is maybe maximum three breakfasts, three lunches, and three dinners that you would be happy to rotate through. And then you understand how to make those as efficiently as possible for yourself. And you just roll with that. And I think most people will find they'll add a little bit of variation to that as needed. I agree with you. I don't think people need as much variation as they think they do. But like, you know, a little seasonal flexibility as like certain

things come into season or go out of season, you know, you'll swap out your fruit or your veggies. Yeah, of course. I had watermelon last week. I don't eat that all the time. Right. Like, or like, I really like green smoothies in the summer, but like a cold smoothie in the winter is just not my jam. Yeah. So I'll switch to like hot oatmeal with my protein powder or whatever. But, you know, having like two or three things for each meal and you just know how to make those without thinking about it will really break down that barrier of you getting in the kitchen and just making your own food. Because really the battle is won by you just making your own food. Yeah, that's a great point.

Because, you know, you got to think about like it's like when you're I think what tends to happen with us is like when we meal prep and we have these like recipes in mind in our head, it all sounds great on Sunday. And then like you get to like, you know, Wednesday afternoon and you get home from work and you're just blasted. And it's like, you don't want it, like you can't devote a lot of mental energy to making this stuff. So if it's just a meal that you've made a million times and you've just, you don't have to, you can just turn your brain off and do it. That really helps. Absolutely. 100%. Yeah, for us, I mean, again, we have a little bit more luxury of time because we're home, but like breakfast right now for us is like, we'll both have a green smoothie right when we get up. And then I have a buttermilk pancake recipe I really like that has, I actually was gifted a grain meal recently. So I've grinding wheat flour for that but which you don't need to do that's way over the top but they're they have a good amount of fiber in them and i really like those for our carbs like secondary carb source we're kind of hobbits here if we eat second breakfast yeah oh really well

what's about second breakfast yeah that's a bad idea. And lunch. Yeah. And then lunch, we tend to like either like chicken, fish, or eggs. We like a lighter meat for lunch, either in a sandwich or on top of, since we've got a bunch of lettuce in the garden right now, so that might actually be a salad. So one time of year, I actually will eat a salad. And then dinner's a... Just once a year. Yeah. So it's not like multicolored, like Instagram.

Oh my gosh. Photoshop salad. How many colors does your meal have? I am growing Merlot lettuce right now, which is this really beautiful dark red, but it's amazing. I have to send me a picture. Yeah.

Um, and then dinner. Yes. Uh, and to your point with red meat, we're big red meters to eaters as well. So like dinner, a lot of to your point with red meat, we're big red meat eaters as well. So, like, dinner a lot of times is just a rice bowl that, you know, if I'm busy, I can just, Trent can go throw the rice on for me. And, like, all I got to do is cook ground beef and decide what to do for a vegetable, you know.

As much as I enjoy cooking, I usually make dinner in 20 minutes. Yeah. That's how long it should take, to be honest, for most people that right it can be done it can be done really well she should bring christy on she does she makes uh some interesting dishes on the low calorie side that i'm just like what the fuck really yeah yeah we're i'm uh we're a little on the opposite side right now especially since i'm pregnant but oh yeah i'm on weight-gaining protocol, not weight-losing protocol. Yeah.

Y'all want milk a day? Right. Buttermilk. Buttermilk. There you go. That's another one. You know, you mentioned stock earlier, but another kind of revelation you've had with your baking

is using buttermilk. Oh, yeah. Now, maybe not the most macro friendly if you're trying to cut fat or lose weight, but, uh, yeah, it's like, it's insane how much, uh, just using buttermilk in your baking, like when you're making pancakes or biscuits or whatever, it just ups the flavor content massively. Also a dirty little trick, if you're making box mac and cheese, a little bit of buttermilk mixed in with the cheese powder,

it's pretty good. You and this powdered mac and cheese. I feel like I gotta go buy some. Do you get a promo code? There's a, one brand we bought that I did like is Big Daddy Mac. I'll take a promo code from Big Daddy Mac. Big Daddy Mac. Big Daddy Mac. It's take a promo code from Big Daddy Mac. Big Daddy Mac. Big Daddy Mac.

It came in like, it's like a pretty big box. I don't know. Yeah. I really like mac and cheese. It just makes me want to buy it now. Yeah, it's great. Powdered mac and cheese. I don't know.

It's just lazy. Yeah, the Annie. If you want to buy it like literally the box mac and cheese, you get the Annie's mac and cheese, the shells and cheddar mac and cheese. That's pretty good. Pretty good. I can't remember the last time I had mac and cheese. I really like cheese.

Yeah, me too. That I eat every day. Going to the effort of making a full-blown mac and cheese is a lot. Not a ton of work, but more work than I want to put in most days. Yeah. I hear you. So, yeah. Hopefully there's some good ideas for you.

You know, it's hard. It's so hard to talk about food because so much of this is personal. So much of this is like, you know, the food you grew up with and the culture you grew up with. That's going to shape your tastes or lack of taste in your case, Santana. Yeah, apparently I don't like food. I have a friend who can't taste, by the way. It's hard for him to eat. He's a skinny guy, too.

He's an anti-taster. He had a car accident, fucked up his old factory system. Oh, wow. That's sad. Oh, wow. He can't taste. But he knows tequila from bourbon somehow, by the mouthfeel. The burn.

The way it burns. He likes tequila. And he likes, what is it, what is it white he likes blanco oh man yeah that's that's well and he gained he gained 40 pounds though he just started shoving a bunch of food down hey well there you go i mean i guess it could be a blessing or a curse depending on how you look at it but um yeah you know it's so hard to talk about food because you know all the things that we mentioned might sound terrible to you and that's's faith. That's legit. There's, there's lots of different cultures and lots of different, you know, types of excellent food around. But I think that every culture that,

that I can think of has these things that they do where they cook, you know, the traditional recipes, they cook the whole animal and they use it for flavor. And, um, you know, and you can, you can find that in whatever you prefer, you know, it may not be chicken for flavor. And, you know, and you can you can find that in whatever you prefer. You know, it may not be chicken stock, but you know, there'll be something else that you cook already that you could probably do it just a little bit more, get more flavor out of your food. And then that's going to make your meals that you prepare for yourself, just much more appetizing and appealing to you. And that's a big part of sticking with it. Yeah, why not? Well, thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at www.weightsandplates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana or

weights double underscore and double underscore plates for the gym, which is now being updated. I'm actually posting stuff up people, you know, I've been yelled at by, you know, people that apparently follow me and say, I don't put enough stuff up. So I'm trying, I'm trying here. Excellent. Well, that's good. Good on you. Good on you. Well, you can find me at marmalade underscore cream on Instagram. That's where I post both my lifting content, coaching content, as well as the audio work that I do, producing podcasts and music and writing bitching guitar riffs sometimes. And you can also email me jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. That's where I answer questions about coaching, you know, training. People just hit me up and ask me about programming from time to time.

Happy to help. So reach out to me and we'll talk. Bye.