Weights and Plates Podcast - #39 - Eating In a Time Crunch

Episode Date: October 29, 2022

It's that time of year again. The holiday season looms with Thanksgiving and Christmas on the horizon, and the inevitable work deadlines and travel stresses that go along with that. When time is short and stress is high, it's easy to make bad food decisions because -- let's face it -- most of the food available to us in the world is high in calories and low in nutrients. With a few basic strategies, however, you can avoid hitting the fried chicken sandwich for lunch and instead eat (mostly) fresh, nutritious, and unprocessed food.   Robert explains how he seeks out food while traveling or working in fast-paced, stressful environments, including the food "slots" he tries to fill each day, the compromises he's willing to make, and why grocery stores and gas stations are actually better than you think if you know where to look.   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.jonesbarbellclub.com

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host. Good evening, sir. It's evening here. It's pretty much evening here. It's starting to dim down. A little bit of orange in the sky, but mostly getting there. That's why I turned my light on. Yeah. Yeah. It's that time of year. You know, it's getting dark at like six o'clock here. Daylight savings hasn't hit. So we wanted to talk about it. Hopefully this will be a fairly quick episode. We've had some meaty episodes the last few podcasts, but today we'll make a quick snappy one. We wanted to talk about eating under a time crunch, or if you are living in a time crunch, like a lot of you are, especially this time of year, trying to close out all the projects for the end of the year before Christmas hits, and we have Thanksgiving coming up, all that craziness,

you know, your schedule gets tight. And we wanted to talk about some strategies for eating in those situations so that you don't go hit the kfc just because you know you're a little strapped for time getting home for dinner well why kfc why not churches or browns or you know yeah ross chicken and waffles all of our friends in Wichita Falls or at least there's a vocal minority that talk about

they talked up Bojangles so hard and I move out here to Chattanooga and we have Bojangles I've never been to one what the fuck is Bojangles

isn't there like a song by the yin yang twins there's Mr. Bojangles well I'm sorry Nick D if you're listening to this

he's probably not but Doug Adio if you're listening to this, he's probably not, but Doug Adio, if you're listening to this, that was the shittiest chicken sandwich I've ever had in my life by a huge margin. It was awful. I mean, it's kind of like, it's like Popeye's,

but for more like fried chicken instead of like, you know, I don't even know. I don't even want to call it seafood. I don't even know what it is. It's like some weird cod experiment. But yeah, that's what it is. It's like fried chicken sandwiches, but fast food, just awful, dry, tough, probably refried. Probably. We got lolos, I think, or is it lolos? Chicken and waffles here in Arizona. Pollos Hermanos.

Yeah, Pollos Hermanos is pretty good. Which one do I—you know, I haven't went out to seek fried chicken out probably in 20 years. And we used to go to churches, you know. Yeah, that was a thing. That was a thing back in the day. Yeah, I liked it. I liked it. My friend, you know, he lived near the west side of Chicago,

and there was one year where he went to high school, and he would tell me he wanted it so greasy it would fall through the bag. You know, I didn't know any better. I hadn't eaten good food back then. I had no money. I was 16. My car blew exhaust smoke out the back in the winter, you know? Right, yeah. You know, and so that's, you know, I had Brown's chicken growing up.

My mom used to get that. But, you know, I got Church's. I got into that for a bit, and it wasn't really, I don't remember. Popeye's was not memorable. I can't say it's bad. I can't say it's good. It's just not memorable. It's bad. It's pretty bad. I remember Brown's was edible. Church's was, you know, what you would expect, you know. I remember the cornbread there was good. The fried okra was good. The chicken was pretty good. It was consistent. You know, I haven't had it here. There's one near my old apartment, and I never stopped in there. I just have not sought, I mean, for obvious reasons, I mean, what I do for a living, I have not sought out fried chicken in a long time. Maybe I need to, though.

You know, maybe I need to mix that in at some point and, you know, see what I think of it. Well, if you ever visit Chattanooga, I asked a local when we moved here. I was like, hey, what's the deal with, like, barbecue around here? You know, like, what's the East Tennessee barbecue style? And he looked at me for a second and he's like, fried chicken. Yeah. Yeah. So apparently, yeah, there's not really much of barbecue around here, surprisingly, but fried chicken, fried chicken is everywhere. We've got a couple of decent places in town. I've heard that Nashville is a place to go for hot chicken. I need to come out there. Spiced fried chicken.

So, you know, we can make a trip out of it. Well, yeah, let's get to it. Yeah, let's talk about this. What do you think about, like, when time gets tight? What are some of the challenges that you have in eating right, not eating bullshit? Well, you know, I've been doing this for so long. My brain's wired a certain way when it comes to finding food. You know, Rip tells me I take food like people take medicine.

You know, it's a half truth, I'd say. You know, I appreciate good food, but I don't need it, you know. Yeah, right. I don't need it. But I appreciate it. I'll eat it, you know. He's right. I'm not going to seek it out but i don't know that i take food because you know it took me a while to build out the things that i want to have day to day yeah you well you have yeah you

have some clear preferences for what you want to eat like it's it's not it's more than like just purely nutrition because otherwise you just eat whatever. Yeah, exactly. So, um, well, let me think. So I used to have a problem with meals other than breakfast. Uh, I've been eating breakfast since I was a kid. My mother made sure I did that no matter what time we woke up. I woke up at, if I had to start my day at five, that meant that I was waking up at three 30, had to eat breakfast and, uh, became a routine. I think in those days when I was in high school, it was cereal, milk, probably, you know. Yep. Maybe oatmeal, you know, typically some sort of cereal product and banana, some sort of fruit. I think bagels at one point when I got

into swimming, I wanted more carbs. Then when I went off to college, my sophomore year, I went to Western Illinois University out in Macomb, Illinois, interesting part of the world, pretty flat, but very lovely in the summer, like lots of green and lots of corn. Anyways, we had a dining hall, as most dorms have. I lived in the dorms that year, and they had made to order omelets. So I started having a vegetable omelet with cheese every morning. And fast forward, it's been pretty much 19 years. Yeah, 19 years. I started fall of 03. So 19 years since I first moved out there. And I still have a vegetable omelet, although it's evolved to egg whites and a lower fat cheese, you know, because I've learned some things along the way.

But, you know, it's something I enjoy. I wake up, I look forward to it, you know. And I pair that with oatmeal and a banana, which is similar to what I ate growing up. And I used to have cereal with that omelet when I was at Western. So that was interesting. I have cereal and milk. when I was at Western. So that was interesting.

I'd have cereal and milk. When I was, you know, bulking the first time, it would be like a quart of whole milk, cereal, omelet, you know, cheddar cheese. And that was my breakfast, you know. Wish I knew how to train better. I wish I was running LP back then. Right. I knew to add weight.

You know, I got my squat up over 300 and just fucking around. So that was cool. I think I put three plates on. Anyways, so, you know, what would happen was, you know, I tried all these crash diets, you know, that I'd read in the magazines didn't, you know, modified keto. And I say modified because I wasn't doing the program. Right, you know, basically, I was trying to zero carbs all the time, and then I was just eating everything, you know, full-out cheat day on the weekend when it was supposed to be high carb and still calorie controlled, you know?

Yep, yep. But, you know, I didn't understand it quite at that level at the time. And, you know, later on I kind of got into a stable routine where, you know, I ate breakfast, but then I'd just eat fast food during the day. Either I'd go to a sandwich shop or sometimes I'd go to Burger King or, you know, I just, I'm trying to remember what else I ate when I was later into my bachelor's and certainly into my master's. I typically would have breakfast at home or I'd go to a diner and order something similar. And then I would just, you know, either sandwich shop, Subway, Burger King.

I definitely was not preparing my lunch and dinner. So I ran into a lot of the problems that you listeners are having, you know, things that I hear about all the time. Except most people tend to skip breakfast. I didn't have that problem. But the eating during the day tends to be the most commonly cited time of the day that people refer to when they are discussing difficulties with scheduling and planning their meals. Yeah. You know, it's either, you know, that's that and, you know, skipping breakfast. That's more of a preference thing, though. I can get people to try the late breakfast because they're up, they're at home, they can grab something. It's more if they don't want to. But in terms of planning, in between going out the door to work and getting back in the door from work, that tends to be a problem for people.

And that was a problem for me back when I was an undergraduate, early 20s, late teens, early 20s. And once I finished my master's, did my dietetic internship, I started getting into a better routine with the daytime. So I graduated. I went to work at the railroad. I graduated. I went to work at the railroad. That job was just kind of stressful in general because hours were all over the place, and it was typical corporate shit, trading your time for money. Every little minute needs to be productive, even though we don't function that way. I remember I would pack things. I couldn't tell you what I ate there, but I was definitely bringing my own food. I didn't dine out very much unless I went to Subway or something. But that was when I started leveraging gas stations more. And this was in 11. So back then, it wasn't as common to go to a gas

station and find options, you know, reasonable ones at least. But I could find some stuff. So I started seeing like hard-boiled eggs there, you know, banana, an apple, and I started grabbing some things like this at a gas station. You know, I know I had Quest, not Quest, Fiber One bars at the time. I would eat those and just kind of piece things together. Then I'd get home and I'd make some pasta, some 96% ground beef, you know, maybe some low-fat cheese quesadillas and those carb-controlled tortillas. I'd make air-popped popcorn. You know, I was trying all these different types of food. But when I moved to LA, I started getting into more of a routine. So I took a clinical job in Los Angeles. I worked at a dialysis center. And, you know, I'd have my breakfast. So typically,

you know, omelet for breakfast and some sort of a carb source. And then I would go into work and we were next to a smart and final. We were next to a fresh and easy. And, you know, if I didn't prepare something, I'd run over there. You know, I'd get some, you know, blueberries, raspberries, you know, might have some canned tuna or something like that. At one point I was eating these, those Heinz beans that are in tomato sauce. And they're like the, the like kind of gold or copper cans or whatever. Yeah.

Yeah. I got into that for a while. You know, I'd have a protein shake sometimes if I didn't want to prepare my food. Or if I got there early enough, I'd go to that McDonald's, get an egg white delight when they used to have those. They don't have them anymore. And then when I was at the one, so I was facilities because I had I was a part-timer so I was at one facility one day another facility the other day then I was a consultant for a nursing home so I was a different nursing homes all over the all over LA and I had different places I could

stop depending on where I was at so at that that dialysis center, I'd go to Fresh and Easy or Smart and Final, and I'd grab, you know, some sort of a fruit, some sort of a protein source. Sometimes I'd get a salad, you know, if there was a Subway. When I was at the other unit, I'd be across the street from a Ralph's, which is a Kroger store, and I'd go in there, I'd get a bread roll, like one of those Bolio rolls, and I would get that, and then I would get a Subway salad. This is where the Subway came in. This was Baldwin Hills Dialysis Center. It was later bought by Kidney Center. So I'd go to Subway, I'd get the salad and I'd double up the meat and put every

vegetable in there. Then I'd cross the street and go to Kroger, which is Ralph's in LA. And I'd get one of those bolio rolls and then either an apple or berries or whatever fruit of the day was. And then this is what I had a lot of because I don't remember eating a lot of meat like I do now. I ate a lot of that Greek yogurt, that Faye Greek yogurt. So I was eating like a quarter of that a day probably, either in individual containers or the big one that I divided up. So I was definitely getting a lot of my protein from that for sure. And, you know, I did that for a while. And then I moved here to Phoenix and, you know, the breakfast stayed pretty consistent. And I got into sushi when I lived here. I wasn't eating that all the time, but I'd go and get

sushi. I'd just get fish and rice, you know, the the nigiri i wouldn't get into the maki rolls those those aren't proper but uh you know i'd get a lot i get nigiri and i'd try to like go during happy hour you know because it's kind of expensive then i'd have that sometimes uh subway was big they had a subway on campus so you know i do the subway salads and when they chop them they're actually pretty decent once all the water comes out and it gets more moist so i do that with the rotisserie chicken that was rolled out around that time okay i was about to say like so they put the meat in the salad yeah they do put yeah okay i've never had a salad at subway before it's not bad you know it's good when you're in a pinch you know it's as long as they chop it which i think is baseline now no now they have bowls so you have

to ask now they have bowls they didn't have have to ask. Now they have bulls. They didn't have bulls back then. So the new thing, like somewhere in 2013, 2014, I went to my subway there on, oh, what were those cross streets? That was La Brea and Rodeo in Baldwin Hills. There was a subway in the strip mall next to the dialysis center. And they started doing chopped salads. And that made it taste tremendously better because before they chopped them, they were not that good. The vegetables taste like shit. When they chop them, all that water oozes out, and it gets some moisture. Yeah.

And it pairs well with the meat. So I would have that, and I'd put spicy brown mustard on it to get flavor. I'd eat the croutons, too, to get a little bit more salt, you know, get some flavor in it. I was just eating a salad. Then I'd go across the street, get bread for more carbs, get the yogurt for more protein. And I did that. But, you know, when I was on campus, I would do the Subway salads. And I'd get home.

And my favorite thing to make, you know, I don't know when I started doing this, but at some point after I moved here, I started making ground beef, 96%, which I had when I was a dietetic intern. I would buy that. You don't have that once a day. And I'd saute a couple pounds of it, and then I'd mix it with different carb sources. So I might mix it with pasta. I might mix it with rice.

I'm basically making burrito bowls, and I'll mix that with vegetables, the same vegetables I put on my omelet, onions, mushrooms, bell peppers. More recently, I added kale in the last two years. I didn't used to do that. I used to do spinach, but I think kale pairs better. Yeah, same here. With some of these saltier foods. But, yeah, I would make that bowl.

At one point, I made burritos out of it. And, yeah, that's how I do it. Sometimes I travel. So I drove to Chicago last year from Phoenix to go to my sister's wedding. So I just stopped a few times. And, you know, I know which motels I'm going to stop at. And it's next to a speedway. And I knew that in that speedway I could get hard-boiled eggs. I ate the whole egg at this point.

You know, I'm picking my battles. And then I get, like, a banana. Then I get some, you know, instant oatmeal. Or I buy the oatmeal egg at this point. You know, I just, you know, I'm picking my battles. And then I get like a banana. Then I get some, you know, instant oatmeal. Or I buy the oatmeal at the hotel. They usually had the old-fashioned stuff there in the canister. And I'd use their milk and then make, and heat it up, you know. Yeah, yeah. I'd do that.

Nowadays, you can find stuff everywhere. These gas stations, a lot of, like a lot of the Loves have Quest chips. So I know that if I stop at a loves, I'm probably going to find Quest chips, I'm probably going to find fresh fruit, I'm probably going to find hard-boiled eggs, protein, ready-to-go drinks, bars, etc. I was about to say, the QT

stations have what they call it, like, Body Fortress or something? It's these big protein shakes. Pretty good. They kind of taste like the Premier protein shakes, but they come in like a double size. You can get like a 40 gram slug of protein in one of those. Yeah. Plus apples, bananas, you can find something fresh there too. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of them have that now. And so that's why, you know, it just really depends on what your situation is. You know, if you're locked into a building all day, let's say you're in a business park and there's nothing like that around.

So remember, I was in an urban area. I can walk places. You're just going to have to buy some of this stuff in bulk and, you know, bring it with you. And there's various ways to do that. A lot of places have a break room and a refrigerator. I don't know of a job that doesn't have something like that. But maybe if you're outdoors all the time, you might have to have a cooler with you. Guys used to do that back in the day.

My dad did. He brought a cooler to work with him. I remember he was like, no, that was my grandpa. My grandpa, he brought a cooler to work with him. So it just depends how much of a priority this is. But you don't need a gourmet Instagram ready meal to eat healthy is my point. I wanted to stop you really quick because I'm just observing about kind of the different iterations of how you have eaten when you were working jobs and not for yourself. I noticed a couple of different things.

Number one is that you weren't prepping a whole bunch of food and taking it with you. No, I never did the container diet. I couldn't stick to that. I did it one time six years ago when I got really lean, and that was the only time I ever did it. I didn't do the stacks of containers in my fridge. I don't roll like that. So, yeah, so you're just finding food that's out available to you and pre-prepared or at least close to it, right? You could prepare it like you said in a hotel.

You could take a few ingredients and mix them up like oatmeal. But most of it's pre-prepared. So that's one thing. So you're not doing this like crazy meal prep that you see on Instagram. The second thing is that you never, you didn't seek out any fried food. Nah, not really. Yeah. So like all of those places that you never, you didn't seek out any fried food. No, not really. Yeah. So like all of those places that you mentioned have fried options too. You know,

you can get the popcorn chicken on the salad. Oh yeah. But you didn't, you got the rotisserie chicken on the salad. I threw avocado on there when they started adding that or guac or whatever it is they have. I did do that. Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure, sure. And then the third thing is, and this is something that I do as well, and it's usually fresher or have more fresh options than, um, even most fast food places you'd go to. Right. Especially more than a gas station would have. Right. So, yeah, I think, I think that's interesting because most people I would expect

when you say, Hey, like we got to rein in the diet while you're at work, they're thinking immediately, Oh, I gotta, I gotta like make a whole bunch of shit on Sunday when I'm, when I'm one, just want to watch the football game. I got to prepare a bunch of shit and like put it all out in containers and pre-portion it. And I got to cook stuff the night before and then remember to take it. And it, there's just this huge amount of work that you got to do, but that's not what you're saying at all. No, not at all. I've never, I've never really eaten like that for more than a short period of time. Yeah. And I think that's not what you're saying at all. No, not at all. I've never really eaten like that for more than a short period of time. Yeah.

And I think that's more realistic. Like if you're trying to make better decisions at work and you don't have access to like, you know, let's say you don't live in a dense urban area that has really healthy restaurant options because there's not very many of those. Well, you know, like what's going to be the easier choice? Making better choices from the restaurants you do have and the gas stations and grocery stores you do have, or putting in several hours of work, you know, probably not hours, but putting in a fair amount of work and forethought into pre-preparing a bunch of food. And then also assuming that you're going to be hungry for that food or you're going to want that food on the day that you bring it to work. Right.

Right, because you're putting up a lot of barriers when you try to do the meal prep thing, whereas, you know, the other thing is like, well, you're going to the same places you probably have already been going, you're just trying to make better decisions. Right. That makes sense. Yeah, no, that makes sense.

Man, no, you know, it doesn't need not be complicated. That's what I always tell people. You know, we've been, we, humans are wired to eat in units. That's how we've eaten for centuries, since the dawn of time. You see food, you grab it, you eat it. The problem is that in modern society, and this is due to innovations in technology, in terms of food technology, what's available provides a lot more than we need. You know, it's widely available. The easiest thing to grab is going to give you a boatload of calories in the palm of your hand if you want it that small you know you can get some pretty calorically dense foods today whereas before you know you had to hunt and gather and you know you

didn't have all these options you know you'd either kill an animal and make food out of it or you had to farm stuff you know and make food out of that you didn't have a ding dong or a twinkie or a fudge round or a oatmeal cream pie, you know, you didn't have 500 calories the size of your hand, you know, that just, or a thousand calories the size of your hand. You can find things like that, you know. So, you know, now we have to insert our logical brain into the equation. And that, you know, tends to be difficult for a lot of people because, you know, we're wired to, you know, go to work, do our job, find food, eat it, you know? Now we have to think, oh, wait a minute, should I be eating that or not, you know? Right. And you're interrupting a natural process that has thousands of years of evolution behind it, you know? Yeah, it's not going to work. No, no. So I've set my life up that way, you know? When I'm ready to eat, I seek out food,

but I know what foods to seek out, and I can find something anywhere. You know, when I'm ready to eat, I seek out food, but I know what foods to seek out and I can find something anywhere. You know, I can go to Walgreens and find something, you know, I've done that. I found Greek yogurt at Walgreens, you know, a couple of times. And sometimes I have to get the flavored because it's all they have. You know, it can't always be perfect. You know, sometimes I have to get 2% milk. I usually drink 1%, you know? Yeah. Right. It just depends. Sometimes I eat hard boiled eggs because it's just what's available. Then I drop my carbs, you know, to make up for it. If I have to eat something else, it's high fat, you know. It just depends on the situation. I did beef jerky for a while, you know, it's kind of expensive. So I don't, you know, don't eat that too often. But yeah, like you want to kind of assess your environment, right? If you're the kind of person that has a job that locks you in a building all day, you get to go to the break room once, there's no commercial business around, you're going to have to buy food to bring to work with you. And you want to buy

stuff that doesn't require you to prepare a bunch of fucking containers because you're not going to do it. You know, I mean, some people might, you know, there are people, you know, some of you listening probably have people in the office that do that, at least one, because it's a thing that people do. But it's not a thing that a lot of people can do in my experience. They always struggle with that. And it's always a problem, right? Like, my biggest thing now when I get new clients is I'm like, don't eat the numbers. Don't eat the paper.

Eat the food. You know, the numbers are a guideline. These numbers aren't accurate, first of all. You know, every single bagel doesn't have the same number of calories. And, you know, from what I've read, the calories in a lot of these foods don't match what has been recorded in nutrient tables, you know, through the USDA, the USDA nutrient tables, because, you know, there's variability, right? USDA nutrient tables because, you know, there's variability, right? So I think people today, because of the way that nutrition information has been disseminated and presented, tend to be focused on what's theoretically in there and the numbers and what's on paper versus just looking around and trying to find food like we're wired to do, right? You know, like...

Right, right. Yeah, and that's the thing, right? Like it doesn't, um, I get this too. Like people that are wanting to make some changes to their diet, recomp, whatever, they immediately want to think like, well, what, what macros do I need? Tell me the macros that I need. And I'm like, okay, I mean, we can do that, but I haven't actually seen throwing some macro numbers at someone be very helpful at all in helping them actually change their habits, right? And that's like, what you actually pick up to eat is what matters, not what macros that you're targeting. No, because you can, yeah, you can target 100 grams of fat a day. But if you're not actually making good food choices, you're going to blow through that every day, right? So like, who cares what the target is? What matters really is like

the types of food you're choosing, because that's going to determine whether or not you're even going to get close to the target. Exactly. Macros are, are useful to help you put meals together. But sure. Once you've done that, you don't need to keep looking at the damn macros, you know, find your base, you know, you're building a foundation, you know, you're building a foundation. So, you know, if I give you a meal plan, and there's, you know, typically, the way I do it is you have like four or five slots, you have your lean protein, you have your carbohydrate source, which is typically, you know, vegetable or not vegetables, starchy vegetables, you know, like potatoes, peas, things like that, and fruits and starches, you know, grains and whatnot, oats, etc. And then you have your non-starchy vegetables, because I want people eating those. And then you have your fat sources, you know, like your nuts, your seeds, or, you know, the fat that's in your meat if you're eating something like fish, right? And I want people to approach this as, how can I fill these slots? not how can I get these numbers to be uber precise. I mean, you want to get around those numbers.

You want to weigh your food out. Weighing food is like training wheels, right? I don't want you busting out a scale for the rest of your life. I certainly don't want you doing it in public, you know? Right. That's not the goal here. The scale is – food scale is like training wheels. It shows you what a portion is.

Most people will overestimate how much they need if they haven't actually weighed it out and gotten used to seeing that visual, right? Yeah. I don't have that problem. I've been doing this for a long time. And the whole point is you want to get there, right? So, yeah, you need to weigh your food out. There's a certain level of structure that's required in the beginning. I mean, you're a musician, Trent, so like if you teach somebody to play an instrument, there's all this legwork that goes into those early phases that kind of goes away and becomes integrated into the whole routine later, you know, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's the same thing with anything, right? Anything that requires any skill, I should say. It's the same with any skill. You know, as you get more proficient, things consolidate into, you know, your normal routine. Like somebody yesterday had a client come in, I trained this guy, and I showed him my squat from last week. And he's like, you just kind of go right into them like, yeah, but you're not going to do that. Because there's a

bunch of things that you're not doing right now that aren't automatic yet. You know, once you've set your back, taking your breath, slowed down, got in the same position over and over and over again, over the course of 1000s of reps over several years, yeah, you can go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, because you're going to do all those things without thinking about it, right? Well, it's the same thing with food. You're going to weigh food out. You're going to compute macros from each food. You're going to kind of get a general schedule and general ideas for meals. And it's going to feel like 15, 20 steps that, you know, if you stick with it long enough, a couple years from now, you're consolidating all

those and it's just what you do. It's like waking up and brushing your teeth. You know, like I wake up, hit the electric tea kettle to heat up the hot water, press the coffee grinder to get the beans, spray my six-inch cast iron skillet, Throw some egg whites in there, cover it. Typically have vegetables left over. If I don't, I'll start chopping vegetables, saute them, and then I'll put them on low heat. Because one of the things you want to know, if you're doing fat-free or very low-fat cooking on a cast iron skillet, everything has to be low heat. So I wake up to give myself enough time with this. And there's a system here.

So I do all that. to give myself enough time with this. And, you know, there's a system here. So I do all that. And then while that stuff is simmering at like super low heat, I'll walk, you know, I'll take my dog out, you know, she'll go to the bathroom. Then I'll walk her around the house a few times, work on drills, you know, because I train my dog.

And by the time I get back in, the eggs have gotten firm, the vegetables have gotten soft, and then I put it together, make my, you know, omelet taco, I guess. That's how I like to make it. You know, I like to put the vegetables. That's how I like to make it. You know, I like to put vegetables in. I don't like the mixing them together. I feel like I taste the vegetables more when I do the omelet taco method. I don't know if that's the actual word for it. We'll have to ask Drea when we get her back, but it looks like a taco, you know? And then I eat. So, again, before when I

didn't have a dog, I would put all that stuff in there on low heat, then I'd take a shower. By the time I came out, it was ready, you know? Yeah. And, you know, there's different ways to spin that. But, you know, the whole point is I don't have to think about any of that, you know? If I'm doing a road trip, I know which gas stations I got to stop at. And it's not like, oh, my God, where do I go to get food? Because, you know, I'm cutting and I need these macros and blah, blah, blah.

No, I don't think about any of that. I'm like, okay, I'm going to stop over at Gallup to spend the night. Then I'll stop at the Loves, you know, on the Texas side once I get out of New Mexico and I'll get some things there. Sometimes I pack stuff. It just depends. You know, I'm always kind of a last-minute traveler, so I rarely have stuff on me, which is good for this thing we're talking about because rarely do I, I don't own a cooler, I own coolers, I shouldn't say I don't own a cooler, I don't have a cooler that I bring with me when I travel, you know, I have a cooler in my garage that sits there and I don't think it's

gotten any use in 12 years, I used it for my thesis when I was giving people milk, another story, but, you know, I just hop in the car and start driving and then I know where I'm going to stop, you know, because I've done these drives before. I know where to find food. When I used to drive to California and back – well, there to here actually, California to Phoenix and back when I used to live there, I knew I would stop in – where was it? Blythe, I want to say. Yeah, Blythe. I would stop in Blythe, which was at the Arizona state line.

But yeah, Blythe, I would stop in Blythe, which was at the Arizona state line. So on the way into Arizona, once you pass Indio, there's like this 100-mile stretch of nothing. And at night, it's pretty rough. And then you get out of this nothing, and you're in this town called Blythe. So I know that there's an Albertsons there. And I typically would stop there and grab some berries and various groceries, sometimes beef jerky. just the protein source buried it was either beef jerky greek yogurt sometimes i just get canned tuna because just didn't want it you know it's easy you know grab it yeah dump the water out in the parking lot drink eat it you know yep sometimes i get oh i was big so when i lived in la that

reminded me of something when i worked at the dialysis center i get uh those sardines in louisiana hot sauce at the uh fresh and easy oh yeah right i'd. I'd get those sardines and Louisiana hot sauce at the Fresh and Easy. Oh, yeah. Right. I'd eat those sometimes. I had sardines the other day and water. It was pretty good. I haven't done that in a while.

But, yeah, like one day, I think I went to work one day on a regular schedule. I forgot why. I was down there at an odd time. And I didn't have a lunch. I usually eat lunch at home after I finish online coaching. Then I'd drive down to Phoenix to go coach at the gym. Well, that day I just drove down. All I had was breakfast.

So I was like, okay, well, there's a fries, you know, around 24th and baseline, about 10 minutes from the gym. So I'm going to go to that fries and I'm going to grab some things. So I'm like, what do I want for protein? You know, I can't cook my beef. Beef is my like favorite, by the way, 96% ground beef. Love this. If I do 93 sometimes too lately,

I've been more price conscious with all the things getting expensive. So, you know, I think I got 93 for like three bucks a pound one week. It was great. I wish I bought more. So either 93 or 96. So I can't have that because I don't have a kitchen at the gym to cook it. So, you know, I'm like sitting here thinking at one point I was getting crap like this little jar of crab that they had in the seafood section. It's like 12 bucks. It was something different, you know? So I bought that a few times. But the other day when I went in there, I was like, okay, what am I going to get? So I grabbed berries immediately. I don't know, I got apples. I got a couple, I got a bag of apples. And then I was like, I need protein. So I was like, can I get

tuna? But I'm like, man, I just don't feel like tuna right now. It's just kind of dry, you know? And then I saw the sardine cans and I'm like, oh, I'll get sardines. I'll just get it in water. You know, I don't really feel like hot sauce today. So I grabbed that. And then I grabbed a can of beans because I needed, you know, needed some, I wanted to get some non-fruit carbs too, because I had like a salt tooth that day, more than a sweet tooth, but I wanted the berries to make sure I got some vitamins and whatnot from that and the fiber, but the fiber and beans too, but you get my point. So then, you know, I just threw all that stuff together and ate it, you know, it's not a gourmet meal, but I'm on the go, man. I don't need to sit down and eat something fancy. I'm just,

you know, I'm just trying to get nutrition. And this is what Rip's talking about. I take food, but I'm very selective, you see? So it's not like, you know, if I just took food, I'd just go through the drive-thru McDonald's and grab something, you know? So I don't know that that's an accurate way to put it, but, you know, I'm looking at the landscape and the environment, and I'm like, what are the best options I can make in this situation? So yeah, I end up having this weird combo. There was a time where I was big on rice, so I did instant rice for a while. More expensive than buying a bag, obviously, but again, what are we talking about here? Every time I bought a bag of rice, it would sit. So what was actually more expensive?

I wasted rice because I did not want to cook it. I did not want to clean the pan. I didn't have a rice cooker that I liked, you know. So I would never make bagged rice. But if I buy the instant rice, I'll throw it in the microwave for 90 seconds and eat it. You know, it tastes fine. So for a while I did that. It's just the problem with rice is it's not filling.

So, you know, I'd rather have beans or fruit, you know. It tends to be more filling. But, you know, you can get those Uncle Ben's packets. There's other brands too that some are cheaper than others. And throw it in the microwave, heat it up, and there you go. You got, you know, you can get up to 70 carbs from that, you know, depending on what your goal is. And heck, you can mix that with the beans. And I always try to get the beans with the flip top, but I do keep a can opener at the gym. I have a bottle opener in my car because sometimes I get Topo Chico. So, you know, I have all the things I need at various places. So, you know, I keep a can opener and bottle opener in my car for these situations because some things don't have the flip top cans. Oh, other things I got when I was in L.A. Things are coming back to me as I talk. I used to get the corn, the no salt added corn um the okay jolly green giant you know i eat that sometimes i got the green beans you know i alternate between those two if i wanted carbs and wanted a little mix of salt and sugar i'd get the corn you know

i'd do that just out of a can you know tastes fine you know i'm not gonna i don't have anywhere to boil the cob man you know i'm on the go you know again if i wanted if i just wanted to take food i'd go to mcdonald's or jack in the box you know yeah that well on the go, you know, again, if I wanted, if I just wanted to take food, I'd go to McDonald's or Jack in the Box, you know? Yeah. Well, that's the thing. I mean, like, yeah, this, like you said, you know, you're, what's the best available option. And I think a lot of people don't, you know, they think of like, oh, well, you know, canned food, like it might be there. I mean, a lot of times there's a lot of places where there's, there's some sort of grocery store near all these fast food places. And I think a lot of places where there's there's some sort of grocery store near all these fast food places and i think a lot of people just kind of think in their head like oh well yeah i mean

yeah there's canned food there but that's like what you cook with and stuff and it's like no i mean a lot of them can be opened like you said you can have a can opener a lot of them have flip tops now um you can buy individual servings even you can buy individual servings of fruits too, like, you know, cups of fruit, canned fruit. And it's real, it's real stuff. I think that's the main thing, right? It's not, it's not super processed. It's not, at the very least, it's not as calorically dense. It's going to provide you some fiber, like you said, it's going to get you some macros and it's going to do it in a package, which is not hyper stimulative to your, to your palate, right? Like you go eat the, you go and eat the burger and there's, you know, it's perfectly engineered to just stimulate your, your taste buds to the max, right? And make you want the milkshake and the French fries and the ketchup. Yeah,

right. Exactly. So at the very least, you know, you're making a choice here to eat something that's going to be, it's going to last longer, right? It's going to keep you full longer because the extra fiber content, but it's also, you know, it's doing other things too, right? Like it's getting you some nutrients that you're not going to get in a fast food package. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's how I think about it. At one point, I would stop at places. So, you know, there's going to be that person who just has to do that. So where would I stop? I used to go to Starbucks a lot, and I would get the spinach and feta wrap, egg white,

egg bites. I'd get those. And sometimes I get a Siggy's yogurt. They have that Icelandic yogurt. Yeah, I was going to mention that. Right. Yeah, the little pre-made yogurts. Yeah. bites i'd get those and sometimes i get a siggy's yogurt they have that icelandic yogurt yeah i was i was going to mention that right yeah the little pre-made yogurts yeah and uh occasionally get a banana sometimes i get the oatmeal um the problem with that stuff was what kind of eventually led me away from it was that it was very salty you know and and one of the things i've learned at

least with me and i think this is with a lot of people, you know, 40% of the country is overweight or obese, so there's a problem here, you know, and people try to complicate that. It's just my genetics. It's my genetics. People try to complicate this thing, but if you just look at the food environment, you know, I don't need a bunch of p-values to know that it's obvious that the easiest things to acquire are calorically dense, you know? Yeah, right. things to acquire are calorically dense, you know? Yeah, right. And we have, you know, impatient feeding studies from decades ago, where when people are restricted on calories, they all lose weight. Different amounts, sure. You know, there's variability. Some people lose easier than others. But everybody loses. Nobody's gaining weight on a calorie restriction

when it's tested in a controlled lab where they're fed, the foods are measured, et cetera. There's no documentation of that. You see weird results like that when you're looking at outpatient feeding studies where, hey, follow this diet. See you later, you know? Then you see people gaining weight on a diet. It's like because they weren't doing the program. Why in DTP? You're not doing the program. So, you know, just go into any place that serves food or sells food

and look around at what's easy to acquire. It's just caloric density everywhere. And given the hundreds, if not thousands of years of evolution, if we see food, we're supposed to grab it and eat it. You know, you're not going to undo that. You know, you have a drive to do that. So, unfortunately now, if you care about managing your body composition or even, you know, performance, right, you have to think about what you're doing. You know, you have to think about what you're doing. And that's the unfortunate nature of the current situation. And, you know, that's the only way out of it, you know? If enough people care about this and start making it a priority, you know, that environment can shift, you know? It's not something that you could mandate away any more than you can mandate

away drugs, you know? You have a lot of drug addicts and drugs are illegal, you know? So, this is just one of those things where the more of a priority it becomes for more people, the more you'll probably see those things shift. But at the individual level, if you care about not being obese or over fat, whatever word you want to use, you don't want to have a lot of body fat on you, you want to maximize muscle mass, you're going to be thinking about what you're eating, at least for a period of time. I don't think about what I'm eating as much, but when it comes time to find food, I'm thinking in my head, I got to fill these slots. You know, that's how I look at it. I don't log anything into an app. I don't have a template that I follow. I mean, I have a template that I follow, but it's all, you know, basically memorized at this point, but I don't have like a spreadsheet out and I don't use a food scale hardly at all. I use a food scale for my dog because she's better than I do. It's expensive. Right, right. Yeah, you got to be kind of nutty about this stuff, you know, compared to the average person out there.

To an extent, yeah. You know, like, why are you going to a grocery store to go eat? Who cares, man? Like, you know, who cares about these people? Yeah, because I'm trying to do something that's not average. I'm trying to be above average. That's why we're lifting in the first place, right? That's why we're bothering to do something hard in the gym in the first place. And if you're bothering to do all that work in the gym, you know, why not apply that to the way you eat, too? I mean, think about it.

And back to the future, three, when they were in the 19th century, they laughed at Doc Brown when he said that people walked or ran for recreation. Yeah, right. You know? Yeah. You know, it's just the environment we live in. You know, you have shit everywhere. And if you just eat blindly, you're going to get more food than you need. It's just how it is.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting since you brought up the 19th century. My wife recently read D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, which is a story about basically coal miners in England. So it's like lower class people. And this is like turn of the century, late 19th century, early 1900s. And what's interesting, just a little interesting little detail in there is that people used to go home for lunch. And what's interesting, just a little interesting little detail in there is that people used to go home for lunch. You know, that's like, if you, yeah, you know, even like this describes people in, in, uh, large cities, even like London, uh, who would like go back to their flats or go back to their common house to eat for lunch. And they'd be there for

like a couple hours because, you know, he's had shit to take care of and manage. And like, you didn't have, you know, we didn't have cell phones. So if you had to like manage things with the family or with other people, like you had to go talk to them in person. Right. So if you work at the T-shirt factory, you can't exactly contact them. Right. So, yeah, like people, people would go home to eat. And I thought that was kind of interesting.

So this idea of like being stuck in an office all day, it's actually really, it's a fairly new phenomenon. Yeah. You know, I don't even think it's a hundred years old. Well, a hundred years ago, people were stuck in a factory all day, but, you know, usually brought their food with them because there was no commercially available food nearby. And if there was, it would be expensive, you know, factory workers couldn't pay for that. So, you know, they had their metal lunchboxes. You remember lunchboxes were a thing? which the name escapes me but i'm sure there's a few of these that are out there but it's in mumbai formerly bombay massive massive huge city right and this company delivers lunches hot lunches to workers in office buildings and you know factories whatever

okay and it basically they do it through this like distributed network so there's like you know Okay. lunches and then he picks up all the orders and he's got a whole bunch on his bike and, you know, hanging off the back. And he like bikes over to the train station where he hands it to another guy who's on a train. Who's got like a bigger, you know, collection of lunches. And then like somehow this like crazy distributed network of people ends up delivering these lunches to everybody. Right. And supposedly they had like a 99.999% accuracy rating, which is kind of wild. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Yeah, but it's kind of crazy how they can manage to do it.

But basically it's like all like home-cooked stuff. Anyway, I think the big takeaway here is that, you know, look for, it's pretty simple, right? We always end up at the same spot. Look for real whole foods and you just have to get a little bit creative with how you do that. And you also look for the best option, right? You know, if you can't find Siggy's at the Walgreens, you could probably find a yogurt or at least some milk, right? Yeah. You can find some dairy and the dairy is better than buying, you know, some like crazy weird like hyper processed like protein bar with 64 grams of sugar in it you know there's always something yeah protein bars are pretty easy to

find so are the drinks yeah and nowadays luckily we're able to find pretty high quality protein bars too nowadays that's that's pretty good it used to be they were oh god a lot of shit like 10 15 years ago it was so bad now there's some pretty clean ones yeah but um but yeah you know you can get creative there and um and and i think if i think as long as you're not picking up the fried chicken sandwich or the double quarter pounder with cheese you're you're winning already absolutely yeah i think that's you this most important thing yeah cool I think we pretty much hammered that, huh? Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate it. You know, I kind of doing this episode has made me realize, man, I'm really out of practice of this stuff. I don't have a lot to offer here

because I ended up designing my life. I eat a lot. I do a lot of the same behaviors that you do, but I basically ended up working for myself, working from home. My wife works from home, so we're able to just prepare whatever we want. So like I go upstairs and make whatever I want when I want a snack, when I want lunch, when I want breakfast. But yeah, I'm glad you could share your experience because I'm not that helpful. Yeah. Thank you for tuning into the Weights and Plates podcast. We appreciate all of our listeners tuning in. You can find me at weightsandplates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. You can find the gym at weights double underscore and double underscore plates. and double underscore plates. Very good, very good.

Hey, and you know, I know we talk about this stuff as if it's easy. I wouldn't say it's easy. I would say it's simple, but it ain't easy. And Santana and I have had years of practice doing this stuff. So we certainly weren't perfect when we started. So if you need some help, go to weightsandplates.com

and sign up for diet coaching because that's where you can get somebody to help walk you through this and hold your hand through this process. So go look them up if you need some help with this. If you need some help with coaching, you can reach me at jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. Send me an email there. Or you can find me on the Instagrams at marmalade underscore cream. All right, we will talk to you again in a couple weeks. Bye.