Building Your Meals
With nutrition, convenience is king. When you’re busy, the last thing you want to do is spend 20mins prepping a meal and another 30mins waiting for it to cook. Let alone making it look good for Intsagram! Or maybe that’s just me….
And it’s these ‘can’t be bothered’ moments that lead us to fail with our diets. I’m sure you have been in the situation where you opt for convenience over what’s ‘right’ or healthy. Breakfast is a latte and pastry from the coffee shop, lunch is a trip to Pret where a sandwich is the go-to option. You’re late home from work and haven’t got any food in the house meaning a trip to Sainsbury’s local for a pack of tortellini and a jar of sauce (35g of sugar!). It’s tasty, easy and you don’t have to think about what to eat, or make the effort to cook.
But it doesn’t have t be like this, nor does it have to be as hard as you think to make simple meals that will help with your goals.
Good nutrition can be easy.
It’s just about having your go to meals.
Or a number of set meals that you know well, are easy to prepare and will stop the ‘what can I have!’ moments.
These don’t have to be Michelin star worthy either, just simple tasty dishes.
Ok… so where to begin?
Breakfast
None workout day or weight management
Any eggs and veggies
Smoothie
Pre WOD
Oats, whey protein, milk and handful of berry’s
Eggs on toast with 1 piece of fruit
Lunch
None workout day or weight management
Lean meat (chicken/turkey) sandwich with a piece of fruit
Big salad – (Lots of greens, lean meat, balsamic/vinegar and a few nuts/seeds)
Post WOD
Have a big sandwhich or 2 :)
Add chickpeas/rice/quinoa or beans and cheese to your salad
Evening meal
None workout day or weight management
Grilled chicken with veg
Herb crusted white fish and lots of veg
Moderate or hard day
Add some noorice/pasta/potatoes and extra butter on your veg :)
These meals are only examples and quantities will differ depending on you, your goals and your training. Someone who wants to gain weight or perform at their best will obviously require a different setup to someone looking to lose a few pounds. To get around this all you need to do is figure out your overall kcal and macros.
I think you can see that good nutrition doesn’t necessarily have to complicated. You could say ‘wow that’s boring’, but it’s ok to be boring if you’re happy eating it. Then when it does get boring think about and write down one more go to meal to add to your list. Over time you’ll be able to develop a whole list of different meal. If you do struggle with ideas or creativity then use resources like Yummly, Pinterest and BuzzFeed for some inspiration.
Taking things a step further
Work out your kcals and macros - https://boxnutrition.co/macro-calculator/
Divide your macros by how many meals you are going to have that day
Make a simple template based around this number using a meal planner like this one.
Use MyFitnessPal.com to track your food
Let's say you're are aiming for 2600kcals with 30% protein, 30% carbohydrates and 40% fat, eating 5 meals per day would be:
(1g of protein is 4kcal, 1g of fat is 9kcal, 1g of carbs are 4kcals).
For each meal:
Protein (PRO) – 39g (195g/5 meals)
Carbohydrates (CHO) – 40g (195g/5 meals)
Fat (FAT) – 23g (115g/5meals)
An example of this would be:
Tin of tuna – 30g PRO
3 slices of wholemeal bread 30g CHO
Mayonnaise – 1tbsp 15-20g FAT
An orange – 13g CHO
Not too difficult! It does take a little getting used seeing how many kcals and macros certain foods contain, but by using MyFitnessPal you begin to build up this knowledge quite quickly and can soon do this without any help at all. Based on your results (training, weight loss, body comp) you can adjust your figures accordingly.
As I’ve mentioned previously, the kcals and macros you work out for yourself to begin with will never be accurate and should only be used as a guiding figure. Based on metrics moving forward you can start tinkering with them.
Or let me help you :)
Find out more about Box Squad, the diet programme that helps you be the best you can be.
