How to Prep most of 2 month’s worth of meals in 2 hours
This will work for figure competitors…more like 2 weeks of food for bodybuilders. Make sure you have enough freezer / refrig space.
Shopping List:
Chicken: 2.99/lb at Costco (Foster Farms, 99% fat free boneles / skinless breast, low sodium / nitrates. Organic chicken is 5.99/lb). Get about $50 worth.
Tilapia: 5.99/lb at Costco (Fresh, Farm-raised from Ecuador). Get about $100 worth.
Yams: calculate how much you’ll need…i usually get about 10 lbs since they freeze well and i’ll eat them offseason, too.
Oatmeal: I like my food as unprocessed as possible. Plus, I prefer the texture and fiber content of steel cut oats. I have 1/4 uncooked oats in my current nutritional plan. I cook my oats in 1-cup batches on the stove (1c oats to 1.5 cups of water, simmer on med low for 30 minutes). I let it cook off and it turns into a cake-looking thing. Lift it out and weight it. Then cut it into quarters. I stuff them into the 4-oz tupperware containers and store them in the fridge. Each morning I will pull out a tupperware…I don’t mind eating my food cold, but you could always re-heat it with a little more water and add your cinnamon, stevia or other favorite seasoning to it. If you’re truly pressed for time, you can cook it with your allotted amount of egg whites and have your entire meal ready-to-go (use an 8oz tupperware to pack it in instead).
4 large Casserole dishes (9×12), covered with foil
4 large baking pans / cookie sheets covered with foil
Large tupperware containers
Wax Paper
Foil
Quart-sized ziplock bags
Gallon sized ziplock bags
Pre-heat oven to 350.
Fill up all of your caserole dishes with chicken, in a single layer.
Fill up all of your baking pans with tilapia, in the baking pans (you might need to cook 2 batches)
Wrap yams in Foil and arrange on baking pan.
Fill up your oven: yams closest to heat source, chicken 2nd closest, fish farthest away.
Check on fish after 20 min. Check on chicken and yams after 40 min. DON"T OVERCOOK!!! SET A TIMER!
Take it out of the oven, and let them cool off (unwrap the yams).
Dice the chicken and portion them out into quart-sized Ziplock bags.
Put the tilapia into the tupperware in single layers, separated by wax paper.
Peel the yams and dice. Portion out into ziplock bags and freeze.
Freeze everything and pull them out as you need it. Every 4 days, pull out stuff for the next three days to thaw in the fridge.
August 11, 2009 at 4:23 pm
hey i think part of your post got cut off…. not sure
August 11, 2009 at 4:38 pm
wow, that is really cool. i am not a pro bodybuilder. but i do have a hard time balancing all my workouts, shopping and eating (oh yeah, and my life). So I am gonna modify this on a smaller scale for me!
August 11, 2009 at 4:42 pm
I thought i was the only person who cooked like this. ….LOL. When I tell people I only cook twice a month, they think I’m crazy……ya gotta be smart. I like this post! If you have Albertson’s Grocery Store They sell 6oz tilapia fillets for $1 each. And a grocery store out her in Cali called WynnCo sold chicken .99cents a pound. I only bought $100 worht b/c I ran out of frezzer space.
August 11, 2009 at 4:46 pm
That is great. I have to try this
August 11, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Thanks Jumper! Just checking, I only buy tilapia that is farm-raised in US or South America…the Asian farming practices are not environmentally friendly, nor is the fish good quality (contaminated with heavy metals that could lead to poisioning down the road like mercury, etc.) I have found that the cheaper packs of chicken are saturated with nitrates. I try to stick to organic when i can afford it…food quality is extremely important to me, as well as farming practices (I can’t help, it, I’m from the San Francisco Bay Area, we’re just bred this way! :-) )
If you are already getting those things at that price, i will definitely check it out! thanks for the tips!!!
August 11, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Good idea! I was wondering…don’t you get a bit bored of eating the same things over and over again?
August 13, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Hey Porsha,
In this sport, we eat to live, not live to eat…so i don’t have a problem eating the same thing day in and out. That said, i follow this general guideline when in contest prep mode for sake of "following the diet", but I DO believe in mixing up my food as much as possible to maximize the spectrum of vitamins, minerals and other goodies in my nutritional profile. When i have the time, I will swap out the food (matching calories etc) for example, lean turkey for chicken. But, for sake of having cooked food available, I keep my freezer full of the "right" foods so that I can adhere to my meal plans.
August 13, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Right now I cook every Sunday or Monday for the week. I love your planning! I might step it up now
August 20, 2009 at 6:33 pm
That makes sense :) I’m sure it also makes things easier when prepping for a comp.
August 20, 2009 at 6:59 pm
I tried this and it’s such a time saver, it’s also so much easier to stay with the diet when you know you don’t have to cook all the time!
thanks for posting!