What I Eat.

It ain't pretty. But it works.

I’m to the left. My good friend Pontus, who is a fantastic trainer in California, is to my right. Yes, we have the pump. Yes, we have some good lighting working in our favor. Yes, it still takes a ton of work in the kitchen to look as good as Pontus.

Every so often someone asks me what my diet is. Just last week in an airport, I was sitting in a chair when a high school kid glanced over his shoulder, sized me up, and shot out a question, “hey man, do you lift?” We proceeded to have an hour long discussion about lifting and nutrition. I walked out of that conversation glowing for two reasons. One: I got to do what I love to do - share lessons and stories about my favorite subject with an eager student. Two: I got an ego tickle. Just by sitting in a chair in an airport wearing a t-shirt and sweats, someone was curious enough to ask what the hell I was doing with my training and nutrition. 

Now let me be clear, I’m not a professional bodybuilder, I don’t have any notable athletic achievements, I haven’t really accomplished anything from a weight gain or weight loss perspective compared to some of the truly incredible stories you can dig up on the internet. However, I’d like to think that I’ve done a decent job staying lean, putting on some muscle, maintaining healthy bio-markers, and doing so from the lifestyle of a public school teacher with an hour and 10 min commute both ways. So, without further ado, if you’re curious about what an education obsessed fitness junkie eats day to day, week to week, year to year…then here it is.

Monday - Thursday

Breakfast:

½ pound of Ground Beef

½ pound of chicken thighs

10-12 ounces of white potatoes

¼ cup of cranberry juice not from concentrate mixed with a can of seltzer

Preparation: I cook the ground beef in a skillet like a big pancake. I get it crispy on one side before I give it a flip and get it crispy on the other side. The chicken thighs and the white potatoes go in the air fryer for 25 minutes. Everything is salted to taste.

Lunch:

½ pound of ground beef

½ pound of chicken thighs

½ cup of dry white rice 

½ cup of chicken stock

1 orange

Preparation: All of this is done in the morning alongside breakfast. The ground beef is cooked in the skillet at the same time as the breakfast ground beef (so I have 1 pound of ground meat in the pan) and the chicken thighs are also being done with the breakfast chicken thighs in the airfryer (so there’s one pound of chicken thighs in the air fryer in the morning.) The rice is cooked in a pot on a stove with a cup of water. I proceed to chop up all the meat and mix it with the rice and throw it all into a thermos. I pour boiling chicken broth over all of it for some flavor, then pack it up into my bag for the day. The orange I eat separately.

Snack:

1 cup of whole fat greek Fage yogurt

1 orange

Preparation : Eat it.

Dinner:

1 pound top round steak

10-12 ounces potatoes

1 teaspoon of olive oil

Two Fruits of my choosing. Been crushing kiwis and apples lately

Piece of toast with either butter, cheese, or almond butter spread on it

¼ cup of orange juice mixed with seltzer

Preparation: Broil the steak for 6 minutes each side, tons of salt on it. Potatoes get peeled and diced and then I toss them in a bowl with the olive oil, salt and any spices I want at the moment. The fruits I dice up and eat in a bowl. The bread is usually homemade by my mother - I always toast it and spread something on it. I consider that my dessert. The quarter cup of orange juice is to add some taste to the seltzer.

Dinner damn near every night. I look forward to it everytime.

Friday

Breakfast: Same as Monday -Thursday

Lunch: Same as Monday - Thursday

Dinner: 

1lb of Meat. + A meal out with friends*.

*Now here’s where things get a little janky. I like to see friends Friday night, because I’m a normal human being ya dig? So here’s the rule. If I know I’m going out to eat some food I have one job. Pick a protein (whatever’s left in my fridge) and quickly crush a pound of it before I go out to eat. This means cook it the fastest way possible, chop it up into tiny little bits, throw it into a bowl with some hot sauce and down it before I get to the restaurant. This serves two purposes. One: I can enjoy the meal without forcing myself to go after the most protein dense food. Two, a pound of protein is fairly satiating, and when I typically go to a restaurant they never really serve enough food. I’m a glutton by nature. Eating a pound of protein allows me to fulfill my protein requirements, and then order two tacos like a normal human being instead of 16 of them. It saves me money and I don’t eat as much shit. 

Saturday

Breakfast: Same as Monday -Thursday (minor variations in here….sometimes I’ll have some bacon and eggs and cut down on the protein…not all that often.)

Lunch: Same as Monday - Thursday

Dinner: 

1lb of Meat. + A meal out with friends**.

**Typically this will happen either Friday or Saturday night but not both. But if it does, the same rules apply here. If not, I usually have the same meal I have from Monday through Thursday. With maybe a little bit of fun. A chocolate mayhap, some of my mothers homemade baguette. I’ll change it up here and there, but I stick with the protein basics for the most part.

Sunday

Sunday is a special day for food. Anyone who follows my instagram knows that Sunday is my cooking adventure day. I have two goals for Sunday. One is to hit my protein numbers. And the second is to create something delicious. Sometimes it's homemade pasta from scratch. Sometimes it's a slow cooked short rib that’s spent 12 hours in the oven. Sometimes I make the world's best taco, or get after the perfect chocolate chip cookie. In all cases, I make sure I hit at least 200 grams of protein from animal sources, and then I enjoy myself.

I am human. I like tasty things. I assure you.

Final Notes

If this sounds wildly repetitive, that’s because it is. It’s based on Stan Efferding’s Vertical diet (with the exception of Sunday.) When people ask me if I get bored of the taste the answer is yes and no. I genuinely look forward to dinner, but breakfast and lunch I consider straight fuel - tasty enough to consume…but there’s definitely a work aspect to it. Some people genuinely hate repetitive eating and can’t imagine eating like this. I’ll say two things in response to this criticism. 

1. I believe the repetitive nature allows you to turn your mind off and simply dial in the routine. When you cook the same food, you get faster and more efficient at cooking it, you don’t have to think about what you’re buying in the grocery store, and you have a home base to return to. Everyone has the experience of overdoing it on a vacation, this repetitive home base allows you to get back into your flow. 

2. Having a repetitive eating routine allows you to tweak your diet very easily. For example. Let's say you have a repetitive eating routine where you know you feel good and you’re performing well. Let’s suppose you want to test whether or not the addition of a supplement in your routine helps make a difference. When your diet is extremely consistent, if you feel a difference in your life after consuming the supplement then you know it's the supplement (casting aside the placebo effect) as opposed to the ole, “maybe it was something you ate that day.” It also allows you to tweak quantity. If you want to put on size you simply eat more of the same, you want to lose some pounds, you cut down on the carbohydrates and fats in the diet. 

In the end you find what works for you. I know this works for me.