5/21/23
For three weeks now I’ve eaten primarily out of the crockpot.
The ease of preparing food is what has been winning me over, as well as the fact the most affordable way to eat is stews and pot roasts.
Homemade. Nutritious. Affordable.
Whatever size crockpot I have, it will comfortably make a stew with 3lbs of meat, with plenty of carrots, onions, celery, and potatoes cut into the pot and cooked beneath the meat.
Whereas without the root vegetables it comfortably fits 5lbs of meat, me putting in 3lbs of whatever is the lowest cost, and not too fatty looking steaks or roast, as well as 2lbs of chicken breast, again selecting a pretty looking lean package – this mix of beef and chicken breast what I consider ideal.
Near the end, or at the end of cooking time I remove the beef from the liquid, and cube it for eating and storage.
I’ve realized that due to the chicken coming apart more easily it can stay in with the liquid, being shredded rather easily, and then to have the bastard spawn of mashed potatoes and gravy – I pour in lots of instant mashed potatoes, of which the idahoan brand was surprisingly more affordable than generic, and some flour – therefore having all the good fatty juices sopped up, and eventually eaten.
large cubed steak bites with shredded chicken/mashed potato/corn/gravy mix – five minutes to prep, six hours of hands off cook time 🙂
I eat the meat first, the potato mix secondly.
The whole thing last me three or four days usually, with the last meal’s worth of potato mix being eaten with some other form of protein (often tuna – yes) as the meat separate the mix has already been finished.
Nothing cooks out. Nothing goes to waste.
However, on that note ; stew with all the root vegetables fills me rather fast, and a week and a half ago I did something that bothers me considerably and is something I’ve likely done naught but a couple of times in my adult life…
I ended up tossing out a goodly portion of that stew.
Then the next two batches have been the meat centric with instant mashed potatoes variant – these filling me less per capita, and therefore fulfilling my desire of waste not want not.
Notable was how affordable this most recent batch was, london broil at $3.99/lb, and chicken breast on sale at $2.49/lb – me able to purchase roughly three days of food for about $30.
12/5/22, 345am
Ravenous I go to the kitchen, what am I craving – meat? Maybe. The only option is leftover chicken wings. Not in the mood right now.
The more accurate craving is just saturated fat, and I’m not in the mood for eggs – cheese sandwich sounds good, peanut butter and cheese sounds horrible, the peanut butter that is, the stuff’s consistency doesn’t always sit well.
Now, in a way, I’m more european than american, I butter my sandwiches everywhere in place of what you expect to be mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise, I only eat the stuff when it comes on something I ordered. I don’t not eat it, I just about never add it myself or say yes to it when asked.
(Exception – taking bout eight packets to slather over my burger and fries for a higher calorie takeout meal after what was probably a 20hr fast.)
A lazy cheese sandwich is peanut butter and cheese.
This morning?
See how I feel about the consistency of peanut butter in the moment.
So we’re doing it right, bread, butter, peanut butter, and cheese.
We want the extra heaviness of the peanut butter. I do sometimes eat butter and cheese sandwiches.
I slice the butter real thin and chop it into tiny lardon sized pieces, microwave the bread and butter for :15, spread it, glob on the peanut butter, mix it around with the extra, bigger than space to spread, butter, and with that set – I slice the cheese, about half of an 8oz brick of what I have on hand.
Some cheese crackers on the side, and voila – I enjoyed my before 4am meal.
Still a bit hungry – this meal probably cause I’d skipped the apple pie and vanilla ice cream I’d usually have eaten around 11pm.
…..
You’ve gotta listen to your body when you eat.
I only touch peanut butter when it is a craving, this morning the lazy sandwich sounded terrible, while butter and cheese (something I do eat) didn’t sound strongly appealing, so the sandwich included it all.
Milk, while I drink copious amounts – is drank at the end of the day, while I am ravenous, when I crave it, or during/after lots of sweating and/or physical effort.
And ice cream is great at any time when hydration is an issue! It’s a great refueler, even used as “prehab” like refueling!
I expect to go to bed, at the very least nap, after eating grits. It is generally thought of as breakfast food, but it puts me to bed, relegating it to a craving food or when ravenous desiring something “heavy” late night as an extra meal.
I tend to cook it with pepper, and sometimes garlic powder added, shredded cheese mixed in, whatever meat is on hand to finish the bowl.
Oats I’ve found to work as a raw ingredient in egg shakes, or mixed with eggs in a bowl before pan frying.
I will eat oatmeal cookies.
I do not cook oats as is traditional in liquid – that preparation gives me stomach aches, and overconsumption leads to some stomach turning blast poops near the end of the day.
…eating serious quantities of instant oats at a hotel continental breakfast, I’m talking 2500-3000 calories of instant oats, 12-16 hour delay – that’s how I know…
Funny that I spent a good deal of middle school and high school having a bowl every morning, listening to what is “common knowledge”, not what I felt, my instincts buried.
A stomach ache after nearly every breakfast.
I eat little in the way of bread, just the occasional cheese sandwich, or almost common buttered sourdough toast.
Almost never do I have the bun when I make myself a burger at work. For months coworkers thought this very odd – now they’re surprised on the odd night I have a traditional looking burger.
Eggs are the superfood…and I rarely eat/drink them. Yes drink, I go through phases making daily raw egg shakes.
When I eat them it’s fried, often cut with oats as written above.
I never eat them scrambled, that’s almost never sat well, just like oats cooked in liquid.
Cream of wheat is not food so far as I am concerned. Tastes nasty, doesn’t digest, it’s like all the cons of oatmeal without a positive.
When I eat a sandwich a regular occurrence is butter, grape or strawberry jelly, and salami.
It’s a regular enough craving.
My red meat is generally cooked to medium at most, and that’s when I accidentally over cook it.
I dodge low fat/no fat dairy products as much as possible.
Skim milk tastes like off water. Whole milk tastes like “God made this especially for me, so I can be big and strong” – YES
I’ve noticed significant difference in my preference to other full fat dairy products as well. Walmart generally has an organic full fat kefir, the latter part the selling point to me – much better than the low fat or skim based product normally found.
Occasionally I find full fat greek yogurt, and tend to always buy it. It’s much better, much more a difference than with kefir.
It’s shameful that so much dairy on the shelves is without part or all of its fat.
Where does it go?
Does commercial baking use all the cream byproduct?
An interesting historical fact – prior to world war two most skim milk was simply dumped as a byproduct, as waste!
And now it’s sold at the same cost as it’s more nutritious counterpart…whole milk.
I try to waste as little as possible of fat from my cooking. I’ll fry something in burger grease immediately following it’s cooking.
This will often be, splash some water, a pack of crunched up ramen letting the beef fat cook into the noodles, the water cook out of the hot pan.
At least once I ate the yolks, the food waste from my buddy’s serious egg white habit – “dude, stop throwing those down the drain, I’m hungry too”.
Blew his mind that I’d eat all the cholesterol willingly, it’s I that know the yolks are the best part, a third or half the protein, all the fat, all the cholesterol – mother nature’s testosterone booster.
It’s always surprised me that we’re in disagreement on this point.
Potatoes are a robust carb.
You can’t go wrong with any preparation, even shitty restaurant mashed potatoes are acceptable.
Wendy’s sell good enough baked potatoes.
Solid in a pinch. One restaurant I worked in tossed at least 4-6 big uns every night.
When I worked, and being the new guy not being sick of them – I’d take every one available, and then at home put meat and cheese from the grocery store over them, partially free twice baked potatoes.
The free food, whether employee meal or snagged food waste, is a big perk for line cooking these past ~15 months – most of my weekly hamburgers are cooked at work in the already smelling kitchen as I already smell.
I more rarely make the house smell like beef fat for 18 hours at a pop (not the greatest ventilation I’d say)..
A large percentage of my calories is restaurant food. But unlike the following…I lift weights, c&p baby, awesomeness….
I made fun of my buddy when he went from a solid 185lbs to 185 of mcdonalds based fluff on the 100% free mcdonalds diet (his only off menu eating other drive through “food” bought by the kfc classy single mother coworker he was hooking up with).
lol – at the above anecdote, and the “kfc classy” description that just came to me. During that period for him it was mostly 5-6 days of free mcdonalds, then 1-2 of kfc as supplied by his single mother whatever they described themselves as.
And I wrap this up.
…..
Might be a lifting one later today.
…..
juicy – which is not exactly what to write after a bunch about food…and this being as close as I got to porn last night, for whatever reason I was going through it over that urge – hence awake typing at 345am
I’ve been doing this I was 16 or so, it ties into when I first “got big” eating and lifting…
One step past cereal with a spoon down the bodybuilding rabbit hole…
Trail mix? With a bowl & spoon.
M&Ms? With a bowl & spoon.
Any nut or seed – with bowl & spoon.
(The entire 1lb+ of ground beef with cheese – with bowl & spoon)
Your fingers stay clean, and alongside the bowl you’ve got your glass of milk to drink.
The gallon seated with you at the table.
Walmart sold bags of trail mix for about $7, no clue what the covid price now is as the bag got smaller a couple years ago, inflation is stupid right now, but it was 3500 calories, then something like 3000 calories for the whole bag, $7, easily eaten, no prep involved.
A bag of trail mix the supplementary, though substantial (able to be more than ½) portion of the day’s calories.
Olive Oil :
At 16 years old my mom insisted on whole milk not being in fridge.
I insisted on more calories per glass…
With whey, sometimes soy powder, and whatever not full fat milk it was whether skim or 2%…
I poured in olive oil, stirred, and drank.
Stirred again if it separated, and continued to drink it.
7000+ Calories For Quick Size (& Fatness lol) :
The summer between my junior and senior years of high school I force fed an average of 7200-7500 calories a day.
I gained weight quickly, from 230ish to 253 in ≤½ of summer break.
I ate like this the entire time though.
For breakfast it was frozen breaded chicken, frozen waffles, greek yogurt, and milk not leaving the table until I’d taken in 100g+ protein.
I had lunch at home.
I then had lunch at my aunt’s.
I’d eat a bunch of hostess/little debbie’s/ring dings at my aunt’s , and drink her 1% milk.
I’d then either eat dinner at my aunt’s then have a second dinner of my mom’s cooking at home or I’d eat dinner at home and after dinner eat half a frozen pizza.
In some cases I ate all three large dinners because…to grow big you eat big.
Some days the other half of the frozen pizza was eaten in addition.
I drank a gallon of milk, my whole milk, every day.
Those who “can’t get big” haven’t spent 3+ months taking in 7k+ calories daily.
Bowl Everything :
Similar to the first, as contrary to what that comedian said about kfc bowls, it is a much more efficient presentation of calories to have All OF IT stirred up in a bowl, your meats, your cheese, your carb(s) fried up, served in a giant bowl ready to be shoveled down.
Sit W/Juice & Milk + The Candy :
At the table you set down your whole milk, and your grape juice, apple juice, and/or apple cider.
You also have a bag of candy within arms reach, maybe twix or kit kats individually wrapped, maybe m&ms with bowl and spoon.
Milk is the palette cleanse.
You eat the bowl of nutrition til starting to slow down, drink juice or milk, make sure your pallette is cleansed with milk, eat a bit of candy which reignites your appetite, and get a whole lot (think 4000 calories minimum) down in one sitting.
Any Food Combinations You Enjoy :
”
GOMAD? Try 10-12 Gallons A Week :
Did that for about 6 months at 17.
Corn Dogs & Cream Soda :
One summer working as a mover I was losing weight far too quickly.
It was red alert, eat however you can to keep weight on.
I could barely eat while carrying boxes in the heat. I’d eat at most 5 of those quaker type rice bars, eating a grand total of maybe 500 calories, and drink a powerade – 700 calories tops until after the gym late night.
It was 8 corn dogs, I’ve found they can be put down in limitless amount, and I drank a liter of cream soda, plus â…“-½ gallon of milk with it.
10,000 Calories In A Day?
Between ;
•having a gym membership
•not having a job
On one particularly hungry day I had three 3000+ calorie meals, coming very close to 10k calories on the day.
A Dozen Eggs :
A dozen fried eggs is rather filling, but is not more challenging to consume with ketchup, melted chocolate chips, mexican mix cheese, a can or two of tuna, and a sizeable bunch (up to 1lb) of ends, usually pepperoni, sold at discount from the deli mixed in.
At the start of my junior year of high school it was 6+ (not more than 9) eggs with a can of tuna, the next step was adding those deli ends, usually pepperoni, then stuff got added incrementally from there.
By winter senior year it was as written above.
The Grocery Store Cashier(s) :
At least one cashier is going to think of you as a regular (who buys so much f#@”*!& food).
This is a sign from the gods.
You are eating big!
A sign particularly humorous when she asks how many you are feeding and from behind your highlander beard comes the statement “me”.
Or when they rib you about missing a usual item, like grape juice, that one woman always teased me when I wasn’t purchasing grape juice.
My buddy was known as the eggs guy. 🙂
(And at work I have a reputation for bringing in chocolate milk – one bartender, she ribs me if I don’t have it, or have something different with me.)
At the gym I hear “hey, can I ask for some advice” he says from the lat pulldown, “yeah, zup” and I pause momentarily at seated row, “I’m trying to get bigger, do you have any advice”.
I’ll write what my advice to him was :
The easiest way to get extra calories in is to drink them.
You obviously play around with the variables, but you make a shake with some combination of heavy cream, milk, raw eggs, and ice cream.
The raw egg shake.
No one got huge eating perfectly clean, junk food will get calories up, but a smorgasbord of garbage calories isn’t the way to go.
You want big calories filled with nutritious foods. Not super clean, not the stereotypical foods, but with more normal still nutritious foods.
Saturated fats from dairy and meat are your friend, nothing is more anabolic, and it’s high intake will improve how you feel, your quality of life. How I feel taking in high levels of saturated animal fats is why I continue to do so.
Complete overhaul isn’t as easily done as small changes are for most.
If you want to get bigger and are eating chicken breast at dinner (he is), eat ground beef or a steak instead. You’re keeping the protein level close enough to constant, but the switch just bumped up the calories due to saturated animal fat with no real effort on your part.
Meat and dairy are truly the foods of the big and strong.
Beef is better than chicken.
I didn’t even get into telling him of olive oil shots, or how simple a crockpot makes cooking to be.
Plus high reps on leg work.
PostScript :
~6 months later the same guy came up to me and thanked me, told me that he’d done exactly as I’d said during the lock down, had switched from primarily eating chicken stir fry to beef stir fry, and had implemented some dairy consumption, drinking eggs, cream, and ice cream surprised at how well he stomached it, and now was the largest/most muscular he’d ever been at 195 compared to the 180lbs that he implemented my advice at.
Now you could go all in, bring a cooler, but that’s not always gonna happen.
I’m more likely to hide whey (that was given to me, I haven’t bought any in years) in something, than to drink a couple scoops in room temperature water at the gym.
I have a better answer for a post workout shake, ready?
Wait for it…
Milk
Cue the gasps.
I keep it cold in a thermos.
A 20oz thermos was given to me as a gift a few years back thinking I’d keep stew warm in it to eat as a before gym meal during truck time on the way back to the shop from moving jobs.
That didn’t work out.
Stew wasn’t liquidy enough, it had gotten lukewarm at the end of the day, but it’d work with soup which is watery enough to hold heat.
However I now have a 20oz thermos, and while a quart would be a better size I have a 20oz one, so I’m using what I have on hand.
I fill that amazing little invention with milk, tend to leave it in the car, and even on the hottest of summer days can exit the gym to a nice cold 20oz of milk.
Many really want to be fancy, but a thermos of milk and a pb&_ sandwich is solid enough post workout nutrition.
More enjoyable, costs less, probably isn’t iifym though 🙂
8/3/21
100g protein is easy to eat in one meal. I’ve been doing so generally twice a day for the last week. Calories aren’t particularly high, but I’ve been ravenous – I take this as a good thing, and attribute it in part to the daily full body workouts which now entail heavy squatting. Squatting primes the body for growth, stimulating the legs, hips, back, and appetite.
A 100g Protein Meal :
•9 eggs – 54g protein
•½lb 75/25 burger – 36g protein
•quart milk – 32g protein
Total 122g protein, and that’s not including the macros of the big serving of cheesy grits I had alongside.
The hamburger may be swapped out with a similar amount of breakfast sausage.
That egg meal is once or twice daily, I’ll go through nearly a gallon of milk each day, drink a decent amount of grape and apple juice, and generally have something small to eat once or twice as well.
I’m liking the results.
I’m training well while eating big.
You likely don’t have either part down pat, but when you do – big gains come quickly.
7/6/21
19,20 years old – for a length of time though my calories were likely 3500 a day, I was barely hitting 60, 65g protein a day, whatever the usda recommended amount is.
I remember eating pop tarts near midnight every night feeling like I was starving.
Still I trained daily.
Today, 10 and change hours at work, drank one gatorade during the day, ate three breaded chicken patties, two on buttered bread, and drank a quart of apple juice.
Pretty low calorie. 30g protein.
And I thrive.
You can get away with eating to both extremes very different from what is recommended as the norm – whether that’s for civilians who don’t train, for bodybuilding, and everything in between.
You can eat and have it effect you more than how you train.
You can train, and have it effect you more than how you eat.
Somewhere out there someone is more jacked and awesome than you, and they’re doing it with less than you – no limitations, just desire.
Just desire, a burning need to ___.
Since you’re reading this at least part of that fill in the blank is to be big & strong.
It’s attainable for all, trust me, attainable for all.
…goes to the gym…
However I did repeat the same meal with corn chips and milk after the gym.
Today choosing food over sleep during that debate.
The chicken patties are just chicken breast and wheat, they’re decently priced.
I found a very good price on beef.
Food prep a bunch of hamburger and chicken patties on buttered bread, stock the fridge with milk, the cabinet with fruit juice while keeping a container each of apple and grape juice in the fridge always cold.
I don’t eat in a way other than how normal should be.
Just stick to real food, eat well, don’t stress the details.
