The Lazy Man’s Guide To Eating Healthy

How to easily make quick healthy meals in 5-minutes or less without spending a fortune.

Last night, I had my pannies in a bunch. After a long day at work training clients and crushing chest day in the gym I was tired, cranky, and hangry. I simply needed to be left alone and more importantly, I needed to eat.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m super busy, I hate wasting time on frivolous activities such as healthy meal prep, and when I’m ready to eat I simply cannot wait. If I’m hungry and it’s in front of me, it’s getting eaten.

Since it’s not 1950 I didn’t have dinner waiting for me on the table when I got home. No, I was going to need to solve this problem on my own like a big boy. But I’m a modern-day man in a technology driven world, so I quickly reviewed my choices:

1. Order something quasi-healthy from Postmates, Munchery, or Sprig. It will be fast, but it’s also expensive and most likely it will not fit my macros. Seriously, the fat content and thus the overall calories on most of those meals is outrageous. If you use them, just be sure to read nutrition info.
2. Grab take-out for something that’s most likely unhealthy, laced with all kinds of oils and sodium — worse, I’ll have no idea what’s actually in it (carbs, fats, proteins).
3. Cook something myself that will probably take FOR-EV-EVER. It will be healthy and I’ll know what I’m getting, but I’ll also gnaw my hand off before I finish. Worse, I barely know how to cook anything. Serious bro-problems.

Damn, this is getting bad. My hanger level just kicked into high gear. Okay, relax. Calm yourself. Channel your inner Aaron Rodgers…

Before we go any further, I just want to say: if you have ever dealt with this situation — and made a bad food decision only to regret it later — then you need to read this entire post. You’ll learn a ton and best of all, you’ll never make the same mistake again.

Just as I was about to jump back into my car and make a Chick-fil-a run, I realized I already had already planned for this situation. My hunger was stewing up some irrational brain fog and I nearly forgot that I had recently adopted the Quick-Cook Method for preparing food.

What happened next is pure magic, at least to a guy that is starvin marvin after a long day and beast-mode workout. It took me exactly 3-minutes to prepare my dinner, which consisted of chicken breast and brown rice. It took me another 4-minutes to prepare dessert, which was a badass combination of organic greek nonfat yogurt, organic granola, cinnamon, and a mix of organic blackberries and raspberries.

(Don’t worry, I’ll explain the Quick-Cook Method in insatiable detail below. But if you are getting hangry and just want the grocery list and the recipes or a video of my demonstrating the method on a real meal — they are available at the bottom of this post. Simply scroll to the bottom and they are yours.)

That’s about 20-min faster than it would have taken me to get something delivered or even stop at the nearest In-n-Out. Even better… this meal was cheap, it was super healthy, and I knew exactly what was in it so I could stay on track to hit my macros. By hitting my macros I would continue to do two things: build muscle and burn fat. Hell and yes. I was a happy and all was right with the world.

At this point you’re probably wondering how I was able to whip up those meals in such short order. And that’s the entire purpose of this post. To share with you a system I’ve developed that’s saved me a ton of time, a ton of money, and best of all — kept me crushing my macros. It’s worked so well I’ve added a solid 5lbs of muscle over the past few weeks and kept my body fat at a cool 6%.

Imagine if there was a jacked dude named Cooking For Yourself and he had sex with a smokin’ hot girl named Meal Prep Delivery. Nine months later you would have a child named Quick-Cook Method. That’s essentially what the Quick-Cook Method is, it’s got all the benefits of both cooking for yourself and meal prep delivery with none of the drawbacks of either.

The Quick-Cook Method was developed out of necessity in another life when I used to work as a traveling technology consultant. I was constantly traveling and in one more extreme year I spent 219 nights in a hotel. As you can imagine, this schedule and limited access to resources like a stove, oven, freezer, etc. led to a rather unhealthy diet. I needed to find foods that were healthy, but also quick and easy to make in even a hotel room. I did this for 7 years while doing many fitness modeling jobs on the side so yes, I eventually figured it out.

Cooking Takes Too Much Freakin Time

Fast forward to August 2015 when I was living in an apartment and nearly forgotten all about my traveling days and my Quick-Cook Method.  I spent 79 minutes per day preparing, cooking, and cleaning up after myself in order to prepare healthy food that fit my macros. That includes prepping the food, actually cooking the food, and loading up all the dishes in the dishwasher but excludes the actual eating time.

(Yeah, I’m weird like that. I track goofy stuff like how much time I spend preparing food and cleaning dishes.)

Think about it… that’s over an hour of time. Per Day! Damn. I know, this is super Type A but I got to thinking about what I could do with an extra hour per day:

• Train another client. Not only am I making more money per day/month/year, but I’m also making someone else’s life better. Awesome!
• Work on my online business. In August I was still dreaming of putting my life’s work on display for the masses on the internet, building an email list, and producing high quality content like this. Ha! 😉
• Relax. Goof off, go for a walk, hang with friends, go on a date, take a nap, hell… even watch television for once. All fun activities I used to do, but never have (or make) time for now that I run my own business.

What would you do with an extra hour per day? Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s more fun, productive, and/or rewarding than cooking and cleaning up dishes.

This was unacceptable. As a business owner I couldn’t continue to grow my business operating like this. My body is important, but damn — 79 minutes! And that was for simple stuff like chicken, sweet potatoes, and steamed broccoli or even a big ass salad with chicken, spinach, bell peppers, mushrooms, quinoa, etc.

The Hidden Dangers of Meal Prep

Next, I did what any smart entrepreneur would do and in classic GTD parlance… I delegated. Now, I’ll be the first to say I loved getting meal prep delivery. There was something so damn cool about getting two boxes of ready-to-eat food delivered every single week. I felt like a boss and I felt like I had beat the system.

Haha. I’m the smartest man alive! Meal prep delivery is the BEST!

Then, while doing my weekly and monthly 80/20 analysis on my life — I realized three significant realities about meal prep delivery:

1. Cost: It’s expensive as fuck. Seriously, I spent roughly $200 a week on food plus delivery. That’s $800 a month! And that was only for 5-days of meals. And the 5-days of food was only about 60% of my calories for the day. I had to still make up for all the extra calories I needed with shakes. Also, I absolutely had to eat out or prepare food 2-days per week. I make a few bucks, but damn…
2. Inflexibility: As my macros changed day-to-day I wasn’t able to adjust the meals. For example, I cycle carbs… that was very difficult to manage with the meal delivery. And if I had to miss a planned workout for some reason I was hosed because I didn’t have a low carb option on hand.
3. Incomplete: As a result of only getting 5-days of meals that added up to 60% of my daily calories I was still eating out or making a few meals a week! Damn $800 a month for meal prep delivery and I’m still having to deal with this shit? First world problems, but problems none the less.

The Silver Bullet: My Quick-Cook Method

Again, unacceptable. I couldn’t continue to spend roughly $1,000 on meals per month. First, this was seriously digging into my fancy dinner/cheat meal budget. If you know me, you know how much I adore fine dining. It’s tough to afford Gary Danko when you’re already spending $1,000 per month on your daily meals that serve only one purpose — utility. Second, I was getting pissed off, frustrated, and wasting a ton of time whenever I ran out of meals or when they didn’t fit my macros and I had to modify the meals or get something else on-the-fly.

Exactly as it sounds, the Quick-Cook Method is quick, it’s easy, it’s simple, it’s healthy, it’s cheap, it can be tracked without much effort, and it can be easily modified to fit your macros.

Quick-Cook Grocery List

Let’s start off with the grocery list. Ideally, you’ll want to shop at a place like Whole Foods, Sprouts, Bristol Farms, or Mother’s Market. Although you could probably get a lot of this stuff in bulk for cheap at Costco too. You can also do Trader Joe’s if you are on a tight budget although you may need some slight modifications. Here’s my list:

1. Cooked chicken breast
   • To save money, you can buy raw chicken breast but then you have to spend time cooking. It’s a trade-off. I don’t know your budget.
2. 90-Second Microwavable Rice
   • For example, Tasty Bites, Seeds of Change, or Uncle Ben’s if you must.
3. Quick & Easy Steel Cut Oatmeal
   • McCann’s or any of the quick & easy steel cut varieties will do.
4. Organic Nonfat Greek Yogurt
   • Stonyfield is my favorite although you can do Chobani as well.
   • It’s cheaper to buy the larger contains as opposed to the individual cups.
5. Kind Cinnamon Oat Clusters with Flax Seeds (link here)
6. Purely Elizabeth Ancient Grain Granola (link here)
7. Raspberries (organic raw)
8. Blueberries (organic raw)
9. Blackberries (organic raw)
10. Unsweetened Almond Milk
11. Raw Organic Baby Spinach or Baby Kale
    • Call me Ricky Bobby because I like the baby version better.
12. Organic Nonfat Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing
13. Perfect Bar Lite
    • I love the Almond Acai, but the Cranberry Crunch is damn good too.
14. Core Warrior Meal with Whey
    • The Almond Raisin is the best and it’s also the lowest in fat. The Walnut Banana is good, but high in fat so be careful. The Cashew Cacao doesn’t taste great and it’s also got a cool 21g of fat.
    • Beware if you are eating a moderate-to-low fat diet.
15. Quest Bars
    • Mix and match, whatever you like. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough is everyone’s favorite although unlike Perfect Bar and Core Warrior Meal these have preservatives and unnatural ingredients like Sucralose in them. I eat my share of them and I like them as much as the next fella but I also realize when I’m eating one — it isn’t the healthiest option. Read this blog post for more on that.
16. Synergy Kombucha (link here)
    • Not exactly a quick cook food; I just love these and buy them every time I go shopping. Here’s the deal, I drink water every single day. A lot of water in fact. About 100-125oz a day unless I’m preparing for a shoot. It can get a little boring especially when I remember how fun it was during my childhood to crack open a can of pop and indulge in that sweet, sweet carbonated bliss. This is the closest thing I have to that these days. And it’s super healthy, tastes awesome, and is just oodles of fun to drink.
    • If you take a superfood green and probiotic drink you don’t really need the extra probiotics Kombucha provides, but again — if you drink a lot of water like I do this will surely be a welcomed change of pace for the taste buds.

In this video I show you EXACTLY what’s in my grocery bags and walk you through the entire list item-by-item. The video is called How To Eat Healthy When Traveling, but the grocery list is exactly the same. Remember, I created this method while traveling for work and most recently utilized it while traveling for the holidays.

Mix & Match To Fit Your Macros

Keep in mind that this is my list, but it’s not necessarily the absolute or only list. It’s simply a starting point and once you figure out the method, you can substitute things you may like better. If you like turkey or chicken thighs buy those instead. Not a fan of granola? No problem, buy something else.

The most important aspect is to buy things that can last about a week in your fridge, are healthy (meaning they are free of artificial ingredients and targeted toward your macros) and can be mixed and matched to make healthy meals in minutes.

Now that you got all this stuff home, now what?

Let’s say you want a snack… grab a Perfect Bar. Okay, now I want dinner… heat up some chicken and rice and throw some baby kale in bowl with nonfat balsamic for a side salad. Ready for dessert? Go ahead and mix up some nonfat greek yogurt, berries, and granola.

It’s literally that easy! Just to be sure, here are a few foundational meals:

Chicken & Rice

1. Pre-Cooked Chicken Breast – 6oz
2. 90-Second Seeds of Change Quinoa & Brown Rice – 1 Cup

Macro Breakdown

• Calories: 420
• Carbs: 47g
• Fat: 5g
• Protein: 45g

Now, let’s play a little game. How would you modify this meal to fit your macros? For example, if this were my high carb day I’d put the whole bag of rice into the bowl and increase the calories to 660 and the carbs to 94.

If you are running low on protein for the day, just increase the chicken from 6oz to 8 or even 10oz. You can go from 45g of protein to 58g or even 71g in a hurry. See how easy this is? To show you just how quick and easy this is I’ll show you how I created this exact meal in exactly 3-minutes in this video:

Greek Yogurt, Fruit, and Granola

1. Stonyfield Organic Nonfat Greek Yogurt – 1/2 cup
2. Organic Fresh Blackberries – 2oz
3. Organic Fresh Raspberries – 2oz
4. Purely Elizabeth Ancient Grain Granola – 2/3 cup

Macro Breakdown

• Calories: 373
• Carbs: 51
• Fat: 12
• Protein: 14

Again, how could you modify this meal to fit your macros? Let’s say you were trying to lose a few pounds or on a low carb day in your cycle. Okay, no problem — just reduce the granola to 1/3 cup and mix in one scoop of protein powder. Now you have a meal that’s only got 34g of carbs and has 36g of protein! See the image example below:

I put my cooking skills to the test for a 2nd time and I show you exactly how to make this Greek Yogurt, Fruit, and Granola meal in my own kitchen in this video:

Power Protein Oatmeal

1. McCann’s Quick & Easy Steel Cut Oatmeal – 0.25 cup
2. Dymatize ISO-100 Birthday Cake Hydrolyzed Whey – 1 scoop
3. Unsweetened Almond Milk – 5oz (more if you like soupy oatmeal, less if you like dry)

Macro Breakdown

• Calories: 275
• Carbs: 28g
• Fat: 4g
• Protein: 29g

This is the most time intensive meal you’ll see in this guide because unlike the other meals this one takes at least 5-minutes to prepare, but don’t get your pannies in a bunch — it still takes less than 10-minutes to prepare and can still be made even in a hotel room with a paper bowl and a microwave.

Putting It All Together

Now you know how to make a few key meals… great! So, what are you supposed to do now? Get creative, mix and match and hit your macros. It’s really not rocket science, bro-science, or any kind of science… it’s just freakin’ easy. That is, if you are tracking your food in an app. If you’re not yet tracking your food using an app and you still have no idea how many calories you should be eating, go back and read my post How Many Calories Should I Eat?

 

But I Want Variety…

Now, one common complaint or barrier I often get from clients and friends when I explain this method of eating goes like this: I like to change it up and I don’t think I can eat the same things every single day.

First, I call bullshit on this one. Human beings love routine. For example, remember when you were in middle school and even high school and the teacher assigned everyone a seat? Everyone in class complained about this. This sucks! This is lame! Why can’t I sit anywhere I want? And you’d always have some asshole that would try to switch his or her seat every class and ultimately get scolded by the teacher — or in my case take a punch to the gut if done repeatedly.

(I went to a private all-boys high school owned and operated by the Christian Brothers. They didn’t take kindly to those types of shenanigans.)

Fast forward to college when we were all finally free of the shackles of assigned seating. Yay! Everyone rejoice. You can sit wherever the hell you want. How amazing. In fact, this is so freeing and amazing that I think I’ll sit… IN THE SAME DAMN SEAT EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN’ CLASS. Along with everyone else in the entire class. And if, by chance, someone sits in my seat I’ll get really annoyed and make sure I get to class extra early next time to make sure I get my seat back.

Think about it… we love routine and we crave routine. Routine is easy, routine, takes little mental effort, and routine — when applied to healthy behaviors takes less willpower. Don’t fight it. Eating the same meals over and over again will be much easier, take less time, be less mentally taxing, and lead to healthier decisions. A routine is simply — a habit, and as we know from Vince Lombardy so is winning.

(Note: for more on habits and how powerfully beneficial or even destructive they can be check out The Power of Habit. Great book.)

Just look at the success of the slow-carb diet made famous by Tim Ferriss. Rule #2 is: eat the same few meals over and over again. I don’t follow slow-carb myself, but this rule is without a doubt one of the secrets to my success in obtaining and even harder — maintaining a sub 7% body fat for so many years.

Spice Up Your Life

When you actually do crave some type of variety I have a quick and easy way to provide it. Two words: hot sauce. Yep, I use the Cholula Hot Sauce Variety Pack in order to change up my meals. It’s fast, it’s easy, and best of all — it’s effective. It will make you feel like you’re getting a different meal each time you grab a different flavor of hot sauce.

What if I don’t like spicy food?

Grow a pair. Hot sauce is awesome and Cholula isn’t even that hot. Even better, spicy food speeds up your metabolism and helps you burn more calories (i.e. burn more fat). There have been more than enough studies and even more articles published on this.

If you really can’t take the heat then just use some herbs and spices that are not hot. Rosemary, Thyme, Sea Salt, Paprika (without Cayenne), etc. Get creative. There are many things you can use that will add flavor without the heat.

Other Barriers To Entry

A few more barriers I often hear when I pitch clients on my Quick-Cook Method are as follows:

1. I actually like to cook
2. I have to eat out often for work
3. I cannot afford to buy pre-made food
4. I don’t want to cook at all

Let me quickly address each of these:

1. If you like to cook then go for it. However, I’d highly suggest keeping some of these Quick-Cook Method foods (especially the bars) on hand for any time that you find yourself too tired or just strapped for time and unable to cook.
2. If you have to eat out often for work that’s fine too. Track your food to the best of your ability, but again — keep some of these foods in your fridge at work or in your office in case you wind up in a bad situation where you are super hungry and don’t have anything immediately available to eat. This will prevent bad decisions and help keep you on point with your diet.
3. If you look at the graph above, my expenses actually went down when switching to the Quick-Cook Method because I ate out less. Now, if this isn’t you and you are just in a terrible cash-flow situation right now then buy raw ingredients and cook them up at the beginning of the week. You’ll essentially be creating your pre-cooked, pre-packaged ingredients and you can still implement the Quick-Cook Method during your workweek when you are busy and will not have time or the discipline and willpower to cook or make healthy decisions.
4. Then go with a meal prep delivery service like The Meal Prep in OC, Square Meals in SF or Fuel Meals nationwide. If you are really rich like a few of my clients then hire a personal chef.

Final Thoughts

Don’t make your health and fitness a bigger challenge than it already is. Be intentional and smart with your decisions to make your life easier and remove discipline and willpower from the equation. If you try to rely on discipline and willpower alone — you will fail. At 7pm after a long ass day at work and hardcore leg workout you simply will not have any discipline or willpower left to think and more importantly, spend the time to make a healthy meal.

However, with my Quick-Cook Method you can have a badass, quick, and healthy meal that fits your macros ready in 5-minutes or less!

How have you overcome the challenges of eating healthy when you are super busy and tired from working and working out all day? Leave a comment below.

Questions or comments? Leave a comment below. I read every single one.