Hey Athletes! Do you meal prep? If not, this is the episode to listen to in order to get you started!
Episode 43 of Ask Me Anything is up!
Ask Me Anything: Meal Prep when Getting Started
This week’s episode of Ask Me Anything is on meal prep. Jerred and Joe talk about how they meal prep and how to get started if this is all new to you!
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To becoming better!
Jerred
Transcript:
Ask Me Anything: Meal Prep when Getting Started
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon: Welcome to garage gym athlete asked me anything. It’s pretty simple. I’ll be answering questions from the thousands of athletes that follow our daily programming. If you have a question or topic you want submitted, go to garage. Team athlete.com/ama. Let’s get started.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jared moon here with Joe Courtney. What’s up Joe. I’m
Joe Shrum: hungry. Jared, how are you?
Jerred Moon: You’re hungry.
Joe Shrum: Nice. Well, I’m ready for this question.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Well, all right, we’re just getting good with the, uh, can you throw me off with audio? Okay. So we have a question from Chris and he asked.
What is the best way to start and, or get into meal prepping for all meals. Great question, Joe, what do you have on this one?
Joe Shrum: So we’ve done this a lot in the past. [00:01:00] And, uh, one thing that I will say that both Ashley and Kyle swear by, and we’re even gonna get it now is the cook once eat all week cookbook, which is really cool.
And it’s not something that like, I, I haven’t, uh, we looked at my, my in-laws, um, cause we got them, we got it for them. It looks like, look at the concept of it. And it’s really cool. And we’re gonna start to do it now. I’m just going to improvise stuff to where you cook a lot of basic stuff. And then you just mix and match what is with them throughout the week.
So it’s not like you’re eating the same exact thing, every single meal, every single lunch, because usually when you’re meal prep, it’s usually for lunch or, and, or breakfast. Is that dinner at home. You’re going to be home for dinner and you’re not away at work. So we’re going to start doing that to where we just make these bowls and we can mix, match that different sauces and stuff on them.
Um, that’s what Liz has been doing while we’re here in the hotel. Just keeping it up. It’s pretty basic. And breakfast is also helps. B is easy for us right now because we train in the morning. So our breakfast is typically some sort [00:02:00] of recovery smoothie, and she might take a little bit more, um, like a little extra snack on top of her, some of these, just to get it in and then have her lunch later on.
But those things are going to be so foresight of making, cooking more in bulk is going to save you time overall anyway, because you know, you might cook three chicken breasts for dinner for your family one night, but then maybe we just cook it like six or nine of them, whatever the pack is and just have that all there for the entire week.
So I to just eat it up, um, unless you’re just really needing and you need, need that fresh food all the time, but. Yeah. What else? Yeah,
Jerred Moon: I think that’s a good, um, I actually forgot about that book. Emily goes, she uses that sometimes and doesn’t, uh, for dinners. Um, but I, she probably does it more how you do it because she’s a good, uh, chef as well.
And so she’ll. You know, not a hundred percent stick to that, but we’ll like, the idea is, is there, so that’s a, that’s a great resource. Uh, as far as [00:03:00] me personally, uh, if you, if you had to break my food down into like three categories, it’s basically a shake, a lunch and a dinner. I probably, I eat more in there in between, but it’s not really structured or anything like that.
Uh, so. I’ll give you my exact meal prep because I am responsible for my lunches and that’s what I do. Uh, so I meal prep typically once a week, if I forget or something like that, that makes normally for a rough week, uh, because I don’t know what to do with my hands. Just during lunch. I had to like create something on the fly, which is tough for me to do.
Let me give you my exact meal prep and what I do. Um, if you can, one of my Instagram, Instagram account, so I’m at EO three underscore fit, Jared moon, just don’t spell my name incorrectly. You’ll find me. And I have like a save story. So you can see me meal prep. And I, the only reason I put it on there was specifically because I get this question from athletes a lot, and this is basically what I do and have done for years, but [00:04:00] I do.
Change up the, like I said, I changed up the meat. I changed up the vegetables. I haven’t been eating the same thing for like all this time. Um, I do right now. I’m pretty close to it. Cause I’ve rotated back. But uh, here is the exact recipe. I’m going to go through it. You can also check it out on Instagram.
So two pounds of grass fed ground beef. Right now I’m using a Turkey three heads of organic broccoli, 10 organic carrots, five organic sweet potatoes, olive oil and seasoning. Uh, so then I. Cut all the vegetables up oil seasoning, or really just salt and pepper. And then carrots and sweet potatoes in the oven at three 75, uh, for 20 minutes.
And then after 20 minutes, I add the broccoli on top of the carrots and sweet potatoes. I just dump it on top. Um, At the 20 minute Mark and then cook everything for an additional 15 minutes, and then that’s done with the vegetables. Then I cook all the meat, how you would, you know, just like in a, in a skillet or whatever.
And then you have a bunch of [00:05:00] ground meat with a taco seasoning. I don’t even know what we have. It’s says taco seasoning on it, but that’s kind of meat that I’m using. And then I throw it all in containers. I bought these like glass containers. Uh, with lids, we have about 10 of them. And I normally make about seven meals.
That, that is good for anywhere five to seven meals, depending on how big you want your proportions to go. And that whole thing I’ve timed it multiple times, just for fun. And it, I can really get the whole thing done in about an hour if you’re like. Joke, probably do it in like 45 minutes. Cause that’s how long it would take to cook the vegetables.
But I’ve gotten better about multitasking. I used to do like one thing, I, it was just like dumb. I’d be like, okay, I’m waiting for the vegetables. I’ll do the meat after the vegetables are done. It’s like, you could totally just cook the meat while the vegetables are in there. I didn’t want to get too stressed out with multiple things going.
I also found out that’s what makes a good chef being able to like, do like nine different things at once. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. Like I can’t do that. So anyway, this one’s really [00:06:00] simple. It’s very easy. And if I can do it, you can do it is the big takeaway there. And so I can do it and it doesn’t take me that much time, like on a Saturday or Sunday to prep all that stuff.
And then I have lunch all week and I’m feeling good. Cause I got my vegetables, I got some meat. And then you can, like I said, you can rotate things in there. You could add like a. Uh, squash or different asparagus I’ve done. Like you just can kind of pick and choose. They are all close to the same and they cook, uh, very similar ways.
So yeah, that’s kind of how I rotate it. Yeah.
Joe Shrum: We’ve never really been the ones to individually portion out the entire like box up an entire week’s worth of lunches, just because the fridge space. So that can be kind of a hassle if you’re dealing with fringe basis. And if you have a whole bunch of food or big family or anything.
That’s what I say. If you just cook in the bulky, you have like your container of meat and then like three different kinds of vegetables or like two different kinds of meat and all different kinds of vegetables. Then you just, when you make up a lunch the next day, it’s like, okay, [00:07:00] I want this meat and I want these two vegetables.
And the next day you pick different ones of those things. And that’s just how you can do it throughout the week. And then that way everything is in one container and it just reusing the same lunch container versus. Filling up your fridge, but if that’s not a problem, if you really, I mean, some people like
Jerred Moon: to do that, normally meal, meal preps.
And so they go in the freezer and, uh, I have my little space that no one touches. If I did the, your way, I would be so bad at. I would eat everything. Yeah. I would like, I’d be done in like three days and be like, Oh, that was supposed to last seven. Like
Joe Shrum: this bowl.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, because that’s what I like Emily put her salmon cakes, she cooked a bunch and then left him.
Then we talked about this before she left them in the fridge that was supposed to be like her lunch for the week. And I ate them all. Like the next day I was like, I thought it was leftover. She said, Nope, that was my lunch prep. Delicious.
Joe Shrum: I can’t blame you. And, uh, a dog did the same thing, so
Jerred Moon: that’s fine.
Your dog ate all your salmon cakes.
Joe Shrum: We, we made one day, we did a cause we always want to make salmon patties. We do two cans, which makes about [00:08:00] 16 of them. So made them all, put them in a, in a container and, uh, let the lid off. And it’s like, okay, we’re just gonna go downstairs and cry. This is when we were living in DC and just go pick up our art to go.
We mainly had to go food for that night. No Sam pays for, for the next like week or two. And when we got back, the container was empty. There was not a crumb. And he was just like, In a food coma, big belly passed out, not, not feeling good and all of our salmon patties.
Jerred Moon: Jenny. That was probably good though.
That was a good experience for him. Yeah. But
Joe Shrum: I think he was, I mean, I’m kind of glad he was sick to the stomach for a while after that again. Yeah. That’s good. You did your little jerk. Uh, but with back to prep, I think two things that are really, really. Uh, great things to have are either a slow cooker or a pressure cooker.
A pressure cooker is really good. And if you can use it, it takes a little bit of finagling and tweaking and like getting cooking times down and how you use it. But, uh, it’s also really nice because. A lot of pressure cookers. Now you can saute at the bottom and then you just [00:09:00] put everything in and pressure cook, or it could be a slow cooker as well.
Um, I just prefer to look over for some things, both of those things are fantastic to have, especially cause pressure cookery, just, it takes no time at all to cook a giant thing of that because it’s pressure. Um, so those are really great to have for that. And yeah, just kind of weighing things and see how it goes.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. The hardest thing for me in this whole process was normally going to the grocery store to get this stuff. Um, just working that into like the weekend or something like that. Cause we normally have pre-bid busy weekends. And if Emily was going and I wasn’t going, I’d normally just tell her, but that was no, that used to be the most challenging part.
If I’m trying to like put a challenging part to this, cause it’s not that hard to go to the grocery store. Right. But now I mentioned this on the podcast too. Like all the grocery stores around where I live now just deliver for free. You have to it’s recommended you, tip the person, picking your groceries and delivering them, which I do.
I’m just saying it’s not a, it’s not a forced fee. You kind of pick how much you want to tip. And so now I [00:10:00] literally would just have someone grocery shop for my meal prep and bring it to my house. It’s just crazy. And I think things like that, you know, the things are just gonna get easier and easier in the world.
And now you can use that to your advantage, like, um, these, all these apps or whatever, like door dash and all that stuff, you could do that. Where you can, if you’re too lazy to go get Wendy’s, you can have Wendy’s brought to you or burger King or whatever, or same theory, but you could have like awesome food delivered to your house for basically the same price and then spend one hour in meal prep.
So it’s very possible, very doable in today’s world. So I think that’s a great way to get started. Yeah,
Joe Shrum: I’m actually one of the first people that we met here, it was a guy who did like a, a food sensitivity test and he was. Changing of how he eats and to starting to meal prep as well. And once he figured out what he could eat, he would just order that from the store and not go to the store because then you can’t see something and go, okay, I’m going to have this, I’m going to add this to my car, especially if you’re hungry.
You know, when, when we [00:11:00] go to sprouts, they have so many good things there. Um, I mean, I wouldn’t get like, too crazy, but there were definitely some times where. Well extra, a couple of bags like, Oh man, these, these chips are made out of cauliflower. I got to try it. I don’t care. What else is it only? I gotta try these Calliflower chips.
I’ve tried like four different kinds of, uh, gluten-free no grain, uh, tortilla chips. And I’m not sad about it, but if I didn’t
Jerred Moon: go, I never would’ve everything that sprouts is good. I found out actually, I don’t know if they do delivery, but there’s a hidden, there was a hidden sprouts it’s like right behind my it’s like two miles from my house.
Oh, nice. It’s super close. It’s the closest grocery store we didn’t even know about it. Cause you have to like drive through a forest to get there, but it’s the enchanted forest. There it
Joe Shrum: is the grandma’s house.
Jerred Moon: All right, you guys that’s it for this one. If you guys have any questions, go to GRA questions, go to Grazia mathlete.com/ama.
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