Mehdi healthy fast food

Nutrition question. My comments are below...

### QUESTION ###
"Hey Mehdi, You talk a lot about eating right to maintain a healthy physique in conjunction with StrongLifts 5x5. Can you give examples of the foods you prepare and in what quantities? My life is busy in between work, cycle training and lifting, so often it is difficult for me to find the time to prepare quality, wholesome food. Any advice would be appreciated!"

*** MY ANSWER ***
Well as I write this, this is what's cooking:

* two chicken breasts
* three leeks with garlic and onion (this is *really* good!)
* a cup of rice

The chicken breasts and leek are both cooking in the oven.

The rice is cooking in my girlfriend's rice-cooker (she's Asian!)

So that's one simple trick: using the oven (and rice-cooker).

Little supervision needed while the food is cooking.

I can write this email in the meanwhile.

And my girlfriend can do her work.

We both work from home now which makes cooking a ton easier.

But things were different when I was employed, before starting StrongLifts in 2007.

Back then I was commuting two hours a day, working 8h30, doing shifts, training on top, etc.

There wasn't a lot of time to cooking before or after work.

At first I did what most people do - eat at work.

But I quickly got tired of eating disgusting sandwiches every noon.

Plus that wasn't helping my goals of being strong, muscular and lean.

(that shit food turned out to be quite expensive too, the "latte effect").

So after a few months I decide to take my own food to work.

And since I couldn't cook several times a day like now...

... I got into BATCH COOKING.

Now if you read books on productivity or time-management, you're familiar with this strategy.

They often recommend "batch-processing".

Group similar tasks together to get more done.

With cooking, you waste a lot of time waiting for it to be done and cleaning up.

Cooking several meals in one go therefore saves a HUUUGE amount of time.

In fact, a lot of lifters batch-cook once a week for their whole week.

They grill 5lb/2kg of meat, portion it out and then freeze it.

Take it to work, microwave it three minutes, ready.

It's like fast food but healthy.

I've never liked cooking once a week though.

I'm picky with how my food tastes and prefer it "fresher".

So what I always did was cooking once a day for the whole day.

I woke up earlier and cook breakfast plus all my meals for work...

... or made dinner in the evening with all my meals for the next day.

Basically double portions and such.

It sounds like a lot of work.

And it frankly is at first.

But you quickly get better at it over time.

After a while it only took me about 45mins a day.

And it saved me a ton of money vs eating crap at work.

Give it a try

https://stronglifts.com/apps/

And keep it simple.

-Mehdi

P.S. I actually still do batch cooking at home even though I now work from home. Because I've found that I can get so "in the flow" when working that I tend to skip meals. The time cooking can take doesn't make it easy to stop. So I recommend batch-cooking even if work from home.

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