62. CHAPTER 12 - CREATING YOUR 5-DAY MEALS
Tim Grover is one of the most prolific personal trainers in professional sports. He trained Michael Jordan throughout his career and continues to work with many top athletes.
Tim talks a lot about his professional athlete clients who can’t lose weight. Sounds strange, right? If your job is being an athlete, shedding a few pounds should be easy!
When Tim begins working with an athlete who needs to drop some fat, he starts by asking about the athlete’s diet. According to Tim, the client will almost always say that he “eats really healthy”, but Tim isn’t convinced.
One common problem Tim comes across is misconceptions about serving sizes and how too much of a “good thing” can actually become problematic. For example, some of his athletes love their smoothies. They pile in berries, pineapple, fruit juices, honey, and all sorts of other “healthy” ingredients.
Tim says that some of these guys are eating more sugar in one smoothie than they should eat in an entire day. Good luck losing weight on that diet!
What foods go into your meals is very important, but so are the proportions of those foods and the overall portion sizes.
This chapter will outline exactly how you can build perfect meals for your 5-day plan.
In the Chapter 11 we looked at a new food pyramid that had it’s steps in the following order of priority:
63. Non-Starchy Vegetables
64. High-Protein Foods
65. Fruit, Starchy Vegetables, Grains, Beans and Lentils
66. Healthy Fats
67. Supplements
Then we looked at a chart that laid out all sorts of great choices for each of these food categories. You can reference this chart in Appendix B.
The next obvious question is, “How much of each food category should I be eating in my meals?”
There are many ways to measure food portion sizes, but I like to use the “hand portion sizing” developed by Dr. John Berardi and his team at Precision Nutrition in Toronto, Ontario.
I’ve heard Dr. Berardi say, “You won’t always have a measuring cup with you, but you always have your hands” as a reason why this method is so practical and effective.
We’ll start with Portion Sizing for Women:
During 5 days of your week you will plan 3 meals per day. Each of those meals will include foods from every category on the food pyramid (except supplements, which can be taken any time you choose).
Non-Starchy Vegetables – The portion size should be the size of your closed fist.
High-Protein Foods – Your portion should be the size of your open palm.
Fruit, Starchy Vegetables, Grains, Beans and Lentils – Use a cupped hand to measure this portion size. For grains (e.g. rice) this will be the size once they are cooked.
Healthy Fats – Use the size of your thumb to measure your fat portions. For oils or dressings, know that a tablespoon is about the size of a thumb.
Now let’s look at Portion Sizing for Men:
Basically we are just going to double the portions we just outlined for women.
Creating meals using the “hand portion sizes” is quite easy. As an example, let’s say you’re making a stir-fry…
Take some broccoli and cauliflower that make up about the size of your closed fist (or 2 closed fists for men). Add a little more since the veggies will shrink when you cook them.
Next, get a large chicken breast and compare it to the size of your open palm. You might end up using half of it so you can save the other half for another meal.
The stir-fry can go on a bed of brown rice. Rice expands to about twice its uncooked size, so keep that in mind when you’re taking a “cupped hand” portion size.
Cut up your ingredients and cook it as you normally would. Add your spices and then sprinkle some slivered almonds (a thumb-sized portion) on top.
Voila! You have a meal that is perfectly balanced and sized appropriately!
Other “meat and potatoes” meals are much easier since the foods stay separated on your plate. It’s really easy to see the portion sizes.
Some recipes call for many ingredients to be mixed together during preparation. With these “one pot meals” it’s important to be mindful of the overall portion sizes you are using and how many meals the recipe is creating.
For example, if you were to make a sweet potato lasagna, you could get a sense as to how many meals the entire lasagna would provide (let’s say 4 meals). Then look at the ingredients and ensure that there are 4 meals worth of veggies, protein foods, etc.
It takes a little thinking at first but becomes quite intuitive and easy with a little practice.
“My hands are really small! I’m going to starve!”
The great thing about using your hands to portion your foods is the fact that hands are generally sized according to your whole body. Bigger people have bigger hands, and these people should be eating a bit more food.
However, do keep in mind that this is your starting place. If you practice this portioning system for 2 weeks and find that you are always hungry, increase you portions a little. Or, maybe you will choose to add a forth meal in your day.
Just be sure to give this system a fair chance before making any major adjustments. Three days likely isn’t enough to let your body adjust to new foods and new portion sizes. I always recommend waiting at least a week before adjusting.
Know that this system ensures that you are eating really, really nutritious food at each meal. Your body craves nutrients and that is what you are going to be giving it.
We’ve covered the basics for preparing meals to be used in your 5-day meal plan, but what about snacks?
This one is VERY simple:
Your snacks are made up of vegetables only and you can eat as much of them as you like! You can eat raw veggies, cooked veggies, vegetables that are pureed into a soup, or any other way you want to eat them. Just be sure that your snacks are only vegetables.
Why just veggies?
As we discussed in Chapter 11, vegetables are unique in that they are densely packed with nutrients while also being relatively low in calories. In other words, snacking on veggies allows you to feed your body what it wants (i.e. nutrients) without you having to worry about over-eating or taking in too many calories. Eat up!
Creating meals for your 5-day plan is often a little overwhelming at first and you’ll likely have some questions. Be sure to check out Questions and Answers at the end of this book. These are the most frequently asked questions that participants in my “10 in 4” groups have asked.
I suspect most (if not all) of your questions will be answered in that list. If not, feel free to visit www.makeyourbodywork.com to learn more about living a healthy lifestyle and to find my contact information. I’d be happy to help.
68. Do you have a favourite meal that fits with the portion sizes discussed in this chapter? If not, how could you adjust the recipe to make it fit?
69. What veggie-only snack will you enjoy eating? Can you think of (or find) two others?