Correct nutrition in bodybuilding is essential, but preparing numerous nutritious meals takes time and effort. Bodybuilders also tend to eat more than 6 meals a day and therefore have a hard time finding healthy recipes that are quick and easy to prepare.

Let’s take a look at how we can minimize the effort required to prepare meals while maintaining desired levels of nutrition.

Let’s be honest, lifting weights isn’t fun, it’s the anticipated results that excite us. These ‘results’ don’t happen while we’re in the gym, it’s the following days when the repair and growth (hopefully) take place. To fuel this repair and growth, you must provide your body with enough nutrients. me

If you don’t get enough of the necessary nutrients inside of you, then all the sweat and tears in the gym will be partially, if not completely, wasted. While many bodybuilders appreciate this fact and few deny it, preparing nutritious meals takes time. Junk food conviction is not available to the bodybuilder.

First, we need to establish how many times we will eat a day. No need to think about it here for bodybuilders, we all know that we should eat at least six meals a day. There are many reasons why this meal pattern is more suitable for bodybuilders, but I won’t go into detail here. Suffice to say, if you’re serious about bodybuilding, three traditional meals aren’t enough.

Variety is the spice of life, but it’s hard work

Therefore, six more meals per day are required. Easier said than done, are you tired of cooking six times a day, seven days a week? Even if I had that much free time on my hands, I could think of much more worthwhile activities to occupy it besides slaving away in the kitchen. If you look at most of the bodybuilding diet plans you find online, they generally look something like this:

Meal 1 (06:00) 8 egg whites, 1 yolk, scrambled, 1/2 cup oatmeal, 1 orange

Meal 2 (09:00) 6 oz grilled chicken breast 1 medium baked potato 1 mixed salad with low-fat dressing

Meal 3 (12:00) 6 oz lean steak, grilled 1 cup brown rice 3 oz steamed vegetables

Lunch 4 (15:00) 6 oz of tuna 1 cup of brown rice 3 oz of steamed vegetables

Lunch 5 (18:00) 6 oz salmon, baked 1 sweet potato 3 oz steamed vegetables

Meal 6 (21:00) 6 oz chicken breast, 3 oz steamed grilled vegetables

Done, done, without so much cooking

Now, if you have the time (and patience) to prepare all of these meals, we wish you good luck. I don’t know many bodybuilders who have enough time to follow a meal plan like the one above, I certainly don’t. There are six different meals to prepare every day. It won’t be long before the kitchen becomes a place you start to despise.

Even if you made all of these meals the day before, that’s still six different meals to make. Doubling to cook two days’ worth in a batch will help a bit, but it’s still a lot of work. Ok, let’s see if we can trim things down a bit.

We could substitute a cooked breakfast for oatmeal and replace the mid-morning snack with something that doesn’t require much preparation like peanut butter and rice cakes or the like. Sure you could replace a meal or two with some protein/meal replacement powder, but that’s not something I would recommend. If you’re cutting back, you’ll be hungry enough without resorting to liquid meals. If you’re looking to gain muscle, then the old adage “food comes first” couldn’t be more true.

Protein powders are a boon when it comes to pre- and post-workout nutrition and a lifesaver when it comes to convenience, but don’t get used to relying on liquid meals.

That still leaves us with the need to cook four different meals per day.

Four is the magic number

But who said that every meal has to be different? Why can’t you eat the same food four times a day?

I’m sure non-gym people would curse having to eat the same meal four times a day, but bodybuilders are different: our eating habits are dictated more by our training goals than our taste buds.

That’s not to say we’re happy with boiled chicken and veggies for each and every meal, we still want food that tastes good with some variety, we sure eat enough! Eating the same food four times a day is not a real hardship for the bodybuilder, especially if these meals taste halfway decent.

The big payoff is that preparing your meals for the day is so much easier and faster. Another advantage is that it is also much easier to calculate macronutrients. So, I hope you’ll agree with the idea of ​​eating the same food four times a day.

Obviously, you don’t want to eat the same four meals every day. In addition to the boredom and boredom that would quickly set in, a lack of nutrient variety could also become a problem. You need to find at least seven different recipes so that you at least eat different meals every day of the week.

That should give you enough variety and keep you from getting bored with the same foods. I would recommend more, but if you’re stuck then seven is the minimum you could get away with.

Each bodybuilding recipe must fit a number of criteria:

– High in protein (minimum 40g per serving)

– Low in carbohydrates, preferably < 15g

– Relatively quick and easy to prepare

– Does not require a long list of ingredients.

– Tastes good

Now that’s not asking too much, is it?

Probably the best cookbook for bodybuilders right now is Anabolic Cooking by Dave Ruel. The book has over 200 recipes, well presented and easy to follow.

To be prepared

One last tip to help make your meal prep easier: be prepared. A good habit to adopt is to prepare at least two days of meals on Sunday, that is, Monday and Tuesday. If you have time, prepare Wednesday or even Thursday meals.

Three days in advance is the limit (unless you freeze your meals) for which you want any food in the fridge. For the rest of the week, a good routine is to prepare 4-5 meals for the next day.

This means cooking late at night, hence the criteria for it to be relatively easy to prepare. Most of your meals will probably center around chicken (occasionally turkey), lean beef (steak and ground beef), and fish. Once or maybe twice a week, eat an egg-based meal, depending on your goals (gain mass or lose fat).

So really, you just need to get seven tasty and relatively easy-to-prepare high-protein recipes. 8.9 or higher would be better, for variety’s sake, but if you can find seven you can stick with, that should get you through a good couple of months before you get bored.