Meal Of The Day

Seasoned Chicken, Red Potato Wedges, Mixed Vegetables.

By no means am I an accomplished chef. The concept my parents have of cooking is to just bung something in the microwave! So naturally I’ve grown up with a rather limited knowledge of what a real, nutritious meal should taste like. Now I am discrediting my parents a bit here - they did the best job of raising me and my poor dad even sacrificed most of his garage space so I could have a place to put all of my home gym equipment! But as my mum’s favourite magnet says on our home fridge / freezer which is packed full of ready-meals, “If it fits in a toaster, I can cook it!”

I think this is relevant to a lot of people who want to get in better shape - there’s this preconceived idea that you’ve got to be some celebrity cook or at least have a book which Waterstones recommends in their food and drink section, if you are to have any chance of living more healthily. The truth is that you don’t have to be Jamie Oliver’s protégé in order to cook a decent meal. In fact all you need to know is where the fresh food sections are in your supermarket of choice, and which dial in your kitchen works the oven.

One of my favourite lunches I make for myself at home, which takes five minutes to prepare and 20-25 minutes to cook, is chicken, roasted red potatoes, and a cup to two cups of any couple of vegetables of your choice. Personally I love onions and peppers together with this meal. It may not sound like something as exciting as you’d find on the menu at Barbecoa, but actually, it only takes a few more seconds to season your chicken and potatoes with some sea salt, pepper and a few spices and herbs, to disguise it as something not too dissimilar to a Jamie Oliver dish.

Firstly you preheat your oven to about 200°, or gas mark 6, and then oil a baking tray or use some non-stick foil. Chop a 5 ounce red potato up into wedge-like chunks, and then finely chop your vegetables. Put it all on the baking tray with your chicken, and season with whatever you fancy. Personally I have a taste for spicy food so I add a dash of paprika as well as sea salt and pepper. In the oven it goes and in 20-25 minutes you couldn’t have made a healthy meal any simpler. Optionally, if you have more time to spare, you can always pan fry your vegetables so you have more control over the temperature and cooking time, but either way the result will be downright tasty!

Macronutrients: What They Are And Why They're Important

I’m surprised by how little the coverage is of macronutrients in the pages of health and fitness magazines, given that it is one of the most critical things to learn about when it comes to your eating. Fortunately, it’s very easy to understand. Made up of carbohydrates, protein and fats, macronutrients are simply the primary food groups that need to make up your daily food intake if you are to eat a fully-balanced and nutritious diet.

It’s a simple concept, but one which I believe is imperative. You can have the cleanest, most minimally processed diet in the world, work harder than everybody else in the gym, but still if you’re not getting enough of any one of these macronutrients you will be inhibiting your results. If carbs dominate your every meal but your plate is short of protein, your body simply wont have enough amino acids to repair itself. And yet if you’re eating three chicken breasts a day but not fuelling yourself with things like potatoes, oats, or rice, your workouts will be a complete bust because you simply wont have the energy you need to push through those last few reps. Fats are also essential in a daily diet. Now, I’m not talking cupcakes and chocolate brownies, but unsaturated fats which you can get from nuts, seeds, oils and fish, or oily fish, all provide energy as well as certain vitamins. They also help reduce cholesterol and fight against inflammation.

Depending on your own body type, the amount of macronutrients you need will differ from everybody else. No two people are the same, and just as you wouldn’t expect a 200lbs bodybuilder to eat the same ratios as a welterweight boxer trying to cut down for the weigh-in, you will have your personal goals to meet too.

Much of what I have learnt in fitness and nutrition has come from BeachBody’s home workout programmes, and particularly Body Beast, the bulking programme devised by two-time Mr Israel and world renowned bodybuilder Sagi Kalev. Now I don’t claim to be a health or fitness expert myself at all, but his approach to macronutrients comes from his 26-years of experience, and I stick by his opinion religiously. You too can find your personal, accurate nutrient needs online with calculations concerning your own weight and body fat percentage. It sinks my heart when I see someone trying to lose weight but is eating, for example, way more fruit than what they should be allotted. Yes, fruit is good for you, but it can still do more harm than good if you overload yourself with all that sugar, even if it is natural - you wouldn’t eat jars of honey in one go so don’t eat punnets of strawberries either! Same applies to every other food group. So make sure you get this right and you will succeed!

Down To The Specifics

On this drab September day as I drive home from the supermarket, I notice a couple, each with an ice cream in their hand, and not only was I perplexed as to why they were eating such a thing on a grey day like today, but I was also puzzled at how this far into my blog I haven’t yet shared the specifics on what I actually eat on a daily basis. Having just been for my grocery shop, I thought now would be a good time to shed some light on this.

Although my palate may seem as drab as the dreariness of today’s weather, given that I tend to eat the same food day to day, it’s the easiest, most cost-efficient way of eating what you need, not necessarily what you want. If there’s one thing I’ve tried to make clear about nutrition up to this point, it’s that food should be seen as the sustenance that it is, not a pastime! Having said this though, I think my palate is actually rather vibrant both in the rich colour of the foods I buy, and the downright tastiness of how they turn out cooked into one hearty meal. It is possible to cook a plate of food that’s both nutritious and absent of anything artificial, no matter how much those sweet-craving tastebuds may try and fool you!

Granted this isn’t my full weekly shop, I tend to go to the supermarket intermittently throughout the week to keep my food fresh, as a lot of what I buy is fruit, vegetables and meat which of course is the last thing you would want to eat past its use by date! So I buy my groceries here and there rather than in one bulk.

Here you can see I literally have a mixed bag, which as I said before is crucial because you want to get your nutrients from as many food groups as possible. And don’t twist my words here, you know what I mean - chocolates and biscuits are not food groups! Protein, carbohydrates, unsaturated fats, fruit, vegetables and some dairy are all important and reduce the risk of you depriving your body of any one of these essential nutrients.

For me the milk is one of the most important ingredients I buy, as it is very versatile by being able to go with many of the meals I eat. It can be mixed with the shakes I have post-workout, and put in with porridge for breakfast as a more appetising alternative to water (which, personally, I hate with my oatmeal) and of course, it’s common to just drink milk on its own. It’s a convenient way of both hydrating and providing your body with the calories and nutrients it needs - this is also why I go for the semi-skimmed milk because I can meet my own calorie needs. Feel free to choose the milk you most enjoy, however, or if you don’t like milk or are lactose intolerant there are of course alternatives such as almond milk for instance, which even I have additionally to the dairy milk (as in cow’s milk, not the Cadbury bars!). The yogurt accounts for much the same, but unlike milk it’s of course more for eating than drinking, so it mixes well with fruit for a nice, light snack, with which I usually have the raisins you can also see in the picture (the green packet).

Aside from the dairy, today I also bought some red potatoes, kidney beans, 100 percent orange juice, a ribeye steak, onions, peppers, and Dove care body wash for men, because smelling as fresh as your food tastes is just as important for maintaining a healthy body and mind! That, or I just forgot to take it out of the bag before I took a picture of what was just supposed to be my groceries!

The kidney beans are also quite flexible in their usability, and so I find myself cooking these for various meals from a tuna salad sandwich to a hearty autumn / winter turkey chilli - with which I’d also have the peppers and onions I bought today too. The ribeye steak is more of a treat as I only have red meat on occasion, instead favouring poultry or fish which is more beneficial to your health. With this I tend to have some delicious roasted red potatoes which I season with a dash of sea salt, pepper and herbs and spices. Lastly, the orange juice I buy is 100 percent juice. I have this over squash for the obvious reason of it being untouched by added sugars. I tend to have this in the morning with my oatmeal.

There is no magic pill or specific ingredient you’ve never heard of - much of the food I buy is as simple as you’d imagine a healthy diet to look like. The difference is the unnatural foods you must cut out if you are to see these nutritious meals take effect and get you the results you want from a healthier lifestyle. The less processed an item of food is between it having been picked from a tree, out of the ground, or from the sea, and put onto your local supermarket shelves, the better. If your diet is packed full of purely whole foods with nothing artificial added, you’d have to try really hard to go wrong! Just take notice of how often you eat your food (every two to three hours is best), and eat five to six small / medium meals a day depending on your individual needs as far as calories are concerned and the target weight / goals you have. Just stay focused, keep motivated, and carry on moving forward, and the results will come in time.