I remember back when I was in college and life was so much simpler. Since I didn’t really drink or party a lot, keeping up with my diet was relatively easy. The first time I came back home after my freshman year in college, people thought I was on steroids because of the kind of progress I had made.
Fast forward to now. Things are slightly more complicated. Apart from a full day’s worth of work at my office, I also would like to spend time with my girlfriend, my family, my friends & read among other things. So, I came up with tiny adjustments to my life. Easy “hacks” to support all my passions.
Here are my top 5 diet hacks for a busy lifestyle –
1. Meal Prep Sunday
I remember reading a line from Chapter 4 of my high school business studies textbook – “planning is all pervasive”. This is probably the only thing I remember from my final year fo high school. Regardless, it’s true. I highly recommend you plan all your big meals for the week on Sundays.
This is how I recommend you go about it –
- Get a Tupperware or Meal prep set. Preferably glass. My girlfriend told me heating plastic isn’t good for you.
- Take 2-3 hours out of your day.
- Get groceries. You’ll get a better idea of how much to buy as you go along with this process.
- Cook in bulk. I usually cook 2-3 cups of rice, 4-5 lbs of chicken and a ton of vegetables. These are the staples in my diet.
- Divide everything up into the different containers.
- Freeze anything you don’t plan to eat beyond 4 days.
Now that you have your meals laid out for the rest of the week, you won’t be tempted to snack elsewhere.
2. Snack Healthy
Many times, it’s actually the crappy snacking we do in between our meals that actuals derails us. I can’t tell you the number of people that I’ve met that think Trail mix is actually a healthy snack (It isn’t). The following are acceptable healthy, low calorie snacks –
- Blueberries ( Or any kind of berry, really.)
- A Banana
- Carrots
- Diet Soda’s (Before you ask, no, they don’t cause cancer.)
- Coffee (NOT your 500 calorie Starbucks Frappuccino’s. Black coffee with a shot of milk or creamer and Splenda) (Splenda also doesn’t cause cancer)
- Water
3. Find people with similar fitness goals
Ramit Sethi, author of “I Will Teach You to be Rich” and one of my all time personal heroes often says that you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.
This can be applied to many areas of our life but speaking in terms of a healthy diet, it will probably benefit us to spend more time around people who’s eating habits are similar to our or even better.
The social pressure’s of drinking alcohol, eating out and partying are immense. While I’m not saying we should abstain from all that, I do believe that we should always prioritize our health first. I have many friends that have gained enormous amounts of weight ever since they started working.
Be smart and audit your circle.
4. Make sure it’s tasty & easy
There’s a dirty joke in that title somewhere. I’m sure one of my more linguistically gifted friends could find it. Regardless, Make sure whatever you’re cooking is tasty but don’t overcomplicate it. The whole purpose of this is to simplify your life. Not make it difficult.
Here are a few simple techniques that I employ to make my food taste significantly better –
- Use a lot of spices. I use Flavor God spices to season a lot of my food.
- Use an oven to cook your chicken. you could probably cook up 2-3 lbs of chicken in 35-40 minutes if you’re quick.
- Use flavored oils. Kroger has some flavored oils from their private selection that taste great. Something like this will work great. Use it as a topping on your food.
- Use supplements to fulfill your nutritional needs. I use whey protein which helps me hit my protein mark everyday.
5. Blend your vegetables & fruits
I absolutely hate eating vegetables. I find it to be a drag. It takes a lot of time to prep them and they usually taste like crap. Now. A more talented person than myself could probably make them taste better.
But I’m not talented. I am efficient though.
I also have an extremely busy lifestyle. What I like doing is putting all my fruits and veggies in a blender in the morning and making a nice little smoothie. The recommended daily serving size for vegetables in 200-300g while for fruits, it’s 100-200g.
The following is my current recipe –
- 1 Banana
- 100g Mango
- 100g Spinach
- 100g Kale
- 240ml fat free milk
This tastes great and gets the job done quickly, which is obviously the whole point. The blender I use is a Nutri Ninja.
So, those are a few of the diet hacks that I use to stay on track whilst not compromising on my busy lifestyle. If you want to read more about my fitness ideas check out my last post, 5 Easy Hacks to Lose Weight (without the gym). If you have any questions or if there’s absolutely any way I can help you, email me at mohan@bebetteratyou.com .
5 Diet Hacks For a Busy Lifestyle