Alright so it seems like I’m making some progress just when I’m about to hit a couple weeks of travel + celebrations.
What went well: Costco runs for pre-packaged salads and chicken
The other week at Trader Joe’s, I threw one of those plastic bags of individually wrapped chicken breasts into the cart. During the week, I noticed I’d actually gravitate toward them when looking for a snack. Tasty, juicy.
This was nearly the exact opposite of when I would meal prep like 17 pounds of chicken breast and do anything not to eat it during the week.
So I turned that up and picked up a bunch of a similar product at Costco: snack packs of sliced chicken breast.
It feels more wasteful environment-wise since it’s using a bunch of plastic. Money-wise I haven’t done the calculation but it’s surely way more expensive.
It feels less wasteful food-waste-wise because I actually eat all of it, compared to meal prepping a bunch and not finishing it all.
Other positives:
- Tastes great, very filling
- Idiot-proof way to add protein to a meal
- Super easy to track since it’s pre-portioned
Then I did the same with some pre-packed caesar salads. Similar pros/cons.
But it seems to be working. This past week was the most effective in both workouts and eating.
Convenience over everything.
What can be improved: Just need to prep for the upcoming trip
I’m not a CEO, but I’ve been listening to Dan Go’s podcast lately. On an episode of his High Performance Founder podcast (The Unique Way We Train CEO’s to Their Best Shape), one of the key things he mentions:
- Focusing on travel and events: 50% of fitness and nutrition damage happens during travel and events. Making sure to have a plan for it is key to success.
Travel makes it harder to work out and social events make it really easy to say “What the hell” and just indulge.
(Note to self: Write a post about good “What the hell” vs. bad “What the hell”)
Which is definitely going to happen to me if I don’t plan for it. Next two weeks:
Travel to NYC and Montana for these events:
- My birthday
- Wife’s birthday
- Wife’s cousin’s wedding
- Cousin’s wedding
It’s going to be great! And tempting. And I do actually think some portion of “ah, what the hell” is valid when on vacation. You need to live life. But living life is that first slice of Prince St. Pizza, not the third $1 slice.
Experiment to continue: tracking food in MyFitnessPal
This is working well. I’ve been tracking. The barcode scanner works really well. And also it’s one of those things with the app where it’s tedious but once you start using it frequently and eat sort of the same things, it’s much less tedious.
BJ Fogg has something about this in Tiny Habits where often times there’s a lot of room to grow in ability so that the difficulty lowers.