Eating healthy is a big part of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. However, for people with modern lifestyles, this can often be a very difficult thing to accomplish. If you really want to make sure you do your best to eat healthy, learning how to meal prep is your best option. Allocating time out of your week for meal prep might turn out to be the best decision you’re going to make. There are certain strategies to make meal prep an enjoyable and easy task as opposed to a chore you’re dreading. Here’s how:
Want to be healthy and full of energy for BJJ? Then focus time and effort on your nutrition habits. You don’t have to buy the latest Dolce Diet book, nor hire an expert nutritionist. Just a little common sense and a few new habits and you’ll be in the best shape of your life in no time! No worries about time constraints either – we’re all busy. The basic idea is that with a couple of hours a week you can be ready to eat healthily and train hard. The road to sustainable nutrition is in meal prep.
Time is generally the biggest enemy of grapples. Professional grapplers have in excess of three training sessions per day. Recreational grapplers tend to have full-time jobs. Both categories also have families and other responsibilities apart from BJJ. Eating healthy in a sustainable way is a real struggle for everyone. Well, it doesn’t have to be so. All you need is the correct meal prep strategy and you’ll be all set. No need to spend hours cooking each day, or go for junk food because it is convenient. Let’s see how weekly meal prep can help you get better in Jiu-Jitsu.
Weight Maintenance And Cutting
So how can you benefit from doing meal prep for the entire week? Well, for starters, you’re going to save time. Furthermore, you’re going to have healthy meals at your disposal. Finally, you’ll be able to both maintain or cut weight more easily.
If you’re dead set on cooking healthy meals for yourself throughout the week, you’ll need time. Breakfast is not a hard task, but imagine cooking lunch and dinner every day as well. That is difficult even if you’re doing nothing but staying at home between training. Meal prep, on the other hand, requires you to dedicate 2-3 hours during the weekend and you’re set for the week.
The temptation to go for junk food or even a restaurant meal is common for grapplers. Very often, these temptations actually get the better of us. With efficient meal prep, you’ll soon find that these temptations completely go away. Having a pre-prepared meal with you can ensure that you won’t binge on empty calories.
In Jiu-Jitsu terms, the habit of doing a meal prep offers control. Just link when you roll, you need to be able to control your diet. Competitors, in particular, have to learn how to control their diet more than anyone. In a weight-class sport, such as BJJ, being just a pound overweight means you get DQed immediately. , Hitting that competition weight is not an easy task to do. Doing a meal prep is going to allow you to gradually reduce calories which means you can skip a hard weight cut. Furthermore, you can control the type of nutrients you’re ingesting.
A Simple Weekly Meal Prep Guide For Grapples
So, how do you develop the habit of doing meal prep? It’s quite easy, actually. Let’s take Sunday as our meal prep day, as it is one that is usually available to everyone. That said, you do not need the whole day. What you actually need is about an hour to do the shopping and approximately a couple more to cook the meals.
First, make sure you’re efficient when shopping. Have a list and stick to it as much as possible. Go and get all the groceries, come straight home, unbag them and turn on the stove. Make sure you know how many people you’\re cooking for. Don’t let food go to waste, so if you’re only cooking for yourself, don’t go overboard. The idea is that you’ll have everything ready to either eat right away or after a short reheat.
Next, you’ll need to organize your meals. Eating the same meal over and over again is boring. You won’t even last a couple of weeks if all you eat is rice and chicken. Instead, break your meals up. A good starting point is an alternating system of three main meal types. This way, your meal prep will last you six days. To make things clear, you’ll cook three types of meals and make enough of each for two days. In reality, the ingredients might be the same, but meal flavors and combinations are going to be different. After all, you need to enjoy food, otherwise, you’d just boil some chicken. Yuck!
Remember to buy stuff that you can in bulk. It’s cheaper and you can keep using them every week.
How To Avoid Boring Meals
Now that you know how to meal prep, let’s discuss the meals themselves. To prevent your meals from becoming boring you’ll need to introduce some variety. Be as creative as you like in that sense. Remember to keep bulk ingredients neutral (like rice or potatoes) and just introduce flavors and texture later.
For example, let’s say you have a batch of brown rice. Eating brown rice for a week is not a pleasant experience. Here’s how to make things interesting. For the first meal, go for an Asian twist. Throw in fried eggs, some chili, garlic, and cilantro in there. An avocado or some broccoli is also a perfect fit. Of course, add in the meat of choice.
Next, liven up your rice in an Indian fashion. Throw in some curry, cumin, and/or turmeric in some olive oil and add in the rice. You can even put some saffron in boiling water and add it in as well. Combine it with some steamed/stir-fried vegetables and some shrimp and you’re off.
Go for the classic to finish. Keep the rice plain but add in a different kind of meat. Let’s say you’ve got a good steak ready as part of your meal prep. While you reheat the steak and rice, you can whip up a quick mushroom sauce in about 5 minutes. Perfect!
You might’ve understood by now that you also need to bulk cook meat and veggies as well. Make sure you have at least two types of meat and a few different steamed, fried or simply chopped veggies. In terms of storage, let everything cool down, divide into Tupperware containers and place them in your fridge. Nothing to it.
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