PBJ sandwich, chips, and chocolate milk. Breakfast was an egg and cheese sandwich, glass of milk, a jelly doughnut, and half a bagel with cream cheese. After workout there will be either loaded cheese fries or pizza, beer, and more snacks. Gotta love a nice junky carbalicious cheat day, 4HB style!
Cheat Day Breakfast (technically half of it)
Being on the 4HB diet plan means that I get to eat whatever I want one day per week. Saturday is my cheat day, and here’s what I had on 3/9.
This is a grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread, baked potato chips, and chocolate milk.
In the interest of full disclosure, this is just the first plate. When it was done I ate another one just like it. So technically this is a photo of 1/2 of my cheat day breakfast.
I wasn’t hungry for lunch.
Dinner was six slices of pizza and a beer. Dessert was two ice cream sandwiches and the rest of the quart of chocolate milk. Snack was a slice of red velvet cake with cream cheese icing.
This is the best diet ever.
I mentioned before that Sunday is the day I cook for the following week, making all of my breakfasts and lunches for the work week ahead. If you want to give it a shot, here are a couple of good recipes that are extremely simple, inexpensive, healthy, low carb, 4HB compliant, and keep well in the fridge for 5 days.
Broccoli Bacon Kuku
Steam 3 cups of broccoli florets. While they’re cooking, spray a 9″ x 12″ glass baking dish with non-stick cooking spray. Arrange the florets in the dish. Scramble a dozen free-range organic eggs very well and pour them gently over the broccoli. Sprinkle the top with 1/4 cup of chopped bacon or real bacon bits. Cut four pats (2 tbsp total) of organic butter and drop on top, spaced evenly. Bake at 325 for 40 minutes or until firm. When cool, slice into six squares. Eat one square for breakfast on Sunday. Individually wrap the other five squares in saran wrap, and refrigerate. To warm, microwave for 1:30 at 60% power. Cost: about $1.75/serving.
Sesame Kale Salad
Buy a bag of ready-to-eat organic kale and 5 organic chicken breasts. I use the ready-to-eat kale because it keeps better than the stuff I wash and dry myself. Cook chicken breasts as desired — grill, roast, Foreman grill, etc. — unseasoned. When cool, slice on a diagonal and individually wrap. Each morning before work, put a giant handful of kale in a suitable lunch container. Unwrap and add one chicken breast. To season, add a few splashes of soy sauce, a sprinkle of sesame oil, and a drizzle of olive oil. Put the top on the container and take it to work, keeping it cold. When it’s time to eat, shake and serve. Cost: about $3.25/serving.
If I was Herman Cain I’d probably call this my 5/5/5 plan — 5 days of breakfasts and lunches, each with 5 ingredients or less, for $5/day. But since I’m not the kind of guy who creates culture personality out of bullshit random numbers, I’ll just call it “A Couple of Healthy Meals with 5 Ingredients or Less.”
Catchy, huh?
As a writer and martial artist who often writes and exercises in the morning, I need every second I can get between the 4:30 am alarm and my 7:30 departure for work. Just think of how much more you could get done if you had an extra 20 to 30 minutes. Here’s a way you can pick up that time.
Make Sunday prep day. You’ll gain 20 – 30 minutes every morning — and you’ll eat better — if you make your weekly breakfasts, lunches, and snacks in advance. I’ve been doing this on-and-off for the past year. When something happens and wrecks my Sundays and I can’t prep, I go into a mental tailspin.
As I was doing my weekly prep on 1/6, I thought some other folks might benefit from duplicating my process. So I wrote this post and scheduled it for today so that, if you want to try it, you can go shopping today or tomorrow and get started this coming Sunday.
If you don’t work a straight Monday through Friday, modify it to suit your schedule. Just prepare enough breakfasts and lunches at a time to last 5 days, which is the maximum recommended safe time to keep this kind of stuff in the fridge before eating (assuming if you don’t use things that spoil easily).
But what do you prepare? Here are some options.
Breakfast : Low-Carb Broccoli Frittata
Preheat oven to 325°. Put 2 cups of water in a saucepan on the stove while you wash and trip your broccoli florets. When it boils, toss in the florets.
While it’s boiling, crack the eggs in a bowl and whisk. Use the butter to coat an 8 x 11 glass baking dish. Trust me, the broccoli is done now, maybe even overcooked. Drain it, put back in the saucepan, and cut it up small with a knife and a fork. Add the broccolit to the egg mixture and whisk again. If you want to zip this recipe up, add 1/4 cup of REAL bacon crumbles.
Pour the mixture into the baking dish, evenly distribute the broccoli chunks with a fork, and bake for about 30 minutes. Watch closely and remove as soon as there is no moisture on top and it’s lightly brown.
Sprinkle the top with cheese and allow to cool. Slice into six blocks (cut the pan in half in one direction and in thirds the other way) and wrap in cling wrap. When it’s breakfast time, microwave at 50% power for about 1:30.
Lunch: Low-Carb Chicken Swiss Wraps
Wash and de-vein the kale and set it aside to dry. It must be totally dry or your wraps will get mushy. Blot dry if needed. When dry, Place a leaf of kale on the wrap. Top it with a stripe of olive oil mayo, add chicken, salt, and pepper. Add a slice of Swiss and top with another leave of kale. Roll it up and wrap tightly in wax paper. The kale doesn’t wilt and is packed with fiber and healthy stuff, so don’t skip it. Don’t substitute lettuce or spinach. They don’t work. If you want to add more fiber, add some roasted chick peas or a sprinkle of flax seeds.
As for the chicken, you can use deli chicken, or you can stew 3 bone-in, free range breasts. Skin and shred with two forks. You can also substitute deli ham and add mustard. Experiment.
Snack
Buy a giant container of mixed nuts somewhere, or go to a good store like Ellwood Thompson’s and get them in bulk. Get a box of snack bags, or a set of six 1/2 cup small tupperwares (I tried the latter, but I lose them. How can somebody so organized do that? I blame Kreacher).
Add 1/2 cup of nuts per bag/container. I make up 20 of them at a time and put them in the cabinet because I know that I will eat 100% of whatever serving size I pick up. So it’s best not to take a 12-ounce can of nuts with me to the sofa.
I try to eat about 375 calories every four hours or so, twice that at dinner. Breakfast casserole at 6:45, nuts at 10:00, the wrap at 2:00 pm, dinner at 6:00 pm, and another snack at 9:00 pm. That’s about 2,250 calories per day.
I work a slightly modified 4HB program, and this is marginally compliant. Technically of course, cheese isn’t allowed, and neither are the wraps, but the carbs are so low they don’t seem to affect things much. Next week though, I’m going to experiment with leaving out the low-carb tortillas and just wrapping everything in large Kale leaves.
By my reckoning, you can pick up an extra 20 – 30 minutes every workday morning by doing this. Plus, the total time is less. You don’t have to get everything out of the fridge five times and put it back five times.
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