ABZ…My Best Life Hack for My Waistline & My Pocketbook. DIY Single Serving Frozen Lunches.

Intro: ABZ…My Best Life Hack for My Waistline & My Pocketbook. DIY Single Serving Frozen Lunches.

I can put together a lunch for a couple of dollars, & I know what goes into it.

STEP 1: Go on a Diet

One of the things that I really tried to change up this year was my diet/exercise story. In my 20s, I could eat anything I wanted to & I stayed rail thin. In my 30s, I could eat whatever I wanted as long as I was exercising, in my 40s, I’ve found that I have to be pretty damn serious about both if I expect to get the kinds of results that I want. I’ve been doing a ketosis diet since the first of the year, & I’ve lost 39 pounds so far. The diet is pretty simple (if really hard to implement), no grain carbs, no sugar. I make a modest exception for the specialized sugar that represents wine. The thing about non-standard diets is that it’s hard to put together a story if you’re running out to grab lunch, & then there’s the fact that most of the lunch options within walking distance of Pier 9 where I work are going to be in the $12 to $15 range. My solution is to spend 3 or 4 hours on a Saturday or Sunday doing cooking for the week, & then freeze single serving portions of lunchables.

STEP 2: Pork Salad - Season & Roast the Chops

A meat thermometer makes all the difference here. Pork to an internal of 145 degrees, chicken to an internal temp of 165 degrees. My Ikea thermometer battery died, so I had to go old school, but I generally like to use the cool Ikea thermometer with a cable extension. You insert it into the meat & then the cable allows you to run the digital readout outside the oven. I like to program it to give the alarm when the meat is at 5 degrees below the recommended internal temp. I’ll pull it out & let carry over cooking take it the rest of the way.

STEP 3: Chop & Marinade

Cut your roast meat up into bite sized bits & add a little booze.

STEP 4: Assemble, Prepare, & Chop Your Fresh Ingredients

Mushrooms, daikon radish, tomatillos, pasilla peppers, & Italian parsley. For the tomatillos, I like to scrub them a bit after peeling them. Chop everything up in sizes that makes sense to you. Fresh lemon & lime. Finally, I’ll add some green onions & spinach.

STEP 5: Deploy the Finished Salad in Single Serving Portions, Ziplock, & Freeze.

Comments

[avocadostains]

So simple. Eat porkchops, get abz.

[reinventmdh]

Not simple...& I didn't talk about doing the gym at 3:30 am 4 day a week, but having a portion controlled lunch ready to go, without a bunch of crappy stuff certainly makes it easier to stay on track. Hope you had a great 4th of July. Cheers.

[avocadostains]

Dang. I knew there was excersize involved somewhere... Have you seen the instructables for Sous Vide controllers. Theyre supposed to cook meats evenly to the perfect temperature, thereby making cheap cuts of meats taste like they came strait from heaven. Ive found that for core muscle definition not volume so much as definition theres much that can be done with extending range of motion, ie just leaning back, to the side, etc. Think of a yogi gymnast able to touch the floor from a standing position in any direction, vs a body builder with giant abs yet unable to belly roll or have nearly as much mobility. Suppose it just depends what the fitness goals are. The human machine can be well in many forms.

[BeachsideHank]

Shed the jeans, wear a pouch, show us all your stuff. ☺

[reinventmdh]

Now, now...I might be willing to show a little skin, but this is where I work. I suspect they would frown on me stripping down to the pouch:-)

[PaleHorseRider]

You left out the part where diet alone won't get you abs. You would actually have to put in allot of work to even get the slightest cut.