Ep. #933: Zach Coen on Easy Ways to Make Better (and Cheaper) Meal Plans

Mike Matthews: Hey there and welcome to muscle for life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for an interview on how to make better and cheaper meal plans, a topic that I’m always getting asked about and I will always get asked about how do I make better Meal plans. And I brought on one of Legion’s athletes, Zach Cohn, to share some of his favorite tips for making delicious meals and making healthy foods taste better and making them easier to prepare and saving money on them.

And in case you are not familiar with Zach, he is a registered dietitian and nutritionist who shares recipes and educational nutrition content and meal planning tips on social media. He has a big and growing following over on Tik Tok and Instagram, and his content is mostly about how to incorporate foods you actually like into your meal plans and how to make food planning and prepping simple and fun so you can stay on track and make progress without breaking.

The bank or breaking your palate. And in this chat, Zach and I talk about practical tips for snacking and how to incorporate more vegetables into your diet in an enjoyable way. We talk about making your. own versions of certain store bought items and pre prepared foods. Zach shares some crafty shopping tips to save money.

He talks about crock pot cooking, which is something he’s really big on these days, fitness, friendly desserts, and what to avoid and more before we get into it. If you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and want 125 of my favorite quick, easy, and delicious fitness friendly recipes, you want to get a copy of my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef.

Because, here’s the deal, you don’t need to follow a bland, boring, bodybuilder diet to get into the best shape of your life. You can eat delicious, home cooked meals you love without living in the kitchen, struggling with hard to prepare recipes, or overspending on expensive ingredients. And the Shredded Chef is the shortcut because it has 13 delicious and easy to make breakfast recipes like BLT eggs benedict, huevos rancheros, high protein banana oat cakes, and more.

It has 11 mouth watering salads and dressings like a spicy Santa Fe taco salad, grilled Mediterranean salad with sun dried tomato vinaigrette. Creamy jalapeno cilantro dressing and more. It also has 14 low calorie snacks that you’ll actually want to eat like blueberry coconut pancake batter smoothie, maple walnut protein muffins, peanut butter protein swirl brownies, and more.

There are also 16 succulent beef and pork recipes for savory lunches and dinners like beef stroganoff, one of my personal favorites, beef lo mein, parmesan crusted pork chops, and more. And then there are 18 tasty poultry dishes that you will love again and again, like curry chicken, Mexican meatloaf, which is killer, polo fajitas, and more.

There are 8 flavorful seafood recipes, like creamy fettuccine with scallops, graham cracker crusted tilapia, seared cod with no cook mustard caper sauce, and more. There are 11 appetizing side dishes. It’s crispy squash fries. Squash fries are so good. If you’ve never had them before, you’re in for a treat.

Sweet potato chips, roasted garlic, twice baked potato, and more. And finally, there are 10 delectable and macro friendly desserts that you can enjoy guilt free like peach cobbler, maple raisin bread pudding. triple berry crisp, and more. I also give for all of those recipes, cook time, prep time, servings, calories, protein, carbs, and fat, which makes meal planning a breeze.

And I even went further and put all of that information into a spreadsheet, which makes it even easier to build out your meal plan. And you can get that as a free download when you get the book, part of the free bonus material. And so all of that is why the Shredded Chef has sold well over 300, 000 copies, has received over 3, 300 four and five star reviews on Amazon, and has helped that I know of thousands of people build their best body ever.

And you can find it on all major online retailers, wherever you like to buy books, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, Google Play. bn. com. Even Audible, there is an audiobook. And yes, some people do buy cookbooks as audiobooks. Who knew? And you can also find The Shredded Chef in select Barnes Noble stores. Hey, Zach. Thanks for taking the time to come and talk to me.

Zach: Yeah. Thanks for having 

Mike Matthews: me. Absolutely. We are here to talk about meal planning. And as I was just saying offline, most people listening, they know the basics of good meal planning. They know how to set up their calories. They know that you need to eat enough protein. They know that most people, they tend to do better on higher carb rather than lower carb as far as satiety goes and they know to drink water and eat fruits and vegetables and so forth.

But I wanted to talk to you. to get tactical with meal planning and to get just some practical tips that people can use to make meal plans that are easier to follow, that are more enjoyable. Like for example, we can just start with something that people ask me about, which is they’ll ask me, I’m not a big snacker.

So I actually don’t have great tips. personal, I can share general advice, but I don’t have great personal advice, but I’ll get asked for good low calorie kind of higher protein meal prep ideas, like stuff that you’re going to eat in between your bigger meals that is satisfying that is maybe A little bit more interesting than just like a pot of yogurt or something, which is maybe what I would do personally.

Cause I’m boring. 

Zach: Yeah. Yeah. Dairy is a big snack for me. There’s a lot of misinformation around dairy right now. But that’s with every food nowadays, 

Mike Matthews: if you just combined three or four different ideologies, you actually can’t eat anything like that’s it. You can breathe air and maybe drink water.

Maybe. 

Zach: Yeah. Even those now there’s like these these guys that claim that the water we drink is killing us. It’s 

Mike Matthews: all good. So throw water out. 

Zach: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Or it needs to be special ionized alkaline. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, 

Zach: exactly. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: And then it probably needs to be maybe ionized air as well.

Zach: Yeah. And of course the water they want to want us to drink is 10 times the cost. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, naturally, you have to pay for quality, you get what you pay for. 

Zach: Yeah. But yeah, I really like dairy snacks. My whole approach is. The best diet is 1 that you can adhere to. So if you’re trying to fill those snack gaps in with things like veggie straws, and you absolutely hate veggie straws are going to be about the same amount of calories as a serving of Doritos.

If you really like Doritos, then make them fit into your goals, so it really just comes down to adherence. But I’m a big advocate for making your own protein bars. I love like homemade granola bars. They’re super easy, throw a few ingredients in a bowl, mix them together.

You can freeze them, eat them in the future. What’s 

Mike Matthews: your go to recipe these days? 

Zach: So I’m big into anything with oat flour now, just blending the oats and almost making they’re like baked oats. But you can put them out in a sheet pan and make cut them into bars and just eat them like that.

So it’s basically like baked oats, but cut them into bars, wrap them up and, eat them on the go. 

Mike Matthews: And so are you’re cooking the oatmeal first, or these are just the uncooked oats? 

Zach: So you put the oats in a blender. So basically the way you would make. Baked oats, usually blend the oats together with an egg, a little bit of Greek yogurt, a couple of scoops of protein, blend it up, make it smooth.

And then you would typically pour it into a microwave safe mug or ramekin and bake it like that and eat it. So you can actually pour them into a baking sheet. Or a baking tray, make a bigger batch, of course, pour them in there. And then once they come out, it’s almost like a big sheet cake. And then you can cut those into bars and eat them on the go.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. I used to do baked oatmeal. I don’t know, probably for maybe a year straight. I was just rotating through different burnout on it. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t burn out easily on food, but eventually I just don’t look forward to it anymore. And I’m like, right now it’s time to change it. Sure. I can continue to eat it.

But why, when I can, and something else now, it just seems more appealing, but it takes a lot. It takes, it took probably a year, a nice thing about oatmeal is especially when you do it, do the whole baked in, oh, I don’t even know the term. I guess it was not a Dutch oven, but whatever, a baking pan of sorts.

I would try different fruits. I would try, sometimes use milk substitutes, try different spices. And so I rotated through a lot of different variations. 

Zach: Yeah, it’s really versatile. You can make it however you like, whatever flavors you like. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, it’s quite good, especially with the right fruits.

For me, it felt like a dessert, but it was also a way to get in a couple of servings of whole grains and fruit as well. Yeah, for sure. As far as dairy products go, what are your, are you a standard Greek yogurt or? 

Zach: Yeah, I really like a Greek yogurt. I love the Chobani flips. They’re a little higher calorie, less protein than, your typical tub of Greek yogurt, but They’re a lot more enjoyable in my opinion, but you can make those yourself to, with just a little bit of standard Greek yogurt.

A lot of the stuff that they incorporate in those Chobani’s you can, but you can find in the baking aisle, like crumbled Heath bars, crumbled up Butterfinger, mini M and M stuff like that. And you can throw a little bit in there, make it more enjoyable, make it more fun. But yeah, Greek yogurt.

I really like, cheese string cheese, like the lower calorie, low fat cheeses, the premade protein shakes. I really like the the fair life nutrition plan shakes. You got premier protein. I really obviously the Legion stuff. 

Mike Matthews: I want to do RTDs. We’re just not there yet. Oh man, that would be amazing.

I know. I know it’ll happen. It’s just, it’s it’s one of those things that it sounds so simple. Like, why don’t you just do RTDs, dude? What’s wrong with you? But. The logistics are a bit more obnoxious than most people realize it’ll happen. But what happens with building a business, especially a bootstrapped business.

Haven’t had any investors, and so you just have to pick and choose. You only have so much. Money and then also just execution bandwidth. And you’re always trying to go after the lowest hanging fruit, so to speak. And RTDs are just a little bit higher than some of the other stuff for example, we’re just now getting back up on Amazon UK to start being able that will also serve as UK fulfillment because we have a lot of people, a lot of, Customers who they just buy bigger orders and they eat the customs fees over in the UK and in, in Europe.

And so by getting up on Amazon UK, we’re going to be able to better serve a lot of people, even though maybe it’s a smaller percentage of our total customers, but we have a lot of customers. And so there’s just stuff like that where I’m like, shit, I want to get that done before I go off and do these other things.

And yeah, we’ll get there. We’ll get there. 

Zach: Yeah, the RTD is that, there’s a big calling for them just because, they’re so convenient as just on the go, you grab one great for traveling. Yeah, it doesn’t take long to make a shake, but those RTDs they’re great on the go.

So 

Mike Matthews: have you tried to skier? I haven’t even heard of that. Huh? So that’s, is it an RTD? Is it a brand or no, going back to yogurt. So it’s Icelandic. 

Zach: Oh yeah. S K Y R. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They’re good. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. For what it’s worth for people listening. I prefer skier. I don’t eat too much of it just because I don’t really have it in my meal plan right now for no particular reason.

But if I do want to have something like that, I prefer skier over Greek yogurt for what it’s worth, at least. Most of the brands that I’ve tried of both Icelandic provisions skier, not that I, I’m not getting paid to say that, but I like theirs in particular, there’s probably better out there, but I’ve tried a few and then really liked theirs and just stopped trying other ones.

And anyway, for people who eating Greek yogurt and if you’ve done a lot of things with Greek yogurt and you’re not really excited about Greek yogurt anymore, you might like skier because it’s a little bit different. It’s a little bit creamier, has a, I think a different kind of base flavor. I find that Greek yogurt.

In general, it’s a little bit more acidic or bitter. 

Zach: It has that little like tanginess bite to it. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yep. Whereas skier has a little bit less. But whatever that’s worth. 

Zach: Now, do you know the macros in comparison to like a traditional average Greek yogurt? Same. About the same. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. You can get the fattier, tastier skier if you want, or you can get the stuff that is a bit more just I would say, oh, I don’t know, like a 2 percent Greek yogurt.

Yeah. A fair amount of protein pretty low in carbs, 

Zach: so those are always going to be tasty. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. So you can just decide for yourself what you want to do. What about like vegetables? What about ways to make vegetables more enjoyable, easier to eat? Butter. That’s a good tip. 

Zach: In my experience I’ve realized that people think that you, for whatever reason, you decide that, Hey, I want to lose some weight.

I’m going to start eating healthier. So they instantly switch into this all or nothing mentality. I have to eat healthy. No more butter. No more saturated fat. No more this. No more that. And so they just become miserable trying to eat just plain veggies, no seasoning, no flavor when in actuality, that’s it’s unnecessary.

Again, it goes back to adherence. If putting a teaspoon of butter on your green beans makes it more enjoyable and makes you actually want to eat them, then go for it. As long as it fits into your macros, your calories and your goals. But I really like veggies in the air fryer, crispy veggies are always, tastier.

What 

Mike Matthews: are your, what are your favorites in the air fryer? 

Zach: I really like broccoli. It’s plain and boring, but a little bit of Parmesan cheese tossed in some olive oil or butter, a little bit of salt and pepper, and you can either do it in the air fryer or even in the oven on a sheet pan, hit them with a broil at the end and they come out a little charred and crispy and they’re so good.

I can just eat those like chips. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I really Brussels sprouts as well. 

Zach: Yeah. Prepared 

Mike Matthews: like that can be really 

Zach: good. And there’s also a misconception that you have to eat. Organic, you have to eat fresh. A lot of people don’t realize that frozen veggies are just as nutritious, sometimes even more nutritious than fresh veggies, they’re frozen at the peak of freshness.

So they say so all those nutrients are trapped in there. Their freshness is trapped in there. They might not be as crispy. So it really depends on how you’re preparing them and what kind of dish you’re putting them in. Yep. But frozen veggies, even canned veggies. They might have a little more sodium and stuff like that.

So if you need to watch your sodium content, then, be aware of that, but there’s nothing wrong with canned veggies. There’s nothing wrong with frozen veggies. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I eat a fair amount. Like it’s a half, half mix of frozen and fresh. Simply because frozen is fast and easy and yeah, chopping a whole bunch of fresh stuff that there is a difference in the meal, but not that big of a difference, not enough for me to care.

I still enjoy it the same. 

Zach: And actually our, as a nation, our biggest food waste comes from the home. And a lot of people, what they do is they go out with the intention of eating these veggies. They buy fresh because they think that’s better. They get at home and they just never get around to eating them or preparing them.

And they toss them out. Food waste is a big issue in the United States. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. They’ll open the fridge and then think. I wish I could be the person I believed I was when I bought all of this stuff. Let me go 

Zach: order a pizza. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Whatever. Any other veggie tips? Like I remember one that was funny that somebody shared, he really doesn’t like vegetables, but he understands the importance of eating them.

And so to get in a serving of a leafy green serving or two, he would just, he just get Spinach and just eat it raw and just whatever, dude, and just eat two big handfuls raw and just drink water and get it down and move on with his day. If you can choke it down like that, then 

Zach: yeah, for sure.

A lot of people don’t realize that you can blend veggies to throw them in your shake smoothies make like a pasta sauce. You’re still getting all of those nutrients as long as you’re not actually like juicing and removing any of the, fiber constituents. You’re still getting all of those health benefits from eating your veggies.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. What about soups? Do you do any soups? 

Zach: I do soups usually around fall, wintertime more soup season. But yeah, I love soup. It’s an easy way to throw veggies in there. And going back to spinach, I found that, chopping spinach really fine and throwing it in pretty much any dish, the flavor is so masked that you don’t even flip, you don’t even taste it and you’re still getting all of the, the benefits of eating the spinach.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned pasta. That’s a great, if you have a, if you just start with a good, let’s say tomato sauce base, something you like, you can put all kinds of stuff in there without spoiling the dish at all. Let’s talk about costs. Do you have any, do you have any advice for people who are maybe on a tighter budget for their food and they do need to keep costs down? 

Zach: Yeah, so I am a big Walmart shopper. I know that, there’s a lot of controversy because, they’re a big conglomerate and, they put small businesses out of business and stuff. But as far as costs, like there’s not a whole lot of people that will be. Walmart’s basic cost, across the field.

I really like Aldi. They have a lot of deals on like cheese and stuff like that. There’s a lot of coupon apps out there. Nowadays. I use 1 called I bought a and basically you download it. Link it to your bank account. You look for deals that they might have. Sometimes they have bogos. Sometimes they have X number of dollars back.

If you buy this. You scan your receipt and you actually get that money back. I’m in Florida. So we have Publix here. Publix has a lot of BOGO deals and they change like every week. Taking advantage of BOGO, getting a Sam’s Club or Costco membership can really be beneficial if you can afford to do bulk shopping.

So if you can buy like the non perishables in bulk. Throw them in the pantry, the freezer, whatever you need to do. The bigger bulk items you get, obviously the cost is going to go down. So you save money in the long run, even though you are paying more money up front. 

Mike Matthews: Do you if you’re looking to minimize your food expenses, are you staying away from generally prepackaged stuff and looking for stuff that you’re going to be preparing yourself?

Yeah. 

Zach: I would say I use a combination of both. It really just I really do look at like the the price per ounce price per pound. A lot of grocery stores. I know Walmart does it. Some others do it, but they actually have next to the actual cost of the item. They’ll have a, 39 cents per ounce.

And you can compare that. To different brands, typically, obviously the Walmart brand is going to, usually going to be the cheapest unless there’s some deal going on. But I like to do a combination of fresh and prepackaged. It really just depends on the dish with my audience and my followers.

I really try to appeal to the affordable side, but also the the time management side. So I realized that, I have a lot of single parents that follow me people that are working 2, 3 jobs, and they’re just on a time budget. And so a lot of times using a prepackaged pasta sauce versus making your own from blending a bunch of veggies and tomatoes together, it might be cheaper to do, your own, but.

At what cost, versus the time taken. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. Let’s talk more about that in a second. Just one other question on the cost side of things. People will often ask me about protein in particular, how to make protein a little bit more affordable. 

Zach: Chicken and eggs, they’re king when it comes to lean protein.

They’re very versatile. You can put them in pretty much everything. The price of chicken has gone up lately. I know in Florida it was a few months ago, a 1. 99 a pound. It’s gone up to 2. 99 a pound now. And that’s at Walmart. I think Target and Aldi, they were all 1. 99 a pound. They’ve gone up to 2.

99 a pound. But yeah, chicken. Again, if you buy the bigger package, don’t be afraid to take out the portion that, you’re going to eat soon and freeze the rest of it. The bigger the package, obviously the lower the cost is going to be in the long run. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s exactly what I do. Just buy larger amounts and then portion out what I need for the next few days.

Freeze the rest. Let’s not, let’s talk about this point of saving time, how to Spend less time meal prepping, because that is a big obstacle. Money is an obstacle. And then the time that it can take if you go about it certain ways. 

Zach: So me personally, I, before I started doing recipes for TikTok and stuff like that, I would typically meal prep twice a week.

I would prep 6 meals on Sunday and then 6 meals on Wednesday. So that would be 3 from 3 for me and 3 for my wife. That would get us through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And then again, at the end of the week, and then Sunday was a free day. A lot of people have this misconception that meal prep takes too much time and all you really need is 1 meal prep.

Day or a chunk of a day dedicated to meal prepping and you save so much more time throughout the week. Because if you think about it, you’re going to have to eat throughout the week. So it’s a lot less cleanup because you’re not doing dishes every single day, cooking every single day. So in the long run, I think it’s great for time management.

I really like crock pot meals. So the crock pot is something you throw everything in there, put the lid on, turn it on and you can walk away for 2, 3, 4 hours and come back and portion it out and you’re done. 

Mike Matthews: What are some of your favorite crock pot recipes? 

Zach: I just did a green enchilada pasta that turned out really good.

So I like the way that the chicken cooks in the crock pot and you shred it. You can do a lot with shredded chicken really versatile. But there, there’s a lot of crockpot dishes I really like. 

Mike Matthews: No, I mean there are so many recipes out there for anybody listening. If you haven’t done crockpot cooking, poke around online, you can find a billion different recipes.

Zach: Yeah. And nowadays I don’t have one, but a lot of my followers, what they do is they’ll take my crockpot recipes and they’ll convert the time over to the Instant Pot. So the Instant Pot is like the crockpot I guess, but it’s a lot, it cooks a lot faster. So that’s even better for time management. If you don’t want to come back and, two, three, four hours and check the crockpot, the instant pot might be a good investment.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s also coming back to vegetables that can make eating vegetables easy too, because you throw everything in there, it cooks all together. If you have a good recipe, it tastes good. Just makes it easy. Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome, thank you.

And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general, and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend? Or a loved one or a not so loved one, even who might want to learn something new word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show.

So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. What about kind of fitness friendly desserts, indulgences, or some ways to. Satisfy kind of a sweet tooth or make dessert type foods a little bit lower calorie maybe sometimes even higher protein.

Zach: So the food industry, it’s a double edged sword. They appeal to our fears and our wants. It’s the good and the bad. The good thing is that they know there is a calling for. People that want to eat sweets and snacks and desserts, but don’t want all the calories that come with it.

So there’s a lot of different brands that are coming out. Nowadays. I really like the yasso Greek yogurt bars. I don’t know if you ever had those. Those are really good. I get them for my kids. They they really like them. They’re coming out with new flavors every day. I know a lot of people like the halo top ice cream fair life just came out with an ice cream.

So there’s a lot of different brands, it really just comes down to, and I only recommend this to people who know for a fact that it’s actually going to satisfy that craving. Because what I see as a registered dietitian with a lot of people is they’ll go and opt for the lower calorie snack. It won’t actually satisfy that craving.

And then they turn around and eat the full calorie, full fat snack. After that. 

Mike Matthews: That’s why I stopped eating the low calorie ice creams. I didn’t like them enough. So I was doing them here and there. And then I hadn’t had regular ice cream again in a while. And so I was like, I’m going to try, I’m going to try Jenny’s, I’m gonna try some Jenny’s and I was like, Oh my God, I forgot what ice cream is supposed to taste like with 

Zach: my life.

Mike Matthews: Exactly. And that was the end of low calorie ice cream for me. It’s just not worth it. Like I find personally, I find you take, you give me those calories. I don’t even need as many calories, but you give me a couple hundred calories, let’s say. And if I eat a couple hundred calories of like dark chocolate, I find that very satisfying, but a couple hundred calories of halo top by the third bite, I’m eh, why am I eating this?

And I’m, 

Zach: so for me, my favorite. Cookie is a chocolate chip cookie. I honestly don’t think, and this may suck to hear as any of my followers that might hear it, I don’t think I’ll ever do a low calorie chocolate chip cookie. 

Mike Matthews: I was going to say the only way you need all the butter, you need all the sugar.

Zach: I would never do that to my favorite dessert just because I know it would never do it justice. So it really just comes down to making those snacks fit into your goals. And a lot of people just don’t understand what moderation is. And again, what I’ve seen as a registered dietitian is you almost need to create this abundance mindset.

So a lot of people, they, when dieting and trying to lose weight, they shift to this scarcity mindset to where they absolutely cut out chocolate chip cookies, for instance, and the 1st time they get their hands on it. Like you said, it might be 2, 3 months down the road. They get their hands on those chocolate chip cookies and they just go nuts with it.

They just binge on entire box or package as opposed to if you allow yourself to have one or two every single day or every other day, you’re creating that abundance mindset to where you tell yourself, I know I’m going to have this again tomorrow. I don’t need to eat the whole package as opposed to. Oh man, I haven’t had these in so long.

I don’t know the next time I’m going to have these. I need to just destroy this package right now. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, that’s a good point. It’s something that I guess I, I haven’t consciously cultivated, but my birthday was a few days ago and we had a cake and it was super good. And it was just that point of just pacing myself like, all right, I’m going to, I’m going to eat as much of this cake as I want until I’m satisfied.

But then I’ll just stop there because I know I’ll just eat more tomorrow and maybe then it’ll be gone with everybody else, but that’s fine. Any other, just for yourself or people that you work with good sweet tooth or craving eliminators without having to eat the whole box or package.

Zach: What I really advocate for is. Enjoying whatever it is in moderation. It, because a lot of people with dieting, they don’t realize that the restrict binge cycle is a very real thing. And it’s a very real problem in our society, especially with, the weight loss industry, they shift into this all or nothing mindset to where they absolutely cannot have these foods.

They finally get their hands on them. They binge, they feel defeated. They feel like a failure. They give up. They have that bounce back weight gain. They undo all of the progress that they made. And now they’re even heavier than they were when they started. Which is even more demotivating. Exactly.

And that’s part of the whole yo dieting. And it’s really frustrating as a dietician to see so much misinformation. On social media, demonizing so many foods and just really creates this disordered eating environment for people. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. Something I’ll just add to that. Just for example, for me personally, I don’t keep ice cream simply because it’s not a go to for me because a couple hundred calories of good ice cream just.

Isn’t very satisfying for me. If I can’t eat at least half of the pint, I’m just not very, to do a few spoons moderation, it just doesn’t do it for me. I would rather take those calories and again, give them over to some chocolate or maybe have a, I don’t have too much random stuff, but like a muffin would be more.

Satisfying to me personally. And I think it’s just good advice for people to find. That’s actually a good point 

Zach: though, because a lot of people, you can’t just jump straight into, Oh, everything in moderation. There are people who literally can’t have these foods in their pantry because they can’t practice moderation, at least not yet.

And so maybe if you love chocolate chip cookies, instead of buying a whole package of chips, the Hoy, Maybe try, the single sleeve package, or I know in the Walmart bakery, they sell, single cookies, just if you don’t have it in your house, you can’t binge on it. Just incorporating these things into your lifestyle and your eating habits, however, you can and I always recommend if something is a multiple serving package, as soon as you get home, open it up, divide it out into either Ziploc bags or some sort of package into the actual serving size that you want.

Yeah. That way, every time you go to grab one, you’re getting three cookies is the serving size. I’ll have it all. Enjoy it. I’ll move on. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s a great tip because for most people, including probably you, me, just about everybody, if let’s say it’s cookies and then we’re going to sit down, especially, let’s say it’s, After dinner, we’re now sitting down in front of the TV and we’re supposed to have three that’s in our plan, but we have the whole box in front of us.

You 

Zach: have a snack. Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: exactly. Maybe we’re not going to eat the whole thing, but on average, our intake is probably going to be a higher than three, but if you portion it out and then you have your little portion, it reminds me of, I think it was research that. might have been later retracted.

I know there was controversy. Brian Wancick, I believe over there was research that suggested that even the size of the bowls than plates that we use when we eat can influence our eating habits, how much we eat. And again, I know that some of the research that this guy. Was doing did end up getting retracted and there was some controversy and I don’t remember if the plate size bowl size was 1 of them, but regardless, this is a similar effect that we don’t need.

We don’t need research. We’ve all experienced that 1. 

Zach: I’ve seen some that yeah, I don’t know if it was the same research, but it comes down to actually did a video on this. That I know my generation was raised on a. Eat everything on your plate or you’re not getting up from the table mindset.

It really pushes us out of that intuitive eating just stance that we have towards food. If you give food to a two year old, they’re going to eat until they’re satisfied. They’re going to get up and walk away. It doesn’t matter how much is left on the plate. So a lot of times as adults, we eat with our eyes and we feel like we have to finish it because.

We’re at a restaurant and we paid for it. And if we don’t eat it, it’s somehow it goes to waste. 

Mike Matthews: Or we took a big bowl and loaded it up, even if it’s at home. And now we feel like we’re wasting if we don’t finish 

Zach: it. 

Mike Matthews: Or if you have kids, how many times, I don’t know if you have kids, but do you have kids?

No, I’ve got nieces and nephews and yeah, I think I know where you’re going. There’s always stuff left on plates and you’re like, Oh, I’ll try it. Oh, I’ll get rid of that. 

Zach: Oh, he didn’t eat all his chicken nuggets. What’s another couple of 

Mike Matthews: chicken nuggets. But yeah that’s a good point. That’s something I keep in mind with my kids.

And it’s been a little bit of a balancing act because when my son was younger, he was pretty skinny. Not like grotesquely skinny, but he just didn’t have that much of an appetite. And so my wife and I were always trying to encourage him you. Just eat a little bit more we’re trying to force him to finish is everything we always give him.

But, when he would say that he’s done, we would try to encourage him to maybe take another bite or two at least. And now he, we don’t have that issue and he’s exactly what you’re talking about. He just eats and sometimes he’s more hungry. Sometimes he’s less hungry. So he’s nine now and my daughter’s four and she is, I would say she just looks normal.

She’s not overweight, underweight, but she will tend to. leave a lot of food. And so it’s the same kind of thing where we’re like encouraging her to always at least take another bite or two because she’ll say she’s full but have not really eaten that much. So we try it’s we try not to create that situation though, where we want to encourage them to eat well, but not create this kind of enforced, which might come turn into some weird subconscious, like compulsion to always eat everything, yeah, 

Zach: I think they call it the clean your plate club.

So 

Mike Matthews: how funny one of the guys who works with me, he had an issue with that. Actually, he was quite overweight as a kid, and his mom was very, she would. Feed him a lot of food and always want him to eat all of it. And on top of that would let him eat whatever kind of junk food he wants to eat. And so he was, he got pretty, pretty big as a young kid and then lost a lot of the weight playing sports as a kid.

But then as an adult had to rewire his relationship with food consciously because it did mess with him where he just ate in such an unhealthy way as a kid for so long that it was hard for him to change that. 

Zach: Yeah, a lot of people don’t realize how much mindset. Plays into, our relationship with food, obesity, dieting, all of those things.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Can you actually talk? I know it’s a little bit off topic, but I think it’s interesting how the, there are psychological factors that are in play, right? There are environmental factors that are in play, cultural factors that are in play. And, I’m not for. Making excuses for people because I think you go too far in that direction, it actually becomes unproductive.

But I have commented myself just that for people to understand that there are people who are struggling with their relationship with food in some, in many cases, it’s not as simple as others might think. It’s not as simple as it Necessarily has been for maybe you or me, right? 

Zach: Yeah. I’m a big advocate for therapy.

I know there’s a lot of not necessarily if you have an eating disorder, but even disordered eating there’s a lot of good therapists out there that can work on digging and finding where those root causes and root beliefs come from. A lot of it stems from childhood. It can come from watching too much social media and just listening to unqualified individuals just demonize food.

And it gets to a point where People think that, there’s something that’s bad, according to, somebody out there, whether it’s the water we drink, the air we breathe, fruits, vegetables, there’s always somebody that will demonize something 

Mike Matthews: And somebody who is credentialed as well should probably add that, right?

Because often this is just human nature, right? When we don’t No, how to determine the truth of a statement, we default to the person making the statement and often just default to credentials like, oh, they’re a doctor. They’re a New York Times bestselling author. They’re, they have a bunch of fancy titles after their name.

I don’t know who am I to say that they’re wrong. 

Zach: Yeah, appeal to credentials is that is another big problem. I won’t drop any names, but there’s a lot of doctors out there that, just really use that doctor title to, promote their best selling book about, don’t eat this food. This is the reason America is obese.

And it’s really just an agenda. Not a lot of merit to it. It’s hard to say, don’t listen to anything on social media because there’s also good information out there. But, it’s really hard to deduce who to listen to and who not to listen to. Like you said, doctors are.

Spreading these things and you have other doctors that say, Oh, don’t listen to that doctor. Listen to me. So at what point, how do you figure out who to believe? 

Mike Matthews: That could be a whole podcast and discussion to itself. But I would say, one example of of a red flag is splashy contrarian marketing very noisy and saying things that are outlandish even, or that go against kind of some mainstream idea like eating vegetables is good, Oh you have Some massive juice head guy to say, he’s on Instagram eating raw bull testicles.

And he said, eating vegetables is bad. It sounds silly, but unfortunately, what you’ll find is a lot of the better marketing is in the dishonest camp. And. Some of that is, is just because for example, contrarian statements get attention and a lot of marketing. It begins with getting people to say, yes, I will pay attention, right?

But I would just say that if you look at it in terms of marketing skill, you have a lot more skilled marketers out there just selling nonsense because you have a lot of people who They’re good at marketing and they don’t really care about anything else. Whereas you have a lot of experts who are trying to tell people about the boring basics really.

And it’s much harder to make those sexy because many people are they’re drawn to the marketing. They’re drawn to the sizzle. They’re drawn to brands like where it becomes a whole ideology. It’s not just dry. Make sure your energy balance is supporting your goals and make sure you eat enough protein, boring.

Zach: Yeah. And I think a lot of it comes down to just self accountability and taking responsibility. So nobody wants to hear that, man, I’m obese because of X, Y, and Z decisions that I made, obviously there’s other factors that go into obesity. But a lot of it comes from just overeating. 

Mike Matthews: In the end, that’s what it is.

We know why they’re doing it. That’s where it starts to get more complicated, but 

Zach: right. But everybody wants to hear that. Oh man, it’s not because of the choices I made in my life. It’s because the government has been spiking my foods with these preservatives that made me obese. It’s because, this person lied and, this new research came out and this is why I’m obese.

It really comes down to just almost an unwillingness to take accountability and responsibility for your own decisions. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I agree. There is I’m trying to find it here. I came across a clever little. Quote it was along the lines of one line persuasion. Let me find it here.

Okay. So here it is. People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies. And. I think there’s a lot of truth in that. I think that’s a good summary actually of a lot of this misleading kind of marketing that we see in our space.

It’s usually checking several or all of those boxes. 

Zach: Yeah. It’s a form of confirmation bias, 

Mike Matthews: yep. And I guess that’s a phase maybe that people need to go through and that’s fine. It’s just people like us are out there saying, Hey, when you’re ready to level up we’re here.

And maybe at one point. The idea that actually the problem is eating too much and moving too little. That was not palatable. And then you have to go through some of this other stuff until you then go, all right, none of that worked. Maybe Zach was right. Or maybe Mike was right. Maybe I am just eating too much food and not moving enough.

Maybe I’ll try that. But but coming back to meal planning Are there any other just kind of general tips or best practices that we haven’t covered you want to share? 

Zach: It’s okay to start small. I’ve talked to and interacted with a lot of people who just think that meal prepping and meal planning is just.

It’s too overwhelming. They think that they have to make 60 different meals on Sunday and that’s all you can eat throughout the week. Even if you just prep five breakfast meals for the week, Monday through Friday, prep your breakfast, see how you feel, see if it helps you, see if it aligns with your goals, your time management, your budget.

And even if you’re not prepping full meals. My content is all prepping full meals, but you can prep portions of a meal as well or parts of a meal. So if you feel like you just really hate cooking your protein throughout the week, you can prep your chicken. On Sunday and just make a side every day to go with it.

So you can prep, just parts of a meal and just build that foundation throughout the week. But don’t be afraid to start small. You again, it comes down to the all or nothing mentality. A lot of times when people start this fitness journey, I’m going to go to the gym 7 days a week. I’m going to eat nothing, but.

Whole grains and, fruits and veggies just start small. If you have a if you just are drinking 10 cokes a day, I would never tell somebody cut out coke, never drink it again. I would tell them, okay, let’s try to cut down to 8 cokes a day. Once you are okay with eight cooks a day, let’s cut that down to six.

Let’s cut that. It’s all about baby steps and it’s no different with meal prepping. If it’s your first time and you’re just trying it out, start with one meal, see how it feels and move up from there. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s great advice. It’s the tiny habit approach, right? To use BJ fogs, where start with something that just in your mind produces no friction, so to speak, right?

Where you’re like. Oh, yeah, that’s easy. No problem. I can do that. So just segwaying off of that then for people who let’s say they’re not doing any meal prepping right now. Are there places where you find that people tend to succeed best with if they start there for example Maybe prepping a certain meal based on kind of their lifestyle, like if one if they just pick one meal and just starting with that, you mentioned breakfast is but for some people maybe it could be another meal for another reason or 

Zach: yeah.

So I always advocate for lunch, especially if you work in an office environment you leave the house. If you leave the house and that’s where you’re going to be eating lunch at work, whatever, a lot of times what happens is say you work in an office and you have a lunch room there that serves lunch if they’re serving the same thing and you absolutely hate the food there.

You might have friends that come over. Hey, we’re going to such and such pub to grab some lunch. A lot of times those restaurant meals are not going to be conducive with your goals. A big problem in America is restaurant portion sizes are almost double a normal portion size 

Mike Matthews: and restaurant food is probably on average double the calories of how you would make it at home.

Exactly. 

Zach: If you can make something that you look forward to eating for lunch. Prep that meal, take it to work, let your friends know, Hey, not this time, guys. I have this, awesome pasta recipe that’s waiting for me in the fridge. So 

Mike Matthews: yeah, that’s great advice. And people who also are on the road a lot can like, if it’s throughout the day, and then just to help prevent them from hitting the drive through really, 

Zach: yep. Yeah, for sure. Yep. Drive throughs. They’re very enticing. They’re easy. They’re cheap. But if you have that meal waiting for you. Yeah. Absolutely. You’re not to say that you won’t go to the drive thru, but you’re less likely.

Mike Matthews: Last question regarding fast food. What are your thoughts on fast food and staying fit, let’s say, or getting fit? 

Zach: I think it, it can still fit into your daily diet. I actually just posted a video yesterday, actually and under, I had 2 boxes and on the front of the boxes, I had the calories listed.

1 was 700 and 1 was 730. I asked my followers to pick which 1 they would choose for weight loss. I assume people would choose the 700. So under the 730 box was a Chick fil a grilled chicken salad. It was an avocado lime ranch dressing, which was probably about half the calories, but it just goes to show that, just because it’s a salad doesn’t mean it can’t be high calorie.

And then under the other box was a McDonald’s cheeseburger, a small fry and a four piece nugget. So a lot of people, when they think eating healthy weight loss, Oh, I can’t have McDonald’s that’s too high calorie. When in fact, if you pick and choose foods that fit into your goals, your taste preference.

Your budget, you can absolutely make it work 

Mike Matthews: out of curiosity, just in your experience, working with people. Have you seen maybe just common like patterns of here’s what tends to work. Here’s what were people who do want to be eating fast food? Here’s how they tend to incorporate it.

Here’s like the stuff they tend to stay away from these things and kind of gravitate towards these things or no. Yeah. 

Zach: It really comes down to a lot of people, what they do when they go to a fast food restaurant. They think I noticed this a lot with males. They tend to go to McDonald’s for example, and, Hey, I’m a big guy, I need a large fry, I need two double cheeseburgers and, a large Coke.

There are some changes that you can make. You can do a diet Coke, zero calories. You can do. A smaller, a medium fry. You can do, a single patty, just it really comes down to reducing that portion size. And as long as it’s not over overly restrictive for you, and you feel like it’s still going to fill you up and satisfy you to the point where you’re not going to turn around and binge later.

It really just comes down to reducing that portion size to something that’s more appropriate and conducive with your goals. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. That makes sense. Similar to what you were saying with with sweets and dessert type foods is finding something that really does satisfy you for a reasonable.

Amount of calories, right? Exactly. This has been this has been great. This has been very informative. Again. I appreciate you taking the time to do it. And why don’t we wrap up with where people can find you and find your work and if there’s anything in particular you want them to know about.

Zach: Okay. Yeah, I’m on tick tock and Instagram. Mostly. I just started YouTube. It’s at Zach Cohen Z A C H C O E N on all platforms. Thanks. I do have a patrion. It’s 5 a month. I do a lot of additional recipes I do monthly meal plans just to give people an example of how they can incorporate my recipes into their goals.

That’s basically the only places I’m at right now. I don’t do any Any one on one coaching right now, I’m really focusing on just content creation to help the masses. 

Mike Matthews: Thanks again for doing this and thanks for supporting legion as well. I really appreciate it. And we’ll have to, we’ll have to see if we can brainstorm another one sometime.

All right. 

Zach: Sounds good. Thanks so much, Mike. 

Mike Matthews: I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don’t miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people.

Who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn’t like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, Mike at muscle for life. com muscle F O R life. com. And let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you’d like to see me do in the future.

I read everything myself. I’m always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.