Day in the Life: Mel’s Meals is a weekly post to show you the simple, clean eating meals that I make throughout the week. I try to break my day into five different meals and rarely go more than 4 hours without eating. A 5-meal day works for me in terms of my schedule and appetite, but play around with your day and see what works for you. It might be three bigger meals and a snack or just simple three bigger meals per day.
My meals are generally smaller, consisting of 250-350 calories each. I try to get at least 30g of protein with each meal and like to spread my carbs throughout the day a little, but I like to eat the majority of them in the morning and at night. I prefer this timing because I workout first thing in the morning, so I like to have the carbs at night to use the next morning and then replenish with carbs after the workout. My schedule works for me, but it won’t work for everyone. Play around with your eating – it has taken me a few years to figure out that this is my favorite schedule.
If you have any questions about Mel’s Meals then please ask! Email me at eatliftplayrepeat@gmail.com, comment below or send me a Facebook message! Don’t forget to check out yesterday’s Grocery Shopping & Meal Prep Week 29 post to see how I prepared some of these foods!
4:30am – Pre-Workout:
My day started like usual for a weekday morning. I was up bright and early and drank 1 liter of water, half mixed with 1 scoop MusclePharm Assault and the other half plain. I took 1 BCAA pre-workout and another post-workout.
I had half a banana before my morning workout which came out to 44g.
6:45am – Meal #1:
Breakfast was a big ass bowl of protein oats and I got a little crazy and mixed in some cauliflower rice. I promise you cannot taste the cauliflower! The oats were made up of 1 whipped egg white, 1/3c quick oats, 2/3c water and 1/4c cauliflower rice mixed together and cooked in the microwave on high for 90-120 seconds.
After it was cooked I added 3/4 scoop MusclePharm Combat Chocolate Peanut Butter protein and topped the oats with the other half of the banana (45g total) and 3/4Tbsp peanut butter. I love hot oats with peanut butter, but the MusclePharm Chocolate Peanut Butter protein takes it to another lever. Delicious and check out that pool of peanut butter….. runny PB is the bomb.
I also had a cup of coffee with breakfast and took a couple more cups to go.
Calories: 350
9:45am – Meal #2:
My mid-morning meal this week is a wedge of the Southwestern Frittata that I made during meal prep. It was made with eggs, egg whites, sausage, cottage cheese, peppers, onion, green chiles and green onion. I used my giant cast iron skillet and cut it into five servings. Each serving has 27g of protein and only 8 carbs!
Calories: 240
12:15pm – Meal #3:
My lunch was just as good as I hoped it would be! I had 5 lean meatballs (made with 93% ground beef), 1 cup spaghetti squash topped with roasted tomatoes and 50g broccoli on the side. Simple and SO good.
Calories: 270
2:00pm:
Each year around the holidays we receive a small box of Ruth’s Toffee. It is SO addicting and delicious! I could honestly eat the entire box… luckily when I opened it there was a small piece already broken off the larger pieces. I ate that and estimated it to be 1/2oz.
Calories: 80
4:00pm – Meal #4:
Mid-afternoon I had 4oz cooked turkey, 3oz Brussels sprouts and 50g zucchini. Meat and veggies is a pretty typical afternoon meal for me. Keeps me full until dinner time!
Calories: 220
6:30pm – Meal #5:
Dinner was more of Breakfast #3. Have I mentioned that I LOVE breakfast foods?!?!
I tried cooking hassleback sweet potatoes for the first time and they turned out pretty good! I sliced two sweet potatoes in 1/4 inch slits without going all the way through the potato. Use chopsticks or two cutting boards as “bumpers” for your knife so you don’t go all the way through. Then I rubbed a tiny bit of olive oil on the potatoes, sprinkled with salt and baked those at 425° for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes I removed them from the oven and spread some homemade cinnamon-butter on them, increased the oven temperature to 450° and baked them an additional 8 minutes. They probably could have used 15 more minutes in the first round of baking, but I was getting very hungry!
I had 4.25oz sweet potato, 4g cinnamon-butter, 8oz Greek yogurt mixed with 1/3 scoop MusclePharm Isolate protein (vanilla), 1/2 cup puffed Kamut and 1/2Tbsp Buff Bakes Snickerdoodle Almond Butter. It was SO good. Now that I think about it, it was very similar to my Sweet Potato Yogurt Bowl recipe. Nom nom nom.
As for the cinnamon-butter, I took 3Tbsp softened Kerrygold butter and mixed it with 1/2Tbsp coconut sugar and 1/4tsp cinnamon. Simple and delicious! I might use 1Tbsp coconut sugar next time to make it even more sweet and dessert-like!
Calories: 415
Well that was everything in terms of Mel’s Meals. I went over pretty much all my goals by a few. I consumed 1,627 calories including 163g protein, 120g carbs and 55g fat.
If you have any questions about Mel’s Meals or how I prepared something then email me at eatliftplayrepeat@gmail.com. Don’t forget to check out yesterday’s Grocery Shopping & Meal Prep Week 29 for information about these meals!
What healthy meal has been your favorite so far this week?
