Hey Reader!
In the 125th issue of The MF Kitchen, you'll slice into the details of:
- Recipes for my Cheesy Taco Rice and Cherry Pie Turnovers!
- If you've never done this, we can't be friends...
- Why weight fluctuations happen (plus how you can accurately track progress)...
- How to track the special 21 and up macronutrient!
Preheat your ovens…
Weekly Recipe Roundup 🍽️
Cheesy Taco Rice
If you are looking for a perfect meal prep that’s high protein and delicious, this is IT!
Click below to download the recipe and make it easy yourself:
Cheesy Taco Rice.pdf
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Cherry Pie Turnovers
A nostalgic low calorie snack/dessert!
Only 75 calories per turnover!
Click below to download the recipe and make it easy yourself:
Cherry Pie Turnovers.pdf
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Recipe Recreations Of The Week 🤌
Birthday Cake Batter Protein Ice Cream is the GOAT 🐐
Only 255 calories with 36g protein
Here’s the video and recipe:
👉 https://www.instagram.com/theflexibledietinglifestyle/reel/CzJqa2xOogT/?hl=en
This Week's Flavor 🎥
Zach's Beats 🎧
One FAQ ❓
Question of the Week:
“I’ve been noticing that my weight fluctuates a lot day to day, and it’s stressing me out. As a female, how should I interpret these changes, and is there a better way to track my progress without getting discouraged?"
Answer: My girlfriend had someone ask her about this during the week.
So I wanted to address it here too.
Because body weight is annoying as hell!
It’s like that friend who you never know what mood they are going to be in.
It goes up when you think you’ve been eating amazing.
It goes down when you have been eating like shit.
It makes zero sense a lot of the time!
BUT after 13+ years of experience losing body fat, I have cracked the pesky body weight code.
Here’s the exact game plan:
1.) Just Weighing Yourself Doesn’t Work
Accurate body weights are the only thing that matters.
That means you are weighing yourself first thing in the morning, after going to the bathroom, before any food.
This is the most accurate way to weigh yourself.
Doesn’t have to be every day.
You are just looking for a trend.
The more data points, the better the conclusion.
But you can weigh yourself once a week if need be.
2.) Your Weight is a Liar (Sometimes)
But will always tell the truth over a long enough time horizon!
What this simply means is, your body weight on a daily basis will fluctuate big time.
But over the long haul, it will show a trend thus showing you the truth.
So here is a list of things that can and will make your weight fluctuate on the day-to-day.
3.) The Biggest Cause of Weight Fluctuations in Women…
All my ladies out there have another big thing that causes the MOST weight fluctuations… your period.
Man do I have so much damn respect for females having to deal with that every single month. You literally only get 1 normal week every month.
That’s insane.
So how the hell do you track progress as a female?
Track your weight in comparison to what phase of your cycle you are in.
If you are just weighing yourself once per week, make sure you are comparing your weight from the week of each phase of your menstrual cycle.
So let’s just say the first week of last month compared to the first week of this month since it similarly lines up each month.
4.) The Scale is Only One Small Part of the Story
Progress photos, measurements, or simply how your clothes feel?
These are the real markers of change.
Keep your focus on the big picture and trust the process!
5.) Be Kind to Yourself!
Please remember this!
We can be the biggest assholes to ourselves and say things we’d never say to anyone else.
I can promise you this 👇
You are doing better than you think you are.
It’s so hard to see it in the day-to-day, but man does it compound over time.
You got this!
Weird Food Fact 🤓
If you have never done this with the sticker on a banana, idk if we can ever be friends 🤣
But how did we get to this point with a banana sticker on our foreheads?
The history of the banana is a lot more wild than I thought it was going to be.
I knew they were seeded and then they were not. But it’s a doozie!
Around 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, bananas were small and full of big, hard seeds.
All I can think of is my brain as a kid when eating a seeded watermelon lol.
But the seed-to-banana ratio was MUCH more obnoxious.
It literally made the bananas impossible to eat.
But somewhere between 5,000 and 2,000 BCE, a banana plant got a special “lucky roll of the dice,” (aka a natural mutation) that made its bananas grow without those big seeds.
Instead, they were bigger, sweeter, and much easier to eat because they had tiny, soft seeds (or no seeds at all).
People in Southeast Asia, who noticed this change thousands of years ago, thought, “Hey, these seedless bananas are way better!”
So they started growing more of them.
But instead of using seeds (since these bananas didn’t really have any), they planted baby banana plants called suckers that grew near the main plant.
By planting these suckers, they made sure the new bananas were exactly like the seedless ones they loved.
Fast forward to the 19th century, and bananas became super popular all over the world.
The banana that became the most famous was called the Gros Michel or “Big Mike.”
It was the king of bananas. Sweet, creamy, and perfect for selling in stores because it had a thick skin that protected it during shipping.
Everyone loved it!
But then in the 1950s, disaster struck.
A fungus called Panama disease spread through banana farms, wiping out the Gros Michel bananas everywhere.
It was like a banana plague! Farmers were scared that bananas might disappear forever.
We were this close to saying goodbye to bananas completely!
How did bananas survive?
Farmers found a new banana called the Cavendish. It wasn’t as creamy or flavorful as the Gros Michel, but it had one key trait, resistance to Panama disease.
By the 1960s, the Cavendish became the new grocery store favorite.
Sadly just 30 years later in the 1990s, a new strain of Panama disease emerged (capable of infecting Cavendish bananas too).
It’s spreading across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, threatening Latin American crops.
So the next time you eat a banana, know you’re biting into the result of a wild, ongoing banana saga lol.
Here's my Protein Banana Bread Chocolate Chip Muffins recipe just in case 😁
Serving Surprise 😮
Lifestyle, lifestyle, lifestyle.
I hate when every single diet tells you what you can or cannot have.
Why not just treat me like an adult and give me the tools to make a grown-up decision?
Well, that's what we do here!
So today I am showing you how to track the 21 and up macronutrient:
Alcohol
Alcohol has 7 calories per gram.
That really doesn’t mean anything.
It’s just good to know lol.
But all you really need to know is how many calories are in a certain drink.
So let's say you're poolside and you order a margarita.
Let's say it has 100 calories.
And let's say you have 3 of them over the afternoon.
That's 300 calories.
How do you track that into your macros?
You just track it as either carbs or fats or a mix of both.
But why only carbs or fats?
Because protein is BY FAR our most important macronutrient.
We want to make sure we hit that because it not only is the building block of building/maintaining muscle.
But it also is the most satiating (keeps us full) macronutrient.
This is important because if we are using some of our carbs and fats on alcohol (not food), we want to keep our hunger at bay as much as possible.
And why we track as either carbs or fats is because they are not as essential.
I like to track it as half carbs and half fats.
- We'll cut 300 calories in half to get 150 calories.
- Since there are 4 calories per gram of carbs we will divide 150 calories by 4 to get about 38g carbs.
- And since there are 9 calories per gram of fat, we will divide 150 calories by 9 to get about 17g fat.
So you’d just track that into your macros and you are good to go!
AND here’s the BIG kicker...
Alcohol isn’t usually what’s making you gain body fat.
It’s your poor food choices around the alcohol (aka your drunk behind blowing through all your macros and mowing down ALL food in sight lol).
I have some fun things coming up for you 😁
Until then...
Go out there and make a recipe that you've been wanting to try.
Yes, you Reader!
I know you have a few saved that you still haven't made!
Get the ingredients this week and make it.
You won't regret it!
Much love and happy cooking,
Zach
P.S. If you need some recipes to make, you can always check out the FDL App. 823+ recipes with new ones added each week.