It’s an infinite series of stacked physical exertions that reminds me that I can’t think my way out of putting in the work.
It’s a great metaphor for how most really incredible projects are actually built (with a lot of grind). It also helps build the mental muscle of ok I gotta hit my targets today so I can hit my new targets tomorrow
I wrote a long form essay about the concept here if you’re interested.
So fwiw I consider myself an athlete (ex-military, powerlifter, been lifting for 15 years) and I still struggle with nailing my weekly meal plan. It’s a nontrivial effort and organization problem.
There’s also no “best” way to eat without identifying what the metrics you’re optimizing for.
For me, I’ll oscillate between really motivated to be lower body fat vs not and that’s basically a function of roughly hitting macros (40% protein, 40% carbs, 20% fats) while staying below calorie counts (2500 on non lifting days, 3000 on lifting days).
It’s not exactly “right” but I can generally manage to hit it with 3 meals a day plus some snacks. If I can manage this without going out to eat during the week then I generally lose body fat over time because restaurant meals have a lot more calories and sodium than home prepped food.
The meal prep is more complicated on “high motivation weeks” but I work to maintain this as a baseline. Trader Joes is my grocery store btw.
Breakfast every day (pre lifting meal) 5 minutes of prep - Egg whites from a box with some shredded cheese + granola bar or handful of granola
Lunch every day: 5 minute prep - bread + Turkey slices + pepper Jack cheese + mustard and 3-4 rice cakes + seltzer water.
Snacks: Turkey Jerky or Yogurt
Dinner: 5 minute prep (I cheat slightly here) - Trader Joe’s prepared meals like a burrito or a Tzatziki wrap or a Caesar salad or a half a box of their chicken nuggets. I sometimes cook my own food but this is a good compromise between a fairly spartan homemade meal but not 1000 calorie restaurant meal.
Portions tend to matter more than you expect.
When in doubt, have a fixed rule like no carbs after 1pm and give yourself a free meal or day once a week for your sanity. It matters more for your life that you just start trying to eat better than to actually nail it off the bat.
Best of luck and feel free to reach out to me if you want to chat further! You’ll figure it out.
VF Protocol | Cofounding CTO or Founding Engineer | Full-time | Prefer IRL, but Remote works | Boston, USA
VF Protocol is building a zero fee payment network on DeFi rails.
We're starting with P2P NFT transactions and iterating from there.
I'm too excited to wait so I'm building out the MVP myself (Solidity, React/Antd/JS, Alchemy, The Graph, and whatever else I need to learn next), but looking for a cofounder to scale the MVP into what the technology should become over the next ten years.
