How To Build Muscle For $8/Day (HEALTHY MEAL PREP ON A BUDGET)

There's a common misconception out there that eating healthy and tasty is expensive. Today I'm going to share the truth and show you exactly how you can build an effective and healthy muscle building diet for just over $8 a day. So the first thing we need to do to make this happen is we need to choose the right food sources. We want to choose nutritious protein, fats and carb sources that will not only be the best option for us to use to build muscle with, but are also the most budget friendly options to hit our calorie and macronutrient targets with. And based on the analysis of multiple sources, here is a pretty accurate list of the best options for each category. For protein, Some excellent options that maximize the amount of protein that you get per dollar are foods like eggs, milk, canned tuna, chicken breast and lean ground turkey for example. But at the same time, don't discount the cost effectiveness of whey protein powder. Although it may seem expensive when you look at it from a cost per tub perspective, most whey protein powders actually come out to be just as cost effective as chicken breast or canned tuna when it comes to the amount of actual protein it delivers per dollar because it contains minimal fat and carbs. And the fact that it is such a high quality and convenient source of protein that can be used in a variety of ways makes it a great budget friendly option. As for carbs, the best options here are oats, bananas, rice, pinto beans and potatoes. For fats, the best bang for your buck would be olive oil and peanut butter. As for vegetables, to help with your vitamin and mineral intake, carrots, onions, cabbage and romaine lettuce are some notable options. And lastly, as for cost effective condiments and seasoning, I'd highly recommend investing in salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, soy sauce and salsa as these are staples that for a very minimal cost can EAs add a ton of flavor and variety into whatever dish you choose to make. Overall, these lists will provide you with the most budget friendly yet healthy food sources to create your meal plan with. However, to take this one step further, you want to then purchase these foods at the most budget friendly grocery stores. Bank of America actually recently conducted a study on this and they compared the price of a predetermined grocery list at various supermarkets. As you can see here, the difference in price from the most cost friendly option, Walmart, to the priciest option, Whole Foods, was almost about 30%. So sticking to cost friendly stores like the ones on this list and some other notable ones like Aldi will be wise to minimize additional costs. I'm going to be using the Walmart prices for this meal plan. So knowing that, let's put this into practice and dive into our muscle building meal plan. The meal plan will consist of four main meals with at least 20 grams of protein within each meal in order to keep our muscle protein synthesis levels elevated throughout the day. So we're going to aim for a daily total of roughly 2700 calories and 160 grams of protein. But after you run through it, I'll provide you with some guidance on how to implement the plan and then how to customize it to best suit your body. So to start off, we're going to make a smoothie that takes just five minutes to whip together. Here we'll use a third of a cup of oatmeal, one frozen banana, two cups of 2% milk, two tablespoons of peanut butter, a scoop of whey protein, and then just blend this all together. Shit. The total of this comes up to just $1.70, yet provides a great return in terms of convenience, calories, protein and nutrients. Meal two is going to be an egg stir fry. Here we're going to need three whole eggs, half a cup of uncooked brown rice with a chicken stock cube thrown in there for some additional flavor, and half a cup of diced carrots, half a cup of diced celery, half a cup of diced cabbage, and some soy sauce and garlic powder to taste for a grand total of $1.51. First, give your rice a good rinse and throw it in a pot or rice cooker. Use a finger hack to cook the rice by lining up the water with the first line of your index finger. This Asian hack guarantees perfect rice consistency without fail. Then throw in your chicken stock cube and let cook. Next, scramble your eggs in a pan and set that aside. Once that's done, throw your veggies in a pan with some garlic until the veggies are cooked through. Add in your rice and soy sauce and give it a nice mix for a few minutes. Last but not least, take it off the heat and add in your scrambled eggs. Give it a taste and then add whatever additional seasoning or sauce is needed. Meal three is going to be a fajita bowl. Here we're going to again need half a cup of uncooked brown rice with a chicken stock cube, 4 ounces of uncooked chicken breast, 1 green pepper, 1 sweet onion, 1 cup of canned pinto beans, half a cup of salsa, and some paprika and salt for a total of $2.84. Alright, time to get cooking. So we're going to use the exact same rice cooking process as a previous meal. But don't worry, after I go through all the meals, I'm going to show you how to properly cook your rice in bulk. As your rice is cooking, throw your chicken, green peppers and onions in a pan and season with paprika and some salt. After a little bit, throw in your canned pinto beans, mix it all up and you're ready for plating. Add the mix beside your cooked rice and top with salsa if you prefer, for some additional flavor. And there you have it. About a third of the price of a chipotle bowl, yet just as tasty and packed with a ton of protein and nutrients. The final meal is going to be some ground turkey with a side of roasted sweet potato and green beans. Here we're going to need about 4 1/2 ounces of raw ground turkey, about 8 ounces of chopped sweet potato, a handful of green beans, a tablespoon of olive oil and a mix of different seasoning for a total of $2.34. To start, place your chopped sweet potato on a baking sheet, season with salt and pepper, drizzle over a tablespoon of olive oil and and then give it a nice mix. Roast for 30 minutes at 400 degrees. As that's going, cook up your ground turkey in a pan with some salt, pepper, garlic and paprika. In a separate pot or pan, steam your green beans by adding a bit of water, covering it and then let it steam until cooked to your liking. And there you have it. If you got some extra change to spare, feel free to top this meal with some cinnamon or ketchup for some extra flavour. But this alone, guys, it honestly tastes great without breaking the bank. So now that we've gone through the plan, let's go over some important information as to how to actually implement it. First, let's cover how to prep it. What I'd recommend is meal prepping the three meals but not the smoothie and instead just making that fresh as it takes just five minutes to do so and will taste a lot better. I'd also recommend prepping these meals to be good for three days since if you prep for the whole week, some of the components will start to get a little bit off tasting and looking by the end of the week. You. You can alternatively cook a week or even two weeks worth of meals in advance, freeze it and then just take it out as needed. If you're short on time, but cooking it fresh in smaller batches instead is generally what'll taste best. So as for how to do this, it's very simple. You just cook enough of each ingredient I've gone through to last for three days worth of meals. So for example, when you're cooking the rice in our meal plan, we use it in two of our meals every day and we use half a cup of uncooked rice each time. So when we cook it in batch, we simply multiply this amount by three and we find that we want to cook a total of three cups to have enough rice to cover these meals for three days. Then you just repeat this with the rest of the ingredients by multiplying their amounts by three to see how much you'll need to cover for three days worth. And use this strategy to guide your grocery shopping as well. I'd personally recommend that for the perishable foods like your protein sources and veggies, shop once a week for just enough to cover a week's worth of meals to avoid minimizing any waste and additional costs. Next lets cover how to add some variety to your meal plan so you're not sick of eating the same meals every single day. Doing this is quite simple and it can be done by just swapping out some of your protein, carb or fat sources in your meal for an equivalent amount of another budget friendly food source instead. For your convenience, I've created a list of swaps for each of the main protein, carbs and fat sources within each meal. These swaps will provide a similar amount of calories and nutrients as the original, but can help just add some variety whenever you need it. In addition to this, just experiment with different seasonings, sauces and veggies for each dish as well as this is a very easy way to change the flavors of the dish and just add some variety whenever you may need it. Lastly lets cover how to tweak the calories and macros of this meal plan to better suit you. Basically you want to prioritize aiming for around 1 gram of protein per pound of your body weight and a calorie intake of your bodywe in pounds multiplied by around 1517 as these two factors are what's most important. Once you have these two targets set, you can simply increase or decrease the portions of the meals in this plan as needed. So for example, if you required less than 2700 calories, simple tweaks to the carbs and or fats such as reducing the serving size of the rice in one meal by half can lower the calorie total quite significantly. Or for example, if you required more protein than 160 grams, just slightly bumping up the servings of each of the protein sources, while of course being mindful of the additional calories that this will add will easily do the trick. Play around with it, but don't stress over this too much. The key is to just get started experimenting with it, monitor how your weight is changing and then adjust the serving sizes to ensure that you're not either gaining weight too quickly or or on the other hand you're not losing weight because its just not enough calories and that's pretty much all there is to it. And to help you out even further with implementing this, I've actually created a budget meal plan that puts all of these recipes together for you with a full grocery list included as well. To grab a copy of this just head on over to builtwithscience.com budgetmealplan and Ill send it right over to you and ill also leave a link to this in the description box down below. But hopefully you were able to see that eating healthy while at the same time keeping it tasty does not have to be expensive. And for a step by step program that puts all of this together for you by showing you not only how to train to build muscle, but also shows you exactly what to eat, how much to eat, and then how to adjust this over time so you can build muscle as efficiently as possible. Just like several of our members have done with their Built with Science programs. And simply head on over to builtwithscience.com and take the analysis quiz to discover which of our plans is best for you and your body. Anyways, that is it for today guys. I hope you enjoyed this one. Please don't forget to show your support by giving the video a like leaving a comment down below as to what you'd like to see me cover next, subscribing to the channel and turning on notifications for the channel as well as this all really does help me out. Thank you so much everyone. I'll see you next time.