Nutrition

FLEX advocates eating five or six whole-food meals a day for sufficient nutrient intake. A key to success is implementation of a nutritional plan that can be adhered to. Too often, inexperienced bodybuilders will replace the effectiveness of whole foods with the perceived convenience of supplements. Here are some tips on how to buy, prepare and store whole–food meals to best incorporate them into your schedule.

SHOPPING

• Buy meat in bulk. Compare prices at butcher shops, supermarkets and discount stores to find the best quality and quantity at the most reasonable rates.

• Grains and complex carbs can also be bought in larger quantities. You can frequently keep rice, yams, potatoes and oatmeal longer than a month without spoilage.

• Although you will have to replenish fresh vegetables more frequently, frozen and canned vegetables are good for supplementing your fresh veggies. As long as you check the labels for salt and other unwanted ingredients that are sometimes included, packaged vegetables offer almost as many nutrients as fresh and can extend a food budget.

• Like vegetables, fruit should also be bought fresh, but it can be bought frozen or canned, as long as sugar is not added in the processing.

PREPARATION

• To reduce time spent preparing food, try to cook several meals twice a week. If you make enough for three or four days, you won't have fresh food in the refrigerator for a week or more that could have been frozen.

• Prepare all the chicken breasts, fish and red meat that you will eat the next three or four days at one time, grilled or oven baked are the best ways to go. They can then be stored in individual containers for each meal. Be careful to prepare and store protein sources properly. Using boneless chicken breasts will help to ensure that they are cooked sufficiently.

• Hard boil eggs for portable on-the-go protein.

• Complex carbs, like rice and baked potatoes, can also be prepared in larger quantities relatively easily.

• Steaming is the healthiest procedure to use for vegetables, although boiling is OK, but you'll lose some nutrients.

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