The Shredded Chef

114 Recipes for Getting Ripped and Healthy

Michael Matthews

Copyright © 2012 Waterbury Publishers, Inc.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

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If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, or ask them to buy their own copies. This was hard work for the author and he appreciates it.

This eBook is a general educational health-related information product and is intended for healthy adults, age 18 and over.

This eBook is solely for information and educational purposes and is not medical advice. Please consult a medical or health professional before you begin any exercise, nutrition, or supplementation program or if you have questions about your health.

There may be risks associated with participating in activities or using products mentioned in this eBook for people in poor health or with pre-existing physical or mental health conditions.

Because these risks exist, you should not use such products or participate in such activities if you are in poor health or have a pre-existing mental or physical health condition. If you choose to participate in these risks, you do so of your own free will and accord knowingly and voluntarily, assuming all risks associated with such activities.

Specific results mentioned in this book should be considered extraordinary and there are no “typical” results. As individuals differ, then results will differ.

Cover Designed by: Damon Freeman

Published by: Waterbury Publishers, Inc.

www.waterburypublishers.com

Visit the author’s website:

www.buildhealthymuscle.com

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Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Achieving the Ultimate Male Body

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Muscle Myths: 50 Health & Fitness Mistakes You Don’t Know You’re Making

If you’ve ever felt lost in the sea of contradictory training and diet advice out there and you just want to know once and for all what works and what doesn’t—what’s scientifically true and what’s false—when it comes to building muscle and getting ripped, then you need to read this book.

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CHAPTER 1

Build Muscle and Lose Fat by Eating Tasty, Nutritious Food

Dieting to put on lean mass or strip away fat is SO much more pleasurable when you can enjoy your food.

CHAPTER 2

What Makes the Shredded Chef Different?

This book was built to meet the diet and nutrition demand of athletes.

CHAPTER 3

How to Eat Right without Obsessing Over Every Calorie

You can look and feel great without breaking out a calculator every time you eat.

CHAPTER 4

Let’s Get Cooking

Before we get to the recipes…

CHAPTER 5

Breakfast

When you wake up, your body is starved for nutrients. Feed it right! This section has breakfast recipes for getting big, for getting ripped, and it even includes some baking!

In this section, you’ll find recipes like…

Peanut Butter Power Oatmeal

French Muscle Toast

High Protein Banana Oatcakes

Powerhouse Potato & Asparagus Frittata

Macho Mexican Scramble

Tasty Turkey & Spinach Omelet

Apple & Cinnamon Muscle Muffins

Sweet Potato Muffins

And much more!

CHAPTER 6

Chicken & Turkey

Never be bored with a poultry dish again! This section has chicken and turkey recipes for getting big, for getting ripped, and it has 15 of my favorite marinades!

In this section, you’ll find recipes like…

Mike’s Epic Turkey Meatloaf

Authentic Greek Chicken

Easy Chicken Fajitas

Heavenly Honey-Garlic Chicken

Jerk Chicken Stir Fry

Mom’s Sweet Pepper Chicken Stir Fry

Low-Fat Chicken Stroganoff

15 Delicious Chicken Marinades

And much more!

CHAPTER 7

Beef

It’s hard to beat beef when it comes to building muscle, and in this section, you’ll learn some of my favorite dishes! This section has beef recipes for getting big and for getting ripped.

In this section, you’ll find recipes like…

Vietnamese Beef and Noodles

Tex-Mex Beef Special

Super Stuffed Peppers

Awesome Asian Beef Stir Fry

Cuban Beef

London Broil

Mediterranean Beef Kabobs

And much more!

CHAPTER 8

Pork

Pork tenderloin is a great source of lean protein, and it can be prepared in many ways!

In this section, you’ll find recipes like…

Apple Dijon Pork Chops

Worcestershire Pork Tenderloin

From Scratch BBQ Pulled Pork

Puerto Rican Spicy Pork

Honey-Dijon Glazed Pork Chops

And more!

CHAPTER 9

Fish & Seafood

Fish is one of the healthiest sources of protein you can eat and perfect for getting lean.

In this section, you’ll find recipes like…

Salmon Burgers

Citrus-Infused Baked Tilapia

Herb-Crusted Halibut

Grilled Shrimp with Spicy Cilantro Salsa

14 Fast & Simple Canned Tuna Recipes

And more!

CHAPTER 10

Pasta & Grains

Whole grains are a great source of slow-burning carbohydrates and fiber.

In this section, you’ll find recipes like…

Chicken Pesto Pasta

Beef Lasagna

Pasta Salad with Chicken

Chicken Fettuccine with Mushrooms

Asparagus and Goat Cheese Pasta

And more!

CHAPTER 11

Salads

Delicious salads with tasty, low-calorie dressings are a great addition to every diet.

In this section, you’ll find recipes like…

Red Wine Vinaigrette Dressing

Creamy White Vinegar Dressing

Almond Chicken Salad

Mediterranean Chicken Salad

Curry Chicken and Squash Salad

And more!

CHAPTER 12

Sides

Great side dishes are a perfect way to add some excitement and variety of taste to your meals.

In this section, you’ll find recipes like…

Wasabi Mashed Potatoes

Sweet Potato Fries

Mike’s Delicious Brown Rice

Citrus and Herb Quinoa

Zucchini Risotto

Couscous Salad

Healthy Sweet Potato Casserole

And more!

CHAPTER 13

Protein Shakes

Protein shakes are a great way to meet daily nutrition requirements, and are especially good for post-workout meals.

In this section, you’ll find recipes like…

Chocolate Almond Mocha Shake

Kiwi-Banana-Mango Monster Shake

Post-Workout Peanut Butter Blast

And more!

CHAPTER 14

Protein Bars and Snacks

Learn how to make your own healthy protein bars using high-quality ingredients, plus a few other yummy snacks!

In this section, you’ll find recipes like…

Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Bars

Granola Protein Bars

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Bars

Egg White Bites

High Protein Peanut Butter Balls

Mean Green Salsa

Classic Guacamole

And more!

CHAPTER 15

Desserts

Everyone likes a tasty indulgence now and then, so I haven’t forgotten the sweets.

In this section, you’ll find recipes like…

Chocolate Protein Mousse

Peach Cobbler

Key Lime Pie

Banana Cream Pie

And more!

CHAPTER 16

Would You Do Me a Favor?

You’re awesome for reading my book! I have a small favor to ask…

Other Books by Michael Matthews

1

Why Buy This Book?

I used to hate cooking because I sucked at it.

Literally everything I made tasted horrible—and it took way too long.

To make things worse, I’m into weight lifting and had to eat a lot of that crappy food every week.

When I was eating to gain muscle, I couldn’t really enjoy it because I didn’t know how to make tasty meals that gave me enough calories and macronutrients (protein, carbs, and fats). I basically felt like a farm animal hitting the daily troth of chicken, eggs, oatmeal, brown rice, and potatoes.

When I was cutting, well, I cringe when I think of the bland, plain chicken breasts and vegetables that I used to force down every day for months (I become quite a connoisseur of hot sauce, but eventually even that couldn’t redeem the food). I would get excited over the banana I got to have with my afternoon shake. My buddies joked that I had the palette of a Rottweiler.

Finally, after years of desensitizing myself to food, I decided to figure out how to cook fast, healthy meals that tasted good and also met my nutritional needs. I wanted to look forward to hearty, nutritious meals when eating to gain muscle, and I wanted to enjoy some of what I got to eat while cutting.

This book is a compilation of recipes that fit the bill. Every recipe in this book is designed to help you build lean muscle or lose fat while actually getting healthier (because who cares if you look great but feel like crap?). And they all TASTE GOOD.

So why buy this book?

Because following a diet, whether to get bigger or lose fat, is SO much more pleasurable when you can enjoy your meals. I think this book will become a good friend.

2

What Makes The Shredded Chef Different?

As you probably know, you must eat properly to see good results from working out. You can grind away on the treadmill and pound weights until the cows come home and still see little to no results if you don’t know how to support those activities with the right nutrition.

Muscles can’t grow unless the body has the right nutrients to repair the damage caused by lifting weights. Eat too little, and you can not only fail to make gains, but you can actually lose muscle.

Your body can’t lose fat unless you make it operate at just the right deficit of calories. Eat just a few hundred too many calories per day, and you’ll find yourself stuck in the miserable rut of feeling like you’re “on a diet” without losing any weight.

That being said, many diet plans out there exist in a vacuum. That is, they assume that eating conditions will always remain the same. They don’t take into account the fact that most people can’t stomach the same handful of food options every day, or that being severely restricted in one’s diet can lead to all-out splurging, which then leads to the dreaded weight yo-yo.

What’s needed is balance—a diet that allows for a variety of foods and that allows you to indulge now and again. It also has to be simple and practical so as to fit in with the craziness of our daily lives. And last but not least, it needs to enhance your overall health by incorporating healthy carbs and fats instead of the junk found in most people’s fridges.

Well, that’s what The Shredded Chef is all about. If you follow the advice given in this book, you’ll not only find it easy to follow diets to gain muscle or lose fat, but you’ll also be able to actually enjoy them.

As you’ll see, most of the recipes are sorted into two categories: recipes for getting big and recipes for getting ripped.

Recipes for getting big are going to be higher-calorie meals with substantial amounts of carbs and fats, and they will help you reach your daily calorie needs for building muscle.

Recipes for getting ripped are lower-calorie meals with little to no carbs and fats, which is vital for cutting successfully. (These meals are also fine for gaining muscle, but you’ll want to throw in a side dish to ensure you get enough calories and carbs.)

So yes, this is a cookbook, but it’s also going to teach you a bit about how to use these recipes to get bigger, leaner, and healthier. And with over 110 recipes, I think you’ll get quite a lot of use out of this book.

3

How to Eat Right

Without Obsessing Over Every Calorie

I have good news.

You can look and feel great without breaking out a calculator every time you eat.

Getting proper nutrition is a precise science, but it doesn’t have to be agonizing. In fact, I recommend a more laid-back approach. If you make planning or tracking meals too complicated, you’ll have trouble sticking with it.

That being said, in order to lose fat, you must keep your body burning more energy than you’re feeding it, and the energy potential of food is measured in calories. Eat too many calories—give your body more potential energy than it needs—and it has no incentive to burn fat.

In order to gain muscle, your body needs a surplus of energy to repair and rebuild itself (along with plenty of protein). Thus, you need to eat slightly more than your body burns to get bigger.

In this chapter I’m going to share some simple rules that you can follow to eat right. Just by following these rules, you’ll find that you can lose or gain weight when you want to and that you’ll feel healthy and vital.

1. MAKE SURE YOU EAT ENOUGH

A calorie is a measurement of the potential energy found in food, and your body burns quite a bit of energy every day. Everything from the beating of your heart to the digestion of your food requires energy, and your body has to get it from the food you eat.

Thus, it’s important that you feed your body enough, and that’s especially true when you work out. If you underfeed your body, don’t be surprised if you don’t have the energy to train hard or if you feel generally exhausted.

Here’s a simple way to determine how much you should be eating to maintain your current weight:

1. Eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day.

2. Eat 1.5 grams of carbs per pound of body weight per day.

3. Eat 1 gram of healthy fats per 5 pounds of body weight per day.

That’s where you start. For a 200-pound male, it would look like this:

1. 200 grams of protein per day

2. 300 grams of carbs per day

3. 40 grams of fat per day

That’s about 2,400 calories per day (protein has about 4 calories per gram, as do carbs, and fats have about 9 calories per gram), which should work for making slow, steady muscle and strength gains without adding any fat along the way (which really should be the goal of “maintenance”—not staying the exact same).

If your priority is to gain muscle, then you need to add about 3,500 calories per week to your “maintenance” diet. The easiest way to do this is to add a little more than 100 grams of carbs per day (or 70–80 grams of carbs and 20–30 grams of protein).

If you’re trying to lose fat, then you need to subtract about 3,500 calories per week from your maintenance diet. To do this, I like to cut my fats to about 20 grams per day and drop my carbs by about 100 grams per day.

It’s also important that you consume high-quality calories. Junk food calories, such as white bread and pastas, chips, and juice and soda, will make you look and feel like crap, while good calories, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins, will keep you in tip-top shape.

1. EAT ENOUGH PROTEIN

If you work out, you need more protein than someone who doesn’t work out. Why? Because exercise causes muscle damage.

With every rep you perform, you’re causing “micro-tears” in your muscle fibers, and your body needs protein to fully repair this damage. The body doesn’t just repair them to their previous state, however; it builds them bigger and stronger so it can better handle the stress of exercise.

So, in order to get the most out of your workouts, you need to eat enough protein. And that doesn’t mean just eating a lot after working out. It means having protein 6–7 times per day with a few hours in between each meal.

By doing this, you can keep your body in an “anabolic” state, which means a state in which it is building muscle and repairing tissue. If you fail to feed your body enough protein, it will fall behind in the muscle breakdown and repair cycle, and your body will go into a “catabolic” state, meaning that it will actually break down muscle and other tissue despite exercise.

There are two main sources of protein out there: whole-food protein and supplement protein.

Whole-food protein is, as you may have guessed, protein that comes from natural food sources, such as beef, chicken, fish, etc. The best forms of whole-food protein are chicken, turkey, lean red meat, fish, eggs, and milk.

Protein supplements are powdered or liquid foods that contain protein from various sources, such as whey (a liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained in the  cheese-making process), egg, and soy (the three most common sources of supplement protein). You don’t NEED protein supplements to gain muscle, but it’s pretty impractical to try to get all your protein from whole foods considering the fact that you will be eating protein 6–7 times per day.

Here are the protein sources that I recommend:

Whole-Food Proteins

Lean meats (beef, pork, chicken, and turkey)

Fish

Eggs

Protein Supplements

Egg

Whey

Casein

These are all considered “complete proteins,” meaning they contain all of the essential amino acids for cellular repair and growth that your body can’t synthesize itself (it creates some and has to get the rest from food).

Foods that shouldn’t be used for protein requirements are those that aren’t complete proteins, such as beans (all varieties), nuts, bread, rice, and other grains. They don’t contain all of the amino acids that your body needs to get from food (which means they need to be eaten in combinations, such as beans and rice, to make a complete protein), and your body can only absorb and use 50-70% of the protein you get from these sources (whereas 80-90% of protein gotten from lean meats can be absorbed and used). So you might think that the 190 grams of protein you got from such sources is all your body needs, but your body may only have 110 grams that it can actually use.

1. EAT HEALTHY FATS

Fats are the densest energy source available to your body. Each gram of fat contains over twice the calories of a gram of carbohydrate or protein. Healthy fats, such as those found in olive oil, avocados, flax seed oil, many nuts, and other foods, are actually an important component for overall good health. Fats help your body absorb the other nutrients that you give it; they nourish the nervous system, help maintain cell structures, regulate hormone levels, and more.

Certain fats are unhealthy, though, and can lead to disease and other health problems. These types of fats are called saturated fats and trans fats.

Saturated fats are a form of fat found mainly in animal products such as meat, dairy products, and egg yolks. Some plant foods, such as coconut oil, palm oil, and palm kernel oil, are also high in saturated fats. Eating too many saturated fats can negatively affect cholesterol levels, so they should be eaten in moderation.

Trans fats are scientifically modified saturated fats that have been engineered to give foods longer shelf lives. Many cheap, packaged foods are full of trans fats (such as run-of-the-mill popcorn, yogurt, and peanut butter) as are many frozen foods (such as frozen pizza, packaged pastries, cakes, etc.). And fried foods are often fried in trans fats. These fats are bad news, and eating too much of them can lead to all kinds of diseases and complications. They have no nutritional value for the body and thus should be avoided altogether.

Most people eat more fat than is necessary, thus adding lots of unnecessary calories to their daily intake. Getting enough healthy fats every day is pretty simple. Here’s how it works:

1. Keep your intake of saturated fats low (below 10% of your total calories). Saturated fat is found in foods like meat, dairy products, eggs, coconut oil, bacon fat, and lard. If a fat is solid at room temperature, it’s a saturated fat.

2. Completely avoid trans fats, which are the worst type of saturated fat. Trans fats are found in processed foods such as cookies, cakes, fries, and donuts. Any food that contains “hydrogenated oil” or “partially hydrogenated oil” likely contains trans fats, so just don’t eat it. (Sure, having a cheat here and there that contains trans fats won’t harm anything, but you definitely don’t want to eat them regularly.)

3. Get your fat from unsaturated fats such as olive oil, nuts, peanut oil, avocados, flax seed oil, safflower oil, sesame oil, or cottonseed oil. If a fat is liquid at room temperature, it’s an unsaturated fat.

By simply sticking to the recipes in this book, you’ll avoid unhealthy fats and include healthy fats without even trying.

1. EAT GOOD CARBS

The carbohydrate is probably the most misunderstood, maligned, and feared macro-nutrient. Thanks to the scores of bogus diet plans and suggestions out there, many people equate eating carbs with getting fat. While eating TOO MANY carbs can make you fat, carbs are hardly your enemy. They play an essential role not only in muscle growth, but also in overall body function.

Regardless of what type of carbohydrate you eat—broccoli or apple pie—the body breaks it down into two substances: glucose and glycogen. Glucose is commonly referred to as “blood sugar,” and it’s an energy source used by your cells to do the many things they do. Glycogen is a substance stored in the liver and muscles that can be easily converted to glucose for immediate energy. When you lift weights intensely, your muscles burn up their glycogen stores to cope with the demand.

Now, why is broccoli good for you, and apple pie not? Because your body reacts very differently to broccoli than to apple pie. You’ve probably heard the terms “simple” and “complex” carbs before and wondered what they meant. You might also have heard of the glycemic index and wondered what it was all about.

These things are actually pretty simple. The glycemic index is a numeric system of ranking how quickly carbohydrates are converted into glucose in the body. Carbs are ranked on a scale of 0 to 100 depending on how they affect blood sugar levels once eaten. An index score of 55 and under is considered as low GI, 56–69 as medium, and 70 and above as high on the index. A “simple” carb is one that converts very quickly (is high on the glycemic index), such as table sugar, honey, and watermelon, while a “complex” carb is one that converts slowly (is low on the glycemic index), such as broccoli, apple, and sweet potato.

It’s very important to know where the carbs you eat fall on the index, because eating a bunch of simple carbs all day is a surefire way to mess up your metabolism and gain weight (the body doesn’t work well when its energy levels constantly spike and plummet). They do have their uses, though, which we will go over shortly.

Your daily carbohydrate intake is vitally important to gaining size and strength. Carbs not only fuel your workouts and enable you to properly overload your muscles, but they also play a crucial role in pre- and post-workout meals.

Regardless of how many carbs you need to eat per day (based on what you’re trying to accomplish with your body), there’s a simple rule to follow regarding high-, medium- and low-glycemic carbs.

Eat carbs in the medium–high range of the glycemic index (70–90 is a good rule of thumb) about 30 minutes before you train, and again within 30 minutes of finishing your workout.

The reason you want some carbs before training is that you need the energy for your training. The reason you want them after is that your muscles are starved of glycogen, and by replacing it quickly, you actually help your body maintain an anabolic state and not lose muscle tissue. (As a matter of fact, your post-workout meal is probably the most important meal of the day.)

My favorite pre- and post-workout carbs are bananas and rice milk, but other good choices are baked potato, instant oatmeal, and fruits that are above 60 on the glycemic index, such as cantaloupe, pineapple, watermelon, dates, apricots, and figs.

All other carbs you eat should be in the middle or at the low end of the glycemic index (60 and below is a good rule of thumb). It really is that simple. If you follow this rule, you’ll avoid so many problems that others suffer from due to the energy highs and lows that come with eating high-GI carbs that burn the body out.

Forget stuff like sugar, white bread, low-quality processed whole-wheat bread, bagels, junk cereals, muffins, white pasta, crackers, waffles, rice cakes, corn flakes, and white rice. I wouldn’t even recommend eating these things often as pre- or post-workout carbs because they’re just not good for your body. Even certain fruits, such as watermelon and dates, are bad because of where they fall on the glycemic index. If you’re unsure about a carb you like, look it up to see where it falls on the glycemic index. If it’s above 60, just leave it out of your meals that don’t come before or after a workout.

What types of carb should you eat regularly? You actually have many choices. Pretty much all vegetables are very low-GI. Many fruits, including apples, peaches, pears, plums, strawberries, and oranges, are low-GI. Certain types of bread and pasta are okay, such as heavy, wholegrain, sourdough, or mixed-grain bread, and whole wheat pasta. Sweet potatoes and yams are great-tasting, low-GI carbs. Brown rice is much better than white, and barley is also very low on the glycemic index.

1. EAT YOUR FRUITS AND VEGGIES

Your body requires many different things to function optimally. It can’t look and feel great on protein and carbs alone. You need calcium to ensure your muscles can contract and relax properly. You need fiber to help move food through the digestive tract.  You need iron to carry oxygen to your cells and create energy.

There are many other “little helpers” that your body needs to perform its many physiological processes, and fruits and vegetables contain many vital nutrients that you can’t get from vitamin supplements. By eating 3–5 servings of both fruits and vegetables per day, you enjoy the many benefits that these nutrients give to your body, such as lowering your risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and many other diseases.

This isn’t hard to do, either. A medium-sized piece of fruit is one serving, as is half a cup of berries. A cup of greens is a serving of vegetables, as is half a cup of other vegetables.

Fruit juices, however, are another story. While they may seem like an easy way to get in your daily fruits, they are actually not much more than tasty sugar water. Not only do most fruit juices have sugar added, but the juice has also been separated from the fruit’s fibrous pulp, which slows down the metabolism of the sugars. Without that, the juice becomes a very high-glycemic drink. You’re better off drinking water and eating whole fruit.

The exception to this is creating juice using a juicer or blender to grind up the entire piece of fruit, removing nothing. This, of course, is no different than chewing up the fruit in your mouth.

Fruits widely recognized as the healthiest are apples, bananas, blueberries, oranges, grapefruit, strawberries, and pineapples.

Vegetables often recommended as the healthiest are asparagus, broccoli, spinach, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, onions, and eggplant.

1. PLAN AND PROPORTION YOUR MEALS PROPERLY

Most people’s meal plans are engineered for getting fat. They skip breakfast, eat a junk-food lunch, come home famished, have a big dinner with some dessert, and then have a snack like chips or popcorn while watching TV at night. This is exactly how you ruin your metabolic rate and pack on layers of ugly fat.

Your breakfast should be the largest meal of the day, and meals should get progressively smaller as the day goes on. This is because your metabolism is at its natural peak in the morning and then slows down as night approaches. That means it’s best to eat a smaller dinner and no carbs or fats at night.

You will also need to get used to eating several small meals per day (one every 3 hours, give or take 30 minutes) as opposed to 2–3 large meals with 5–6 hours in between. When eating 6–7 smaller meals per day, your metabolic rate actually speeds up, while eating 2–3 large meals per day slows it down and makes weight gain inevitable. Eating only 3 times per day also makes it hard to meet caloric requirements when eating to gain muscle (forcing you to gorge yourself).

Protein

You should be eating protein every 3 hours or so. You never want to go more than 4 hours without eating protein because your body will start to break down muscle. For most people, this means eating protein 6–7 times per day (the amount in each meal is very manageable, usually about 30–40 grams).

Carbohydrates

Most of your carbohydrate will come immediately after training. For most guys, a post-workout meal includes about 100 grams of medium-to-high-GI carbs. This may sound like a lot, and it is, but your body needs them.

You should have low-GI carbs with each protein meal leading up to dinner.

Fats

It’s best to get your fats in earlier in the day, such as during breakfast or lunch. Like carbs, you don’t want to eat any fat for several hours before going to bed, because it can lead to fat gain (as it’s very calorie-dense and burns slowly, releasing more energy than your body needs while sleeping).

One other important part of eating right is planning your meals around your workouts. About 30 minutes before training, you want to eat about 30 grams of high-GI carbs and about 30 grams of fast-digesting protein (such as whey).

The carbs will not only give you energy to fuel your workout and the protein will get amino acids into your blood stream, which will then be immediately available for repair as you start to break down the muscle fibers by lifting weights.

When you finish training, your body is in a highly anabolic state, and it will absorb glucose, glycogen, and amino acids at a higher rate than normal. However, if you waste this window and don’t feed your body, you can actually halt muscle growth.

Therefore, it’s vitally important to eat immediately after training (within 30 minutes of finishing) and to eat a large amount of medium-to-high GI carbs and a normal serving of fast-digesting protein. (Don’t worry—we will work out your exact numbers soon.)

1. DRINK A LOT OF WATER

The human body is about 60% water in adult males and about 70% in adult females. Muscles are about 70% water. That alone should tell you how important water is to maintaining good health and proper body function. Your body’s ability to digest, transport, and absorb nutrients from food is dependent upon proper fluid intake. Water helps prevent injuries in the gym by cushioning joints and other soft-tissue areas. When your body is dehydrated, literally every physiological process is negatively affected.

I really can’t stress enough the importance of drinking clean, pure water. It has zero calories, so it will never cause you to gain weight, regardless of how much you drink. (You can actually harm your body by drinking too much water, but this would require you to drink several gallons per day.)

I highly recommend that you drink at least a gallon of water per day. Make sure it’s filtered, purified water and not tap water. I have a $250 reverse-osmosis filter with a re-mineralization component at home that produces clean, crisp water. I fill a one-gallon jug at the start of my day and simply make sure that I finish it by dinner time. I then drink another half-gallon of water between when I arrive home and when I go to bed.

I highly recommend that you spend a couple hundred dollars on a good water filtration system. There’s a big difference between drinking clean, alkaline water that your body can fully utilize and drinking polluted, acidic junk from the tap or bottle.  If you’re not currently drinking much water, you’re going to be amazed at how much better your body feels once you get up to 1–2 gallons per day.

1. CUT BACK ON THE SODIUM

The average American’s diet is so over-saturated with sodium it makes my head spin.

The Institute of Medicine recommends 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day as the adequate intake level for most adults. According to the CDC, the average American aged 2 and up eats 3,436 milligrams of sodium per day.

Too much sodium in the body causes water retention (which gives you that puffy, soft look) and it can lead to high blood pressure and heart disease.

Frozen and canned foods are full of sodium, as are cured meats like bacon and sausage (one slice of bacon contains 1,000 milligrams of sodium!).

Whenever possible, I chose low- or no-sodium ingredients for the recipes in this book. When you need to add salt, I recommend sea salt or Himalayan rock salt (sounds like fancy BS, but it’s actually great stuff) because it has many naturally occurring minerals, whereas run-of-the-mill table salt has been “chemically cleaned” to remove “impurities,” which includes these vital elements.

1. CHEAT CORRECTLY

Many people struggling with diets talk about “cheat days.” The idea is that if you’re good during the week, you can go buck wild on the weekends and somehow not gain fat. Well, unless you have a very fast metabolism, that’s not how it works. If you follow a strict diet and exercise, you can expect to lose 1–2 pounds per week. If you get too crazy, you can gain it right back over a weekend.

So don’t think cheat DAYS, think cheat MEALS—meals where you eat more or less anything you want (and all other meals of the week follow your meal plan). When done once or twice per week, a cheat meal is not only satisfying, but it can also speed up your metabolic rate. Scientists aren’t sure why, but it might have something to do with a similar aspect of muscle growth—overload. By “overloading” your metabolism occasionally, you make it work extra hard, and it always has to be ready to handle a large influx of calories.

I would recommend, however, that you don’t go too overboard with your cheat meals—don’t eat 4,000 calories of junk food and desserts and think it won’t do any harm. Ideally, you would have your cheat meal in the morning or at lunch (giving your body plenty of time to work through all the extra food before going to sleep), but don’t be afraid of cheating for dinner.

How many cheat meals you should eat per week depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. When you’re eating to grow and aren’t necessarily worried about gaining some body fat (which is just a part of the game of bulking), two or three cheat meals per week is totally fine. When you’re cutting, you really want to stick with one per week, and you want it to be a moderate one.

4

Let’s Get Cooking

Getting lean, while still feeding your muscles and body what they need, can be tough. That’s why I wrote this book, and I’m confident that you’ll be able to find the right recipes to fit your needs. Nothing in this book is fancy or hard to make, yet many of the recipes are quite delicious. I’m sure that you’ll find some new staples for your diet in this book.

The most you’ll need to make these recipes is a blender and a couple pots and pans (most don’t even need the blender). The instructions are easy to follow, the prep times are minimal, and the ingredients are easy to find. Cooking doesn’t get much simpler than this.

For the sake of simplicity, I recommend that you pick out a week’s worth of recipes and then go shopping for the ingredients. Many of the recipes use the same ingredients, which will save you money and time.

5

Breakfast

Although the body appears to “shut down” during sleep, this is far from the truth. It’s incredibly active while you sleep; repairing muscle and producing hormones.

If you slept 8 hours and ate your last meal 5 hours before going to bed, your body has gone 13 hours without food. If you were to wake up and skip breakfast, waiting another 5 hours for the noon lunch, the fasting period stretches to 18 hours. From there, you only have 6 hours to get in your daily nutrition.

Well, that 18-hour period of starvation sends a clear message to the body: Food is scarce, and it had better store fat as soon as possible to better cope with the starvation next time. That’s why is very important to eat immediately after you wake. It tells your body that all is fine and there is food available.

Another significant reason to eat right as you get up is that during the starvation period of sleep, your body goes into a catabolic state (breaking muscle down). You want to end this as soon as possible, and you do it by eating food.

So, make a little time each morning for a breakfast—even if it’s only a few minutes. You can make some of the recipes in advance and just keep them in the fridge. Or you can make quick meals like oatmeal or egg scrambles. And if you have a little time, and so desire, treat yourself to something like pancakes.

Breakfast Recipes for Getting Big

Mike’s Muscle-Building Blueberry Oatmeal

(Per Serving)

Calories: 580

Protein: 52 grams

Carbohydrates: 57 grams

Fat: 16 grams

Makes 1 serving

Ingredients

1. 3/4 cup oatmeal

2. 8 egg whites

3. 1/2 scoop chocolate whey protein powder

4. 2 teaspoons pure cocoa powder

5. 1/2 teaspoon stevia or other sugar alternative

6. 1 tablespoon flaxseed oil

7. 1 cup frozen blueberries

8. 1/4 cup water

Directions

1. Mix all of the ingredients except the blueberries together in a deep microwavable bowl.

2. Microwave for about 1 1/2 minutes on high and then stir. Microwave for 2 more minutes on high.

3. Stir a couple minutes after cooking, add the blueberries, mix it up and chow down!

Peanut Butter Power Oatmeal

(Per Serving)

Calories: 610

Protein: 48 grams

Carbohydrates: 73 grams

Fat: 14 grams

Makes 1 serving

Ingredients

1. 1 cup oatmeal

2. 1 cup skim milk

3. 1 scoop chocolate whey protein powder

4. 1 teaspoon pure cocoa powder

5. 1/2 teaspoon stevia or other sugar alternative

6. 1 tablespoon peanut butter

Directions

1. Mix the oatmeal, skim milk, stevia, and cocoa powder in a deep microwavable bowl.

2. Microwave for 1 minute and then stir. Then microwave for another minute.

3. Let cool for 3 minutes.

4. Stir in the protein powder and peanut butter.

Baked Apple Pie Oatmeal

(Per Serving)

Calories: 476

Protein: 40 grams

Carbohydrates: 61 grams

Fat: 8 grams

Makes 1 serving

Ingredients

1. 3/4 cup oatmeal

2. 1/4 cup oat bran

3. 1 medium-sized apple, cored and diced

4. 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

5. 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

6. 1 scoop vanilla whey protein powder

7. 1 cup water

8. 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

9. 1/2 teaspoon stevia or other sugar alternative

Directions

1. Mix the oatmeal, oat bran, protein powder, vanilla extract, and water in a bowl.

2. Mix the applesauce, cinnamon, and stevia in another bowl.

3. Coat a small baking pan with cooking spray.

4. Pour the applesauce mixture into the baking pan first, and then pour the oatmeal mixture on top of it.

5. Bake for 35 minutes at 350 ºF.

Finally! How to Get Big and Lean Without Hating Your “Diet”

If you want to know how to build muscle and burn fat by eating healthy, delicious meals that are easy to cook and easy on your wallet, then you want to read the rest of this book.

Inside you’ll find 114 healthy, flavorful recipes specifically designed for athletes that want to build muscle or lose fat. Regardless of your fitness goals, this book has got you covered.

Here’s a “sneak peek” of the recipes:

1. 18 fast, delicious breakfast recipes like Peanut Butter Power Oatmeal, French Muscle Toast, High-Protein Banana Oatcakes, Lean and Mean Zucchini Hash Brown, Macho Mexican Scramble and more. Whether you’re trying to burn fat or build muscle, you’ll find recipes that will help you get there.

2. 18 mouthwatering chicken dishes like Chicken Stroganoff, Tasty Thai Chicken, Jerk Chicken Stir Fry, Honey-Garlic Chicken, and more. Forget boring chicken dishes, even when cutting!

3. 14 tasty beef recipes like Low-Fat Russian Beef Stroganoff, Lean Bison Burgers, Vietnamese Beef Noodles, Meathead Meatballs, and more. Enjoy beef like never before with these creative recipes and you’ll even find low-calorie beef dishes designed for losing weight!

4. 10 savory fish and seafood recipes like Turkey Bacon Wrapped Scallops, Provencal Baked Halibut, Salmon Burgers, Tasty Tuna Melt, and more. Never again settle for flavorless, unappetizing fish and seafood—these recipes will have you singing praises for the sea!

5. 7 hearty, healthy pasta recipes like Chicken Pesto Pasta, Asparagus & Goat Cheese Pasta, Classic Pasta Bolognese, Beef Lasagna, Chicken Fettuccine with Mushrooms, and more. Each of the pasta dishes are high in protein, making them great muscle-building treats.

6. 14 awesome side dishes like Wasabi Mashed Potatoes, Sweet Potato Fries, Hot ‘n Healthy Brown Rice, Zucchini Risotto, Couscous Salad, and more. You’re going to love mixing and matching these side dishes with the entrees and discovering your favorite combinations!

7. 5 delectable desserts like Key Lime Pie, Peach Cobbler, Chocolate Protein Mousse, Banana Cream Pie, and more. These sugar-free desserts will satisfy your sweet tooth without the calorie overload!

8. And more! (I haven’t even mentioned the recipes for pork, salads, protein shakes, protein bars, and snacks…)

Click here to buy this book now to forever escape the dreadful experience of “dieting,” and make building muscle and burning fat easy and enjoyable!

Other Books By Michael Matthews

Cardio Sucks! 15 Excellent Ways to Burn Fat Fast and Get in Shape

If you're short on time and sick of the same old boring cardio routine and want to kick your fat loss into high gear by working out less and...heaven forbid...actually have some fun...then you want to read this new book.

Click here to learn more about this book!

Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Achieving the Ultimate Male Body

If you want to be muscular, lean, and strong as quickly as possible, without steroids, good genetics, or wasting ridiculous amounts of time in the gym, and money on supplements...then you want to read this book.

Click here to learn more about this book!

Muscle Myths: 50 Health & Fitness Mistakes You Don’t Know You’re Making

If you’ve ever felt lost in the sea of contradictory training and diet advice out there and you just want to know once and for all what works and what doesn’t—what’s scientifically true and what’s false—when it comes to building muscle and getting ripped, then you need to read this book.

Click here to learn more about this book!

Table of Contents

The Shredded Chef