Meal Prep for Bodybuilding: Get Easier Muscle Gains By Prepping Your Meals

What’s up my dudes! I’m really excited to share my meal prep formula for faster gains. If you’re a busy dude and you have aspirations of building a ton of lean muscle mass in a short period of time, then you absolutely 100% need to be meal prepping.

Meal prep for bodybuilding is one of the greatest fitness hacks of all time because it is going to help you make easier lean muscle gains and will also save you a ton of time and money.

I don’t know about you – but if I had to pick my 2 biggest assets in life they are certainly money and time. To be honest I value my time even slightly ahead of my money – but if you’re short on either then you’re going to struggle immensely with your personal life and with your bodybuilding goals.

This article is going to break down how I meal prep for bodybuilding success – and also give you my favorite new recipe that will make meal prep a lot more exciting.

I’ve been meal prepping for about 2.5 years and I can honestly say it has been the most important fitness hack that I’ve tried in the last few years due to all of the benefits.

We already know that it will help you save money and save time, which I’ll dive into deeper in the next section – but it’s also going to help you easily consume a calorie surplus and eat clean even when you’re craving junk food.

Just having all of your meals cooked and prepared is going to take away that urge to hit the fast food counter, and you have zero excuses not to get all of your calories in when all your gains are as close as a 2-minute trip to the microwave.

The devil is certainly in the details when it comes to meal prepping – so let’s cover the important aspects to meal prepping success.

Meal Prep Blueprint – The Fast Track To The Gain Train

We need to cover a few important questions before I dive into how I meal prep for muscle gains.

The first question is when should you meal prep? I personally like to meal prep on Sundays to prepare all of my meals for the upcoming weekdays. During the weekdays you are probably really busy with school, work, girlfriends, etc.

The thought of taking a 45-minute break from your busy schedule to cook a bunch of food during the week can be soul crushing – so for this very reason I like to meal prep on Sunday nights.

I like to eat out and have a more flexible diet on the weekends, so I will cook just enough food to last me Monday through Friday.

How long does it take? The beauty of meal prep is you can be the world’s greatest multi-tasker and knock out a week’s worth of gains in an hour.

You’re going to be taking advantage of every accessory your kitchen has. The oven, stovetop, and microwave can all be used at the same time.

You might be baking some chicken and sweet potatoes in the oven, while rice is cooking in the rice cooker, while you are frying up veggies and fish on the frying pan. Yes – you can cook 3 things at once with a little bit of planning as you’re about to see!

What do I need to meal prep? You need about 10-12 Tupperware containers (I recommend getting BPA free Tupperware) – and of course a whole bunch of food.

Since you’re looking to meal prep for muscle gains you’re going to want to have a nice array of protein, carbohydrates, and healthy fats in each meal prep container.

My Perfect Meal Prep

Without a lengthy talk about nutrition science you are going to need a nice array of the following major macronutrients for your meal prep:

1. Lean protein
2. Complex carbohydrates
3. Healthy gat (It’s best if they contain some Omega 3’s as well)

So let’s figure out our grocery store list for this super easy meal prep:

• 2 lbs. boneless skinless chicken tenders or breasts
• 2 lbs. salmon or 6 cans wild caught salmon
• 4 large sweet potatoes
• 4 cups brown rice
• Hemp seeds
• 3 avocados
• Coconut oil
• Veggies of choice

So here’s how it breaks down:

1. Protein: Chicken tenders and salmon
2. Complex carbs: Sweet potatoes, brown rice, veggies
3. Healthy fats: Hemp seeds, avocados, coconut oil

Now this is going to be so easy to cook all at once. Are you ready? Let’s make some gains in less than an hour which will last you the entire week!

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Step 2: Turn on your rice cooker and place 2 cups brown rice and 4.5 cups water in your rice cooker. Press “cook” and your brown rice will be ready in less than an hour!

Step 3: Chop the sweet potatoes into shape of your choice (I prefer fries) – and spread on a baking sheet with coconut oil. Sprinkle with seasoning of choice.

Step 4: Place the chicken tenders on a separate baking dish and season with cayenne pepper sauce, coconut oil, black pepper, and garlic (this is my favorite healthy combination, feel free to use whatever baked chicken recipe you want)

Step 5: Once the oven is preheated to 450 degrees place the sweet potatoes on the very bottom rack and the chicken tenders on the middle rack. They’re going to cook for about 45 minutes at 450 degrees together. They should finish at literally the exact same time if you have 4 sweet potatoes and 2 lbs. of chicken in the oven.

Step 6: Now you’ve got your chicken, sweet potatoes, and rice cooking all at once and we are only about 15 minutes into the meal prep.

Now we are going to heat up that skillet and pan-fry some salmon and veggies while everything else is cooking.

Coat your frying pan and let’s get frying! Place the salmon on the frying pan and cook those bad boys about 8 minutes on each side. Now you have 2 lbs. of salmon cooked in less than 20 minutes. Next take out your veggies and fry them up in some coconut oil and seasoning!

Set the salmon and veggies aside.

Step 7: We’re about 45 minutes in, and we’re ready to start separating this into meals. Take out your chicken and sweet potatoes from the oven and place all your food on your kitchen counter.

Separate your Tupperware containers and let’s make some meals.

Remember the avocado and hemp seeds? We are going to add this into our meals for additional protein, healthy fats, and nutrients. The beauty of theses two foods is they don’t need to be cooked and we can add them on top.

I like to combine all sorts of things into my Tupperware, so with everything we just cooked we can have a few different types of meals:

1. Baked chicken, brown rice, topped with sliced avocado.
2. Baked chicken, sweet potatoes, topped with hemp seeds.
3. Pan-fried salmon, brown rice, topped with sliced avocado.
4. Pan-fried salmon, sweet potatoes, topped with hemp seeds.

And we’ve also got a few lower carbohydrate meal combinations:

1. Baked chicken, hemp seeds, and pan-fried veggies.
2. Pan fried salmon, sliced avocado, and pan-fried veggies.

Simply separate all of your cooked food into meal prep containers and you’ll be on your way to saving time, saving money, and making gains!

Hope you enjoyed this meal prep extravaganza! Once you get the hang of it you will be meal prepping like a boss every week.