The first time I ever did a food prep was in May 2014 as I was heading off to compete in IBFA Miss Spain competition in the miss fitness category. Looking back, how I managed to achieve 2nd place in the Canary Islands (regionals) which qualified me for the national level show without a proper preparation is truly beyond me. However at the time I had many other issues in my life (bad break up
/ moving house etc) so somehow my body had remained in excellent condition despite having never done a meal plan (in the world of bodybuilding competitions the nutritional side of things is beyond paramount to your progress)
Fast forward 1 week before I was due to fly over, I had asked a coach for some advice on what food I should bring. He too was flabbergasted that I had achieved so much with such minimal planning. I was advised to cook 6 meals a day of 150g Chicken and begin eating only that. This is what is called a de-carb or depletion which aids eliminating any excess water retention from the body. The only other food I was advised to cook was 300g of brown rice for the day of the competition aka Re-carb to fill out the muscles.
6 days of chicken for 6 meals each consisting of 150g + 1 day of 300g Rice
I felt utterly clueless about where to even begin, despite the fact I realistically only had to prepare 2 different foods, was truly overwhelming. I drove to the butcher at La Pepa Food Market who kindly portioned out all 5.4Kilos of poultry into exact 150g measures. He looked at me like I was completely insane when a refused to accept a portion that weighed an extra 2grams. (I was inexperienced, and have weird OCD with certain things therefore wanted everything to be exact)
Back home I filled every saucepan I could find & began to boil all of the meat, which I did one portion at a time; likewise for the steamer I was also using. Retrospectively it would not have been difficult to place 2 - 3 rations of chicken in pot, but I just wasn´t sure. Also like an idiot, I didn’t think to place the rice on to boil / in the steamer first as it has by far the longest cooking time.
The kitchen looked like a total state (rubbish-tip accurately describes the scene except replace the word rubbish with a curse word beginning with S) during this process -Tupperware, freezer bags & foil everywhere.
This initial food prep took close to 3 hours for me to complete (excluding washing up), whereas now for similar quantities & more ingredients it takes just under an hour including cleaning up afterwards.
Top Tip: Invest in a set of food scales as your number one priority before you take on any kind of larger scale food preparation. Before this I used to guesstimate portion sizes eg: 1 chicken breast + X amount of this + Y quantity of that; or measure rough portion sizes using cup measurements
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