I’ve spent the last 10 years showing you the how, now I want to teach you the why. Learn more about macro-friendly cooking, get recipes not seen anywhere else, and so much more when you join 71,557+ others by entering your email below!
👨🍳 The MF Kitchen #27 - i got catfished...
Hey Reader!
In the 27th edition of The MF Kitchen, you’ll slice into the details of:
These Breakfast Crunch Wraps are HUGE!
Only 500 calories, 49g protein, and are amazing for meal prep!
Dense. Delicious. And super easy to make.
With a hard shell and gooey inside, you can enjoy the whole bowl and not feel guilty!
Macros for each WHOLE Double Cheeseburger:
425 Cals, 20g Carbs, 13g Fat, 57g Protein
Here’s the video and recipe:
👉 https://www.instagram.com/p/C7j1YB8shLq/
I LOVE me some fruit.
It’s my favorite form of snack.
Delicious, nutritious, and (most times) refreshing.
For our ancestors, fruits served as foods that could be easily collected and eaten without any preparation.
Fast food before today’s version of fast food 😅
It’s even been suggested that our ability to distinguish between red and green was evolutionarily selected for us so that we could find fruits and tell if they were ripe or not.
And nowadays, we can just go to the grocery store and find all kinds of ripe fruits with ease.
But where did all these varieties of fruit come from?
Today we are covering the Geography of your favorite Fruits!
This list is going to be in alphabetical order even though some fruits are most definitely better than others 😏
- Apple – Kazakhstan
- Apricot – Northeastern China and Central Asia (particularly the regions of Xinjiang, China)
- Avocado – South Central Mexico
- Banana – Southeast Asia (particularly Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines)
- Blackberry – Europe (particular areas of the British Isles) and North America
- Blueberry – North America (particularly the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada)
- Cherry – Europe and Asia (specifically Turkey and the Caucasus region)
- Clementine – Algeria
- Coconut – Indo-Pacific region (particularly the coastal areas of Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent)
- Cranberry – North America (particularly the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada)
- Date – Middle East and North Africa (particularly Iraq and surrounding regions)
- Dragon Fruit – Central America (particularly Southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Costa Rica)
- Durian – Southeast Asia (particularly Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand)
- Elderberry – Europe (particularly the British Isles, and also found in North America and Asia)
- Fig – Middle East and Western Asia (particularly modern-day Turkey)
- Grape – Near East (particularly modern-day Georgia and Armenia)
- Grapefruit – Barbados (Caribbean)
- Guava – Central America (particularly Southern Mexico and Northern Central America)
- Kiwi – China (particularly the Yangtze River Valley)
- Lemon – Northeast India and Northern Myanmar
- Lime – Southeast Asia (particularly the Indonesian Archipelago and nearby tropical areas)
- Lychee – Southern China (particularly Guangdong and Fujian provinces)
- Mango – South Asia (particularly India and Myanmar)
- Mangosteen – Southeast Asia (particularly the Malay Peninsula, including Malaysia and Indonesia)
- Melon – Africa and Southwest Asia (particularly modern-day Iran and Turkey)
- Mulberry – China (particularly the Yangtze River Valley)
- Orange – Southeast Asia (particularly Southern China and Northeast India)
- Papaya – Southern Mexico and Central America (particularly Southern Mexico and Costa Rica)
- Passion Fruit – South America (particularly Brazil, Paraguay, and Northern Argentina)
- Peach – Northwest China (particularly the region near the Kunlun Mountains)
- Pear – China (particularly the provinces along the Yangtze River)
- Pineapple – South America (particularly Brazil and Paraguay)
- Plum – China (particularly the regions near the Yangtze River)
- Pomegranate – Iran to Northern India (particularly modern-day Iran)
- Quince – Western Asia (particularly the regions of the Caucasus)
- Raspberry – Europe (particularly the regions around the Mediterranean and Northern Europe)
- Strawberry – Europe (particularly France and Italy)
- Tamarind – Africa (particularly Sudan)
- Watermelon – West Africa (particularly the region around modern-day Sudan)
Confession though. If you had me point out on the map where all these countries are… I’d fail big time haha.
Regardless, was cool learning about where all these fruits originated and how now we can find them all with ease just by going to the grocery store.
Question from Meagan (Charleston, SC) – “My problem is I log all my food every day to make sure I am hitting those goals and I hate it. I feel like a slave to MyFitnessPal. So when you just eat macro friendly, you already know the breakdown of what you’re eating? I want to hit my goals but not want it to be a chore.”
Answer: Trust me, I know exactly how you feel.
This is the ugly truth about tracking macros.
The blessing becomes the curse.
I tracked my macros religiously for 7+ years.
It was borderline OCD.
But I have not tracked my macros for the past 5 years.
I got over that hurdle.
And it made everything about my nutrition so much easier.
When I was tracking my macros religiously, I thought about food 24/7.
It was because I had endless food options to fit into my macros.
It would be a game I’d start each day of, “how do I maximize my macros as much as possible today?”
I would never eat the same thing multiple days in a row.
I had a list of cravings and I was at the mercy of them.
Every. Single. Day.
So even though I had goals and was reaching them.
AND was tackling my cravings with delicious foods/recipes each day.
It was defeating the purpose because it made food as the sole focus of my life instead of food helping me live my best life.
Food was the star of the movie instead of the supporting actor it was supposed to be.
So how did you stop tracking macros?
How could you still achieve your goals and keep the results without having to track your macros?
The first step is a mindset shift.
You have to let go of the game of maximizing your macros.
You also have to let go of being perfect with your macros.
Good enough is going to be good enough.
So hitting your macros close enough will be good enough.
I promise!
Now the second step is to reverse-engineer your perfect day of eating.
This is important because without the north star (your macros) to guide us, we will need to create another form of structure to ensure we are “close enough.”
And this structure starts with how many meals per day would you like to eat?
I personally eat 3 meals per day.
I love 3 because I like to eat a solid amount of food with each meal and that amount of meals also fits really well into my schedule/lifestyle.
And knowing how many meals per day is important because we will need to know what the macro composition of these meals need to be.
“But Zach, I thought we were not going to track anymore?”
You are not.
But you are going to have to learn how to build a meal without having to log it.
And that comes from logging it for the first few times you make it and then not having to anymore after.
So let’s use some round number examples for this.
Let’s say your macros are 120g protein, 150g carbs, 60g fat.
If you are eating 3 meals per day with no snacks (you can have snacks! just keeping this example simple), then we will divide each macronutrient goal by 3.
So per meal, your goal should be to hit 40g protein, 50g carbs, 20g fat.
With these macros in mind, you start playing with different meals you love that hit those macros.
You start collecting meals/recipes that hit those numbers.
And then, like in the original question, you are just eating “macro-friendly” and reaching your goals without having to track.
You just need to build that base of awareness.
I’ve had 12 years now of macronutrient awareness that I can use to very easily hit my goals, really enjoy my meals, and live the lifestyle I desire without having to track.
And the cool part is, you don’t need to spend 12 years like me.
You can have all this now.
It just starts with those first steps of building that secondary structure outside of macros (aka how many meals).
And then second, it’s building that first 10 or so macro-friendly recipes that you LOVE and know that they fit perfectly into your macros.
So then you can reach your goals and also not have to track.
You just make the meal and eat it.
I really hope this helps. Keep me posted.
Food IRL aka Food Catfishing
Not trying to be a dick…
BUT the amount of times I’ve met a girl whose pictures online looked WAY better than she did in person is TOOO many times lol.
I recently went to McDonalds for the first time in a while just because I wanted to taste the “real thing” since I make a ton of recreations of those classics.
I do this once a year or so.
And man was it depressing.
I was looking at all the pictures of each item when ordering online thinking, “damn this all looks fire!”
I then walk into McDonald’s to pick up my order.
All I can smell is those delicious fries when walking in.
I go to the cashier excitedly asking if my order was ready.
She says, “idk maybe? Go look and see if any of those have your name on it.”
Lol well alrighty then 😅
I look and there she was.
My glorious order hoping she’ll be as cute as the pictures online.
I am walking with my bag as if we are already holding hands on the first date.
I then ask for a tray because I think we are going to be here for a while.
Moment of truth.
I’ll start with the…
McDouble
Macros:
400 Cals, 33g Carbs, 20g Fat, 22g Protein
Filet O Fish
Macros:
390 Cals, 39g Carbs, 19g Fat, 16g Protein
McChicken
Macros:
400 Cals, 39g Carbs, 21g Fat, 14g Protein
10 Piece Chicken Nuggets
Macros:
410 Cals, 26g Carbs, 24g Fat, 23g Protein
Large Fry
Macros:
480 Cals, 65g Carbs, 23g Fat, 7g Protein
For those macros, all these better be the most tasty food of all time.
Unfortunately, the taste is just as average as it looks.
The good news?
I’ve made homemade versions of all 5 of these.
All delicious, half the calories, twice the protein, and take less time to make than if you went out to McDonald’s to get your order.
Here are the links to the recipes:
And if you guys like this Food Catfished series, reply to this email and let me know because I will do more! Shit’s so fascinating to me how mediocre eating out has become.
If you saw my email from last Thursday, you might have seen that I have two NEW recipe books available!
To celebrate, I’m opening up my lifetime bundle (aka you get all my recipe books PLUS all future books) for just $99!
This brings the price of each recipe down to just $0.10.
So if you’re anything like me and want to hit your health goals while enjoying the food you love, you might want to consider getting the lifetime bundle.
👉 Click here to learn more about what you get access to
And if you already have it, the new books should finish uploading to your recipe dashboard soon.
Whether you get it or not, I’ll be sending these emails out every week regardless!
Much love and happy cooking,
Zach
P.S. The bundle comes with a 100% money-back guarantee because I’m so confident you will love it. So feel free to grab the bundle, take a look inside, and then decide if you want to keep it! I want this to be zero-risk for you 🙏
I’ve spent the last 10 years showing you the how, now I want to teach you the why. Learn more about macro-friendly cooking, get recipes not seen anywhere else, and so much more when you join 71,557+ others by entering your email below!
