About three, four years ago, I purchased an amazing tool for building physique. It's just over here, but it's not actually something you buy for a gym. I'm talking about my slow cooker.
Now, because this is not something for training, you're likely thinking about changing videos, but that would be a huge mistake.
What Is a Slow Cooker
This right here is one of, if not the biggest reason for my success building my physique. Especially on a cut, having this has made it so much easier to make sure I'm losing fat without also losing muscle. When on a cut, regardless of whether you're tracking macronutrients, whether you’re tracking calories, or whether you're doing intuitive dieting, consistency is very important.
The Importance of Consistency
Consistency makes it easier to see how well you are progressing towards your goal and to change the quantities as needed. But of course you don't want to just eat the same thing every day for every meal. Mentally, this is very draining and increases the likelihood that you'll binge or just give up on your diet.
Obviously, cooking all your own meals is going to increase the likelihood that your diet succeeds. But if you've got a busy lifestyle, sometimes it's not practical, especially when you need to cook four or more meals every day. And this is why I think having a slow cooker is crucial for building a physique.
The Power of Slow Cooking
With a slow cooker, you can make large quantities of high calorie, low protein meals with very little effort. Of course, you can use any ingredients you want, but personally I like to use chicken breast as my protein source, I put in mushrooms because they're low in calorie, but also very satiating, and I'll add a sauce.
By changing just the sauce, you can consistently use the same ingredients every time whilst changing up the flavor. This significantly reduces the risk of the mental drain from eating the same food over and over again whilst also helping you to be extremely consistent with what you eat. Just to name a few sauces, Japan has many pre-made sauce stocks you can use, such as Hayashi rice and curry rice sauce stocks. Also, from Costco I'll buy things like their marinara sauce and even the salsa sauce to mix up the flavors.
Slow Cooker Demonstration
Next, I'm going to demonstrate just how easy it is to use by showing you a meal I actually made with the slow cooker. In this one, of course, I've used chicken breast and shimeji mushrooms, and I've also used the sauce stock from Hayashi rice. When using these sauce stock cubes, I like to melt down an entire packet using 500 milliliters of boiling water.
This is not a lot of water, but when using a slow cooker, a lot of the moisture drains from the food and because it doesn't have any way to escape, the entire amount of liquid increases in the slow cooker. Personally, I also like to have a bit of a stronger flavor. If this is a bit strong for you, then feel free to adjust the volumes, but don't go too high.
Once all the ingredients are ready, it's time to start putting them into the slow cooker. When I put in my ingredients, I'll first do one layer using one third of the sauce, the mushrooms, then two chicken breasts, another layer of sauce using another third, then more mushrooms, two more chicken breasts, and finally I put the remaining third of sauce on top.
You can get away with doing another layer of everything so you've got more meals in total, but it is strongly recommended that you leave the top third of the slow cooker empty. This ensures that everything cooks through properly. And the last thing you want to do is have uncooked chicken. But you can also get around this by increasing the cooking time. It's up to you.
Once you've got all the ingredients in, just put the lid on, set it to the low setting, and leave it for 6 to 8 hours. And that is all you do, it is so simple. In fact, it's so easy that slow cookers are often associated with the phrase “set and forget”.
And of course, because you don't need to physically be there, you can put in all the ingredients, set it to cook and leave for the day, come back home and it's done, or even do it all at nighttime, wake up in the morning and it's done. If you're pushed for time, you can go on the high setting and cook it for less time, but I strongly recommend going longer and using the low setting. This makes sure everything cooks through properly without burning anything, plus it also tastes nicer. And let's say you've got a very busy day and you don't get to the slow cooker in time, it's not that big a deal. You can go over by a few hours and it won't impact it.
Meal Preparation with Slow Cooking
Once the slow cooker is finished cooking, you can transfer the food over into containers and add things like brown rice and vegetables. These types of foods are especially useful on a cut because they're highly nutritious, very satiating, and lower in calories. And also, based on your goals and how well you're progressing towards them, you can adjust the quantities, especially the brown rice, to make sure you're on track. And now, with very little preparation time, you have high-protein, low-calorie meals that you can eat.
Regardless of your level, whether you just want to lose a little bit of fat or whether you're serious about building an amazing physique, you need to have a slow cooker. This is going to be one of, if not the key tool to your success.
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