Protocol · food · calibrated on 80 kg
Which foods, on which days, what sits in the freezer for when a meal is missed. Plate weights are cooked; the shopping list is raw, which is how you buy it.
Pick how many times you will eat each thing. The list below adds it up, converts to raw weights, rounds to what shops actually sell, and copies in Italian.
Meal 1 · 09:30
Meal 2 · 16:30
Shake, snack, burritos
Pick some meals above and the list builds itself here.
The full week, every slot with every ingredient, has its own page.
A whole meal in one piece, vacuum sealed one by one, no equipment to reheat and no decisions to make. Four variants so the freezer never holds one flavour.
| Variant | Per unit | Freezes | Why it is on the list |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beef & potatothe original | 150 g lean beef mince · 100 g potato · 1.5 eggs · 10 g cottage cheese · 8 g tomato paste · 10 ml Worcestershire · 1 large tortilla · 2.5 g sriracha mayo | good | Highest protein of the four. Potato is the weak point: it only survives the freezer if it went in browned and dry. |
| Pulled chicken, rice & black bean | 160 g chicken thigh · 40 g dry rice · 40 g black beans · 1 egg · 10 g cottage cheese · 1 large tortilla · smoked paprika, cumin | best | Rice freezes and reheats better than any potato. Beans add the fibre the beef version lacks. |
| Turkey & sweet potato, chipotle | 150 g turkey mince · 110 g sweet potato · 1.5 eggs · 10 g cottage cheese · 5 g olive oil · 1 large tortilla · chipotle | good | The leanest, which is why it carries added oil. Sweet potato holds up better than white. |
| Lentil, mushroom & ricemeatless | 50 g dry lentils · 80 g mushrooms · 40 g dry rice · 1.5 eggs · 15 g cottage cheese · 1 large tortilla | best | Cheapest, highest fibre, and the one that stops four beef weeks in a row. Lowest protein, so pair it with the shake. |
Three techniques that decide whether they survive the freezer, and they apply to all four. Brown the potato or rice properly dry, never soft and steamed. Scramble the eggs soft, pull them off the heat before they look done, and fold in the blended cottage cheese, because that dairy is what stops frozen egg weeping on thaw. Cool the filling completely before rolling, or condensation inside the vacuum bag falls the tortilla apart.
Reheat: 20 minutes at 180 °C from frozen, or 3 minutes a side in a dry pan once thawed. Never a microwave. And never eaten alone: they are protein dense and carb light, so they need oats and a banana beside them.
Deliberately more than you need. They exist for the missed cook, the bad day, the change of plan.
| Item | Target | Remake at | Where | Keeps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burritos, mixed variants | 10 | 4 left | Freezer, vacuum sealed one by one | 90 days |
| Meatballs in sauce | 6 portions | 2 left | Freezer, plastic container | 90 days |
The rule that keeps them alive: reserves do not enter the ordinary rotation. Eat them on rotation and they are not reserves, they are the menu, and the first surprise leaves you with nothing. Run ./pantry.py to see current levels.
The emergency shelf. Everything here reheats into a real meal; everything in the second table does not.
| Freezes well | Keeps | How | Back to a meal by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burritos, all four variants | 90 days | Vacuum sealed individually, laid flat | 20 min at 180 °C from frozen |
| Meatballs in sauce | 90 days | Container, sauce covering them | Pan from thawed, pasta cooked fresh |
| Chili con carne | 90 days | Container or vacuum after freezing solid | Pan, over rice |
| Pulled chicken | 90 days | Vacuum sealed, laid flat | Pan, over rice |
| Lentil bolognese | 90 days | Container | Pan, over pasta |
| Cooked beef mince, plain | 90 days | Vacuum sealed, laid flat | Pan, into a bowl with anything |
| Tomato and shakshuka sauce | 90 days | Glass, never aluminium | Pan, crack eggs in |
| Cooked rice | 30 days | Cool within an hour, freeze immediately, flat | Straight from frozen in a pan |
| Never freeze | Fridge | What goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Potatoes and sweet potato | 3 days | Grainy and watery. The exception is inside a burrito, where the texture is masked |
| Cooked vegetables | 3 days | Go limp on thaw |
| Wilted greens | 2 days | Collapse to nothing |
| Raw baby spinach | 4 days | Only usable cooked afterwards, so it stops being a raw leaf |
| Fruit salad | 3 days | Cell walls burst, it thaws to juice |
| Opened yoghurt | 5 days | Splits |
Vacuum sealing does not extend fridge life. Removing oxygen selects for different bacteria, it does not remove them. Four days, then freezer or bin. In the freezer it is a real gain: one to two months becomes three to six. Never on liquids, they get pulled into the machine, so freeze the sauce solid first and seal the block.
| Rule | Why |
|---|---|
| Olive oil raw in the bowl, 1 tbsp per meal, never in the pan | The fat dose stays measured and the oil stays good |
| A different leafy green every day | Spinach daily is too much oxalate: it binds calcium and magnesium in the gut |
| 30 g of carbs at 05:45 on swim and long-run days only | Muscle glycogen survives the fast for lifting. Endurance work does not |
| Weigh daily, read the weekly average | Down more than 0.3 kg: add 100 g of potato or pasta to Meal 2. Never add a fourth feeding |
| Ignore the scale until mid October | Creatine adds 1–2 kg of water and masks a real drop |
| Yoghurt: ≥ 9 g protein, ≤ 5 g sugar per 100 g, milk and cultures only | Anything labelled "alla greca" is ordinary yoghurt thickened |