Can I Eat My Bodybuilding Diet for Just $100 a Week?

[00:00] People say that eating a healthy, bodybuilding diet is expensive. I don't think that's true. That's why your boy brought $100 American dollars to Walmart to see if we can get the job done. One week of bodybuilding food for $100, every meal accounted for, every macro.

[00:15] Let's find out how this works. So I am trying to hit my entire week's worth of groceries in one run.

[00:28] every single meal, every single macro. 320 grams of daily protein, about 400 grams of carbs, 80 grams of fats every single day. That's a lot of food. I've got to do it with real food. We're

[00:41] talking about a core protein, healthy carbs, bit of veggies, standard bodybuilding fare. We're not just going to cheat this by buying a bunch of Gatorade, olive oil, and protein powder and calling that technically eating my macros. No BS. This is a real diet that you can eat for $100.

[00:57] maybe we'll see for a week let's get it done

[01:27] So we want the most protein for the lowest price because quality is something rich people worry about. We're looking at quantity.

[01:40] So 25 bucks for how much? So 92 cents per ounce. And then we have 78 cents per ounce.

[01:52] Four pounds for 38 bucks. Such a good deal. 40 servings. Perfect. We need 35 protein servings. This has 40. We're good to go.

[02:05] Whoa, look at this ripoff. Super GLP-1 support. What a f***ing crock of s***. F***. Don't buy this s***. It's a f***ing scam. Yeah, GLP-1 support is my needle.

[02:25] Neat. Neat. We just get a bunch of frozen pizzas and call it a day. Oh, shit. 24 servings.

[02:39] This is like $6 a pound. So I'm going to tell you right now, we're not going to make the $100. Not even close. $40, and then we need... Then we can't get enough protein.

[02:53] Now, mind you, I need 320 grams of protein per day, so we can easily explain in a video, like, you people that need 150, which is almost all of you, you can for sure do this for 100, 100 bucks. For me, it's going to be like 150 or something.

[03:06] Secret protein. Let's go look around. This is breath and breath. All right. So, wow. 32 servings. Are we only going to have chicken? Fertilized, skinless chicken.

[03:18] Great deal. So we were going to try to buy fatty beef and then strain it out. But the chicken turned out to be way cheaper. Which is often not the case, but today it was.

[03:31] So we're adapting.

[03:43] Oh, that's cool. I didn't see those. Those are nice. I'm going to buy those. I just, just for the record, I don't think 100 is going to work. But that's okay, because we're finding out. If we get really close. Sure, we'll find out as close as we can. 22 servings.

[03:56] Cut green beans. And 11 servings gets us to almost every meal. Boom. Boom. Why did I hit 100 bucks? Problem is, I'm big.

[04:09] I weigh 230 pounds. I have a lot of protein. 320 grams of protein. That's way in excess of what most people need. I'm really just kind of running a high protein experiment on myself. And so it's going to cost, it's tough to get under a hundred bucks, I'll tell you that right now.

[04:21] Also, we're in an area of Metro Detroit called Troy. A bunch of rich-ass people out here, the price is high. So if you've got Troy money, maybe you can make it work. We're going to do our damn best, and we're going to do it with a shitload of canned green beans.

[04:35] Good news, the original rice we got is way too expensive. Huge deal You get the great value Walmart brands we literally paying 40 of what we were for the name brand Unbelievable Oh yeah

[04:58] Black beans. So with a lot of our stuff, we're actually going to have a little bit more food than we need for the week. So we're probably going to spend more than $100, but later we can calculate to figure out how this works. So we'll do a per meal situation.

[05:12] oil right here all right all we need now is healthy fats pretty much all these fats are healthy we don't need to go for the extra virgin whatever i'm not a virgin i am technically but

[05:26] never mind it's all about price canola oil we have 96 servings each 14 grams of fat more than

[05:38] we need for $3.76. Now you're thinking, now Mike, canola oil is a seed oil. It is. Seed oils are bad for me. They're not. Check out one of our many videos on the subject. Seed oils are bad for you.

[05:50] It's entirely a myth. Pretty much every randomized controlled trial of canola oil replacement with other oils results in better health outcomes. Canola oil is healthy and delicious and amazing. You're going to have a lot of seed oil stuff. Take it in the comments.

[06:02] We'll see you there. All right, guys.

[06:35] We have chicken protein powder. We have green beans, we have black beans, we have rice, we have canola oil. We're ready to check out. This is a week's worth of food for sure for me. Let's see how close we get on price.

[07:07] I feel like we're forgetting something.

[07:23] We got cars. We got protein. We got fat. We got veggies. We're most boring guys out there. Boring. But, uh, shit, I think we're gonna make it. My Judaism.

[07:40] Hi. Watch out.

[08:02] All right, guys. So we got more food than we need for the week by a good smidge. That way, right? On proteins, carbs, and especially fats. Because holy shit, for $3.50, you get all the canola oil you want.

[08:16] $84.57. We did forget to buy some seasoned salt for the flavor, but that shit's like $1 for like an 18-week. So we're totally Gucci on that. A little hundy spot later, we are 100% good,

[08:30] and we're saving money because we didn't even need $100. The big thing from the shopping experience that is critical is to look for the cheap stuff. And I know that sounds crazy. But a lot of us who do okay in life, actually most people, I think,

[08:42] just kind of grab what they want. Stop doing that. Great value is Walmart's internal brand. That's huge. Great value, all the discounted stuff. The six-star protein is super cheap.

[08:54] Man, I'm telling you, if you buy the Walmart brands, you get the basics. We're even eating chicken breast on this diet. That's pretty intense, man. And if we really do only spend $84, we have an opportunity to spend about $15 on a going-out meal as a treat on Saturday night.

[09:09] Look at that. Living the life. Now that we've done the shopping, let's go get all the meals for a day laid out to see what that actually looks like. All right, guys. We are back.

[09:21] We have the meals all prepped. This is a typical day of eating macros live for me. And this is what we can do on less than per week Total macros for the day 320 protein 400 grams of carbs about 80 grams of fat

[09:39] Each one of these meals is about 65 grams of protein, about 80 grams of carbs, about 15 grams of fat. Plus or minus a little bit. Tried to get the proportions as good as we could, but it's just real food, so you can only get so close.

[09:53] What are we actually eating? Well, we did a little flavor magic with the chicken. Again, we didn't buy the seasoning right then and there. Sort of forgot. But remember, seasoning is a thing you can buy in bulk for incredibly cheap, and it'll last you months and months and months, so we're well taken care of.

[10:07] The whole total was just, like, under $85, so well enough to get the seasoning. So we got chicken. We got black beans. We bought a ton of that. We got rice. Put a little seasoning in there. And then we have canned green beans, which do have an interesting smell,

[10:22] but don't taste that bad. And then, of course, with every single meal, we have a protein shake, which is amazing and tasty and everything that is good. So let's talk about the nitty-gritty of how to actually apply this to your life.

[10:37] It's a budget constraint, and all of us are to some extent or another. And if you want to make a really good run of eating healthy and bulking, maintaining or cutting. First thing, what's up with the protein shake situation? Could we have budgeted out to get enough actual meat, beans, and rice to fill our protein?

[10:54] We absolutely could have, but protein was used on purpose to illustrate a really cool concept. A lot of people think protein is a supplement, it's extra, it's not healthy to take, and all of that is categorically wrong.

[11:06] People also think that protein is expensive, which I can never understand. Protein gram for protein gram, the cheapest whey protein concentrate, is packed to the brim with the highest quality protein.

[11:18] It is incredibly cheap. It is incredibly storable. It's a bit of a different thing than just eating meat all the time. So what you can do is if meat happens to be pretty expensive at the store or the cuts you want are not there,

[11:31] you can always supplement with protein shakes. If the meat you want at the store is there and it's totally good to cover your protein bases and you can afford it, absolutely go for it. Another thing is if you want, when there's a more expensive situation with meat,

[11:45] And, you know, maybe even though you could have the cheat meat there, if you want to get something a little different for variety, some chicken thighs, some ground beef, you don't want to break the bank, protein powder is an amazing protein filler for your meals.

[11:58] You can have protein powder for every single meal of the day in addition to whole foods, and it will not affect your health and vitality and longevity and definitely not your results negatively. Don't you dare fall for that.

[12:10] Protein shakes are amazing 100% of the time. Here's another big insight. We did this as kind of a YouTube influencer exercise. Oh, a week's worth of food for $100. We just bought a week of food.

[12:23] We had a little bit extra, actually. Considered extra, especially on the fast, which we had like most extra, because there's only so much oil in here. And it turns out that, good God, that oil is really, really cheap. We could even make this cheaper.

[12:36] So can you by buying in bulk as much as possible. We got just two little things of rice. You could get the giant thing of rice, giant things of beans, the biggest cans of veggies,

[12:48] and protein that you order online instead of going to the store for that's even cheaper, and an even bigger container of oil. That's probably going to trend your weekly food budget down closer into the mid-70s of dollars per week,

[13:03] which is legitimately close to $10 a day, which is entirely possible. So buying in bulk is massive. We didn't do that as much here. It's a big unlock for you. Seasonings. You're not going to want to eat unseasoned food all the time.

[13:16] My best recommendation for seasoning is stick to the stuff like seasoned salt and a bunch of the spices and herbs that are found in the seasonings rack at your store. What you'll notice is that especially the various seasoned salts,

[13:28] they have the salt, they have the tasty flavors, there's a ton of different variety, and if you look at the serving sizes, they're unbelievably cheap, and there's not even really any way to buy seasoning like that for just a week.

[13:41] It's like a minimum month, maybe three months at a time. So you can season your food incredibly well. The other awesome benefit of seasoned salts is that they don't have any calories. And so a lot of people will say, oh, my food is gross. I need like oils and butters and crudely sauces to get the calories or to get the flavor going.

[13:58] And then they're like, well, there's always calories. Well, look, seasoned salts don't have any calories and they can make your food taste amazing. Next up, where do you go shopping? because that's really important.

[14:10] If you want to save money on groceries, you can go to places like Walmart to places like Aldi if you have it around and save a gazillion dollars and eat super well on a really tight budget especially if you buy the store brand and not the name brand national stuff

[14:28] That's going to save you giganto bucks. It's a huge deal. Look, if you complain about food costing a lot, and you shop at a Whole Foods by Pimp, I don't really know how to explain to you that that is a completely discordant piece of advice

[14:42] you're trying to take at the same time. If either you buy at Walmart, Aldi, Meijer, or a few other stores around the country, the basics, Food Lion is amazing wherever you have that. And if you're in the South, Piggly Wiggly. It's a real store.

[14:54] And of course, in Texas, the old Hebb. Scott, you like the Hebb? It's a good name. F*** you, Scott. It's a good name. So make sure the store that you're buying at is not super elite ritzy,

[15:07] and make sure you're buying the store brand that's going to be critical for you to save a ton of money. Let's talk about variation. You can't just eat chicken breast and black beans, white rice, and green canned beans all the time.

[15:19] You could, but it would be pretty gnarly. Even the protein powder doesn't make sense at that point. At some point you get so sick of it, you just want to put the protein powder on your food. Here's the thing. For roughly the same amount of money, you can vary each individual source.

[15:33] Replace the chicken breast with chicken thighs. Replace the chicken thighs with ground beef. you can buy cheap, high-fat ground beef and just drain almost all of the fat away.

[15:45] It's absolutely a real thing. Instead of getting the rice, you can buy macaroni, which is ultra-cheap and is an amazing source of carbs and a very different taste, very different texture. Instead of the black beans, you can buy, like, tons of other different kinds of beans,

[16:00] all of them approximately costing $0. And then for the canned veggies, well, the world is your oyster because there's all sorts of canned veggies that you have access to, so you can switch up the situation all the time. And lastly, you can switch up the protein powder flavors

[16:14] if you want to do the protein powder, and, of course, the different season salts, and there's just like a gazillion of them. You have enough variation at any regular grocery store to just never run out of a really cool, super different way

[16:28] to consume an amazing, healthy, bodybuilding-friendly diet straight up. It is absolutely possible for the vast majority of people to eat a bodybuilding-friendly diet for under $100 per week.

[16:42] I weigh 230 pounds. I eat 320 grams of protein. That is excessive. I'm just trying to see if really high protein intakes make a difference in my physique. You could easily eat 200 to 250 grams of protein and save a crap load of money, even if you weigh 230 pounds like me.

[16:59] If you're somewhere between 150 pounds and 200 pounds, in that range for the average male, average female, my God, you could eat for under $70 a week in most cases.

[17:11] As long as you're a little bit creative with the shopping and the cooking, you're good to go. And on the cooking front, I mean, all of this really takes, if you prepare and bulk and dump all your food away, cooking for two to three hours, one to two times a week,

[17:25] depending on how much reheated food you like to eat in the microwave after it's been frozen. So not only is eating super well just not expensive to prepare your own basic food, but it's also an incredibly, like, not time impactful situation.

[17:42] People will say, well, I could eat healthy, but I don't have time to cook. A few hours a week, I think you can probably find. To get a quick laugh, Google or Snapchat GPT or go Wikipedia and look up the Stigler diet,

[17:56] named after George Stigler, an economist from back in the day. He made up a famous optimization problem where there's all of the nutrients and minerals and vitamins and macros that the human body needs, and it was his job to figure out how to meet those in the cheapest way possible.

[18:11] You guys think this is basic sort of gross eating. Check out the Stigler diet. We've got navy beans, peas, evaporated milk, crazy stuff. And we actually managed to design a diet that in today's dollars,

[18:24] you could for sure eat for about $3 a day. Think about that. This is close to about $10 a day and is unbelievably reasonable. And if you have a few spare bucks here and there,

[18:36] you can go out to eat a few times a week on top of that. So if you think bodybuilding and fitness dieting to get tracked and lean is expensive, think again and I'll see you guys next time