What's for Breakfast?

“What does he eat?”

This is, without a doubt, the question I get asked most often about Bodybuilder Hubby.

Over the years, his diet has been tweaked and changed, and sometimes has varied greatly from off-season to training time.  But his typical breakfast has probably stayed the most consistent: eggs, oatmeal, and meat.  All together.  In a bowl.

Eggs:   Bodybuilder Hubby eats a lot of eggs (mostly the whites), probably something like thirty kajillion each week.  More than once I’ve had grocery store clerks comment on how many eggs I bought at a time, about how we must have such a large family.  At the time, it was just me and Bodybuilder Hubby.  And I rarely ate eggs.   I’ve always thought it was quite convenient that most of Bodybuilder Hubby’s contests have been in the spring.  Eggs always go on sale for Easter.

Oatmeal:  Bodybuilder Hubby buys rolled oats in 25-pound bags.  He puts oats and a little water in a bowl and microwaves it so that it comes out in a semi-solid disk.  Most often, he crumbles the disk into the bowl of scrambled egg.

Once he tried to turn the oatmeal disk into a mini pizza, topping it with tomato sauce and shredded mozzarella.  I haven’t seen him do that again, though, so it must not have worked very well.

Meat:  Most of Bodybuilder Hubby’s meals include some sort of lean meat.  He goes through massive quantities of chicken breast.  He’s figured out some good ways to get discount prices, including finding out what time the butcher block sections of the grocery stores close so he can show up at exactly the right time to get end-of-day specials.

He sometimes chooses ground turkey instead, or lean ground beef which he drains and rinses to make even leaner.  He cooks the meat in large quantities once or twice a week to make it easier to throw together individual meals.

Flavor:  “Healthy” meals without much, if any, fat or salt aren’t exactly known for tasting very good.  For a long time, Bodybuilder Hubby added flavor with this amino acid stuff.  He said it tasted like soy sauce, but, oh my, the smell… I refused to eat in the same room when he used it.

Now he relies on one of his favorite food ingredients: hot sauce.  When we were dating, we frequented a burrito restaurant that had a “Wall of Fire,” shelf after shelf of different varieties of hot sauce.  In his mind, a good meal is one that burns enough to make his eyes water.

So that’s it: eggs, oatmeal, meat and hot sauce.  All together.  In a bowl.

The breakfast of this champion.