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Scot: All right. And our guest today, we're really excited about this. From Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵ of Utah's College of Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵ, Department of Nutrition and Integrative Physiology . . . Did I say that right? I said that right. That was like the Olympics from my mouth right there. Registered dietri—

Troy: See?

Theresa: You fail. You stumbled on the podium.

Mitch: You are listening to "Who Cares about Men's Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵ," where we aim to give you some information, inspiration, and maybe a different interpretation of your health. I'm Producer Mitch. Troy, Scot, and I are taking a little bit of a summer break, but we'll be back next week with some new episodes. In the meantime, we've put together some best-of episodes highlighting some of our very favorite moments over the past 145 episodes.

One of the health philosophies that we here on "Who Cares" have been developing over the last 100-plus episodes is that whatever approach you choose to take with your health, it needs to be unique to you if it's going to be sustainable and, well, enjoyable.

This means two things. First, that exercise or nutrition plan that you find on Reddit that claims to be the secret to reaching all of your goals may work great for some guys, but it might not be right for you. And you aren't a failure if it doesn't work for you.

And the second thing is that because there isn't some magic plan that fits every guy, we have to be willing to be curious, and willing to try things out. You won't know what does and doesn't work for you until you try some things.

Everything from me trying to run a 5K, or the mental health practices that Scot's had us try out, or decluttering our spaces together, or even trying out social media influencer challenges like the Project50 Challenge, we've tried a lot of new things on this podcast. And some work for us and some don't, but we stay curious and we try our hardest to give them an honest shot.

But there was one particular series that had all of us try some very different things with our nutrition and really pushed some of our boundaries. And we found some things that really ended up working for us by trying them out.

For five weeks, we were guided by nutritionist as a part of our Man Meals series. Scot, Troy, , and myself worked with Theresa to learn a thing or two about cooking in a healthy way and learning some strategies about how we could improve our diet without eating nothing but salads or chicken breasts and peas.

Each week, we would learn a new recipe, we'd cook it up that week, and then report back to the group what did and didn't work for us and our tastes and our lifestyles. Man, oh man, did we all learn a lot.

We kick off the series with Episode 83, "Tasty and Easy to Make Man Meals," where we discussed with each other the struggles that we were facing with nutrition. And Theresa gave us some really meaningful direction on how we should approach this challenge.

Scot: Troy, I have a question for you. When do you make bad eating decisions? Is there kind of a time you make bad eating decisions?

Troy: I make horrible eating decisions after night shifts. No doubt about it. So when I'm tired, I always make bad eating decisions. I make bad eating decisions if I get home like 2 in the morning from a shift. So I think sleep deprivation is the theme there for me.

Scot: Yeah. How about you, Mitch? Bad eating decisions, when do they happen?

Mitch: I make them a lot when I'm driving around. For some reason or another, I cannot . . . Just old habits, whatever, I always like to go to the Maverick, get myself a drink, and then there's always a weird candy. I have a soft spot for roller food, as terrible as that sounds. That's when I make the worst decisions, is when I'm getting gas or stopping by somewhere.

Troy: So just to clarify, roller food, we're talking the stuff that's been on the rollers for a day or two, right?

Scot: Oh, that's what he's talking about.

Troy: That's what I assume when he says roller food, like hotdogs.

Theresa: The hot dogs, the corn dogs.

Troy: The taquito that's caramelized.

Mitch: Get a pair of those taquitos.

Theresa: I think it's past caramelized.

Thunder: It's been rolling for several weeks.

Mitch: I know. I'm feeling a lot of shade right now and I will not abide by it.

Theresa: I'm sorry. No shade.

Troy: Mitch, we've all been there.

Theresa: This is really great. And this is very common, right? The stuff that we hear, tired, driving, I need quick, convenient, I want something yummy, and I don't really want to have to work for it. So this is awesome and not unusual. All of you are very, in this regard at least, normal. I can't speak to everything, but regarding your food choice, it's normal.

Troy: One thing we do check the normal box.

Theresa: Right?

Mitch: We then discussed a few of our personal barriers that were preventing us from eating right and enjoying it. And after talking to some people and getting some emails from listeners, we found out we weren't the only ones dealing with these types of barriers. And Troy gave us a bit of a surprise by admitting how much this emergency room physician was intimidated by getting into the kitchen.

Troy: I'm just going to start here and just say the kitchen itself intimidates me.

Scot: Really?

Troy: My idea of cooking is opening a box of pancake mix that requires nothing but water, and that is what I cook. And that is about the only thing I cook. So I'm setting the bar pretty low here in terms of anything that requires mixing together and cooking it is a stretch for me.

Thunder: I think the bar is actually on the floor, Troy.

Troy: It's in the basement. Yeah, it is.

Theresa: All right.

Mitch: So, for me, the big thing is that in our household, we eat pretty healthy. Jonathan makes all these delicious salads, but I'm not a salad person. And I think when I was first thinking about this idea, I was like, "I'm terrible. I love my junk food. I love my salty stuff. I love my tacos."

And so especially when I'm trying to eat healthier, when I'm trying to lose a little bit of weight, which I'm trying to lose a bit of the COVID weight right now, but it's hard because it seems like it's always, "Ugh, another salad. Ugh, another salad."

I don't know what to do, right? I feel pretty confident in the kitchen, but I don't have the imagination, I guess, to make something tasty, fun, and healthy and have it not be a pile of vegetables.

Scot: Theresa, I'll tell you, I have had a habit of making meals in advance, but I have a very small kind of group of meals, like beans, rice, and chicken. I ate that every day for lunch for years. Kind of gotten tired of it. I really didn't spice it up or anything like that. I like spaghetti a lot, so I'd make that in bulk and eat it a lot.

I'm not too intimidated in the kitchen, but I think time is kind of a thing. I'm willing to invest some time, but I'd like to be able to make it and then pop it in the fridge and have it for the rest of the week, or pop a couple in the freezer, have it later in the week. So that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for stuff with flavor too.

Theresa: Yeah, that's something that . . . I love the flavor piece and the junk food that Mitch is talking about and late night opening the fridge of Troy. You want something quick and easy, but it also has to taste good, right? It can't just be what we often think is pile of vegetables that's good for you, that is just kind of bland, and doesn't have a lot of flavor.

And that's hopefully what I'm bringing to the recipes and to this, is that it can be healthy, but it can be super yummy and really tasty, too. And we shouldn't have to sacrifice deliciousness for health.

Scot: And easy to make, too.

Theresa: And easy to make. Yes, indeed. So I get the time, and I think when we're thinking about these big batch meals is that we're kind of paying it forward, that we're putting in some time on the weekend or a day during the week where you've got some extra time, and then you've got it in the fridge. You've got extra portions that you can repurpose different ways or just pull out and either eat cold or pop it in the microwave for 30 seconds, a minute, something like that.

Mitch: So we were given our very first recipe to try out for that following week. And despite it being labeled as an easy man meal, it turned out to be a challenge for, well, some of us for different reasons. Here are some of the best learning moments from Episode 84, "Troy's Culinary Struggle."

Scot: Mitch, was it good or not? What'd you think?

Mitch: Really liked it, but my partner is a bit of a foodie, and it was really surprising when we to . . . We went down to the Southeast Asian market to get some supplies, because I know Theresa on the episode was like, "Get good stuff. Go and get some quality ingredients. It'll make a better product."

I got the pre-prepared curry paste, and he was a little snooty about it. He was like, "You can make your own curry. You can do that." And it turned out better than any curry that we've tried before. I'm just going to throw that out there.

Scot: I have a feeling, Theresa, that in this particular recipe, simplicity trumps authenticity.

Theresa: I would beg to differ on the authenticity piece because I know many Asian/Southeast Asian/Thai individuals who just use paste.

So that brings into a good point of when you use pre-prepared/packaged items and when you make them from scratch. And some of the key things that you want to look for are, "Are there added chemicals, things like MSG, or added alternatives? Is there added sugar? Is there a lot of extra salt in it?" Those types of pre-prepared/packaged things, sauces, mixes, soups, things of that sort, you could probably do better if you did from scratch.

Whereas something like the curry paste is really just a blend of spices and peppers and things like that. And across the board, I would say most of them don't have that extra stuff in them that we often want to stay away from.

But if Jonathan wants to make his own, I would be more than willing to taste test for it.

Mitch: That's kind of what I told him too.

Troy: I'm just going to jump in here and say if I had to make my own curry paste, that would've been my breaking point.

Thunder: It would've been back to the bean burrito, Troy.

Troy: This is what I would've done. I thought very seriously about going down to a Thai restaurant we had been to a week before and ordering a red curry and eating it and saying, "Yes, I had a delicious red curry. I loved it." I was close.

Theresa: And taking a picture like Thunder.

Troy: And taking a picture and saying, "Look how great my . . . I made a few modifications. It may not look like yours, but it was delicious." I was close.

But like I said, I'm definitely the outlier. I recognize this was not a difficult recipe, but my background is . . . I thought back over the years. I've never made anything that required more than five ingredients. And even that's been a stretch for me. So, usually, my ingredients are pancake mix, eggs, milk.

Theresa: Water.

Troy: And maybe some water. That's been it. I made some cheesy potatoes before. You cut up potatoes. I looked it up to see how many ingredients it was. It's potatoes, cheese, and cream of mushroom soup. That's the extent of my cooking expertise. So this was a stretch.

Theresa: Was it real cheese or Velveeta? No, I'm just kidding.

Troy: It was real cheese, but it could've been Velveeta. So I'm speaking for all the guys out there who may not have a lot of cooking experience. This was a stretch for me. This was tough.

Scot: Yeah, I want to throw in what Troy's wife posted on Facebook and made me laugh out loud. So it says, "Troy's preparing dinner as part of the challenge for the podcast. In 13 years of marriage, he's never made dinner. Here are my favorite comments so far." This is from Troy's wife. "What is a saucepan?"

Troy: I have no idea.

Scot: The third thing, "Do you know coconut milk is a thing?" And not only is it a thing, it's the thing that makes this so freaking good. Let's just say that.

Troy: It did make it good.

Thunder:Yeah, it's a key ingredient.

Scot: Yeah. If you don't know anything about coconut milk, know this. It makes things good.

"Ginger is crazy looking," and, "How do I do medium heat?" Which is a legitimate kind of question, in a way.

Thunder: Isn't that the middle part of the heat dial?

Troy: One would assume. But honestly, I had it on medium and I'm like, "This isn't cooking fast enough." I'm supposed to brown everything I'd chopped up and it was two minutes into it, and it wasn't very brown. I'm like, "Okay, I don't think this is medium." So that was throwing me off a little bit.

Theresa: Let me kind of tease this out a little bit more, Troy. Was it the recipe literacy piece or not knowing what . . . It sounds like there was not knowing what things are. And so just learning that? Or was it the actual seeing this laundry list of ingredients and multiple paragraphs of instructions? Was that the kind of intimidating part that caused a little bit of the shutdown?

Thunder: Or all the above?

Troy: Everything you just said. I went down aisles in the grocery store I have never visited before.

Theresa: Awesome.

Troy: I'm like, "I've never been in this aisle."

Theresa: Love it.

Troy: And then I'm looking for the diced tomatoes, and I find this aisle that has all the vegetables. I'm like, "Where are diced tomatoes?" There's every other vegetable you can imagine in this aisle. Come to find out, diced tomatoes are in the Italian aisle. There are like 400 varieties of diced tomatoes by the spaghetti sauce.

And then the clincher . . . I found the Thai paste pretty quickly, because there's an Asian aisle, but the clincher was the coconut milk. I was like, "Coconut milk? Where in the world am I going to find that?" And I finally found it down on the bottom. They had a couple of cans of coconut milk by the condensed milk. And so that part . . .

Theresa: The baking aisle, yeah. Which threw you, right? "Why shouldn't it be by the Asian food?"

Troy: I know. Why is it . . .

Thunder: But Troy, did you start in the dairy section for the coconut milk?

Troy: I might as well have.

Theresa: That's great.

Troy: I didn't go that far with it. I'm like, "I don't think it's going to be refrigerated, so it's not going to be next to a gallon of milk that I would pull out of the thing." But like I said, I was going places I've never been. And I'm glad there weren't a lot of people in the grocery store, because it was just me going up and down aisles, up and down aisles, multiple times.

Scot: Yeah. Your frustration started at the grocery store, and then did it continue?

Troy: It did. Yes, it did continue. That wasn't the end of it. As I'm trying to peel the garlic, I'm like, "How do I peel garlic?" Just simple things. Honestly, I've never done them before. So Laura, my wife, says, "Well, if you put it in the microwave for seven seconds, it makes it easier to peel." So that kind of helped.

And then the ginger, I kind of figured out how to peel that with the spoon. But again, it's something I'd never done before.

But when I did get into the recipe itself, I'm trying to time this stuff, like, "Okay, I've got this in there. Oh, wait, I need to add this. Oh, wait, I should have chopped those vegetables first. I didn't chop those vegetables. I've got to get those in." So I think I probably should have read ahead a little bit more and been prepared for what was coming rather than just kind of going step by step, which is what I did.

I mean, I got through it, and it actually tasted really good. I was happy with the outcome. It was a process, but I got there.

Theresa: So looking back, was it a good . . . do you feel a little bit more empowered now for this next week's recipe?

Troy: I don't know if empowered is the best word for it. Maybe a little bit.

Scot: Quite frankly, I'm afraid he's dropping out. I really am.

Troy: I've thought about it.

Theresa: No.

Scot: I'm very afraid that he's wanting out.

Troy: I've thought about it. I hate to admit it, it was a challenge. Again, the most rewarding part is that, number one, I enjoyed it. It tasted good. Number two, Laura was very impressed. She was like, "Okay, this is really cool you did this." She was very supportive, so that was great. But it was a challenge. It was definitely a stretch.

Mitch: And to round up the episode, we had one last helpful tip from a pair of nutritionists to help all of us make cooking just a little easier.

Thunder: I actually got frozen vegetables out of my freezer and put them in the curry instead of buying and slicing up my own vegetables. I had a powdered turmeric that I used instead of just shaving the root. I used the minced . . .

Troy: Powdered ginger, you mean?

Thunder: Oh, sorry. Yeah, ginger.

Troy: Yeah, the ginger. Okay.

Thunder: And then I also had the pre-minced garlic out of the jar. I used that stuff. And the whole recipe didn't take that much time. What took the most time for me is I added my own flair to it. I took tofu and I pressed the water out of it, and I stir-fried it and I added it to the curry. But I didn't have to do that.

Scot: They also have a pre-bottled or in-a-jar chopped ginger-garlic combination, which is what I used. So we have a jar of chopped garlic and then this little deal, so then you don't have to deal with that stuff, Troy, which can kind of take some of the stress and pressure off if you just buy that sort of thing.

Troy: That would've been nice, yeah.

Theresa: That piggybacks off of kind of what Mitch was talking about of how do you know what is a decent packaged or pre-prepared type of food versus not? And frozen vegetables, even some canned vegetables, are a great example of that, because the chopping and finding it in season and fresh can sometimes be challenging depending on the time of the year.

And those frozen individual veggies or veggie medleys are really great to have on hand so that you can just grab a couple of handfuls there and throw it in your sauce. And you could throw it in your spaghetti sauce, or your Thai curry sauce, or your Alfredo, or something like that, too, if you were venturing in those other directions.

Mitch: After a first week of struggle, Troy didn't give up, and he came back for next week's recipe. And wouldn't you know it, he was actually finding some new confidence in the grocery store and a new love of spaghetti squash. From Episode 85, "Suspiciously Delicious."

Troy: It was great. I am now a fan of spaghetti squash. And this, again, pushed me a little bit. I had to find someone in the store and ask them, "What is a spaghetti squash?"

Theresa: Yes. I love it.

Troy: I did. No, I had to.

Thunder: "Is it in the pasta section?"

Troy: And so this nice lady in the store then, who works there, of course, had a couple of smaller ones. She's like, "Oh, let me go get you a good one." So she went to the back room and brought a nice big spaghetti squash out for me. And it's cool.

Theresa: Wonderful.

Troy: This is cool. It's fun to eat.

Scot: Special treatment. I like that.

Troy: I enjoyed it.

Theresa: Troy, did you find the olive bar?

Troy: I did. Our olive bar, though, is still not an open olive bar. They have an olive bar with everything packaged so they don't have it all exposed. But I did find the olive bar.

I'll tell you the way this happened, if you're interested. I went to the store for something else, and then I said to myself, "I am really overthinking this cooking stuff. Why am I doing this?" And so I tried to pull up the recipe on my phone, and I couldn't get a connection in the store. And I'm like, "I remember what to get."

I remember Thunder talking about the olive bar, so I went there. I found olives. They did not have sundried tomatoes, but I remembered that. I found that. I remembered the spaghetti squash. So I'm like, "Hey, I can do this."

And so I found most of the stuff. Just remembered what we talked about. I tried not to overthink it and got everything together, and it was much less stressful. It was like, "I can do this."

Theresa: We can try and take a step back, right? And a lot of this is kind of this analysis paralysis. We're trying to overthink it. We're trying to be that Food Network chef, that Instagram influencer, or what have you. Especially when we're starting out, we need to take that step back and kind of remember those basics.

And if we think about some of the basics that these recipes have introduced us to, sauteing, chopping things, roasting, buying pre-prepared, and then adding a bunch of fresh stuff to it, it can be a lot easier than what we're kind of holding ourselves to these unrealistic expectations.

Mitch: But again, Troy wasn't the only one learning something about cooking. Even though Scot and I have had a little more experience in the kitchen, we both learned something about how to read recipes and how to approach eating nutritiously without breaking the bank.

Scot: And when a recipe says two cups of spinach chopped, does that mean I take two cups of pre-chopped spinach and then chop that? Or am I supposed to chop up the spinach until I get two chopped cups?

Theresa: I love this. This is so what I was going to talk about during this episode. In the recipe that we're going to make, it has some of this recipe jargon that is helpful to know. It's not the end of the world, it's still going to taste really good if you mix it up, but it makes a little bit of a difference in the taste and quality.

So, for example, the recipe today will call for "one cup parsley, chopped." Or if the recipe were to say, "One cup chopped parsley." So it's a matter of when you measure it. If it says, "One cup of parsley, chopped," then you start with one cup of loose leaves and chop that up. But if it's saying, "One cup of chopped parsley," then you want to chop until you fill up a full cup of parsley.

Scot: Got it.

Mitch: When do you learn that in your life? Is it just right now or is it . . .

Theresa: Right now is when you learn it, Mitch.

Mitch: Because I've cooked for a long time in my life, and I'm just like, "Wait, what?"

Theresa: Right? It's just like algebra.

Troy: It's the order it's in.

Theresa: What do you do first? Is it parentheses? Is it addition or multiplication? That's all. So, yeah, there you go.

Mitch: I guess one of the things that I was kind of wondering was . . . It seemed like I had a bit of sticker shock as I was scanning one jar after another. It just seemed like it was a bit pricier than I was used to.

Theresa: Very valid. And this is where looking at where and how we buy our items and then reusing them. So this is sometimes challenging when we're trying a recipe for the first time and we don't know if we're going to like it.

So if you were buying jars of these items, it's quite possible that you had some left in that jar. You didn't use the entire jar. And this is where maybe some of those grocery stores that have an olive bar, you can just purchase the amount that you need for the recipe. So if you only needed a half a cup, that's all you have to buy instead of needing to buy one to two cups' worth that's in the jar.

Look at other store options as well. So Trader Joe's does some of these items less expensive. Those kinds of things are a great way to look at some of these alternatives.

So, certainly, it's a valid question, valid concern with this particular recipe. I would also argue, though, at the same time, when you think about the quantity that it made . . . It gave Troy six meals' worth for one or two. That's a significant amount of food that it made. So kind of pricing it out per meal hopefully would be considerably less. Yes, that initial purchase can sometimes be a bit of a shock.

Troy: And I will say, I priced mine out because I'm curious about this too. I priced mine out about $20 for everything. And admittedly, I did forget to get the artichoke hearts. I would've liked to have had those, and I didn't remember until I got home. I was like, "Oh, artichoke hearts." So that probably would've added on another $5.

But you're right. I think if you look at $20 and you spread it over four or five meals, it's not crazy high. But it seems like there are variations you could do on that. Maybe you don't do the sundried tomatoes and maybe you just do the olives or something.

Thunder: Sundried tomatoes are the best part.

Theresa: Or if you didn't like the olives . . .

Troy: You're right. They are the best part. Maybe you don't do the olives.

Theresa: Or pre-canned olives, right?

Troy: Yeah, canned olives.

Theresa: You could do canned olives. Artichokes, there are frozen artichokes, and those are fantastic as well. So Troy's exactly right there. You could certainly modify this and make it a little bit less expensive of an initial punch.

Mitch: And for this week, we actually had two recipes. The second was a no-bake granola bar that even had chocolate chips in it. Finally, a delicious, healthy food that I could really enjoy. But I had some suspicions, which is when I learned a thing or two about portion control.

I find these suspiciously delicious. The question I have . . . Because I don't have it readily available, we ended up swapping . . . we did some Kashi GO rather than puffed rice to make it a little more protein-rich. What is the caloric density of these things?

Because I've been having them as . . . I've had to run up to the hospital time or two. I've been grabbing them just as a quick lunch.

Thunder:It's high.

Mitch: They are so tasty, though. I'm just concerned. I'm very concerned.

Theresa: And especially with putting in the Kashi GO, it certainly upped it from what it was. So if you just made one batch and cut it into the, I believe, nine servings that it was allotted for, which would be a fairly good size bar, they're about 300 calories.

Mitch: Okay. That's like a meal replacement.

Theresa: So then with the Kashi GO, I'd probably add another . . . If you did that fully instead of the puffed rice, it's probably another 25 to 50 calories. So it's a very dense snack, yes.

Thunder: Mitch, did you cut them into . . . Did you actually make nine bars, or did you cut them into smaller bars?

Mitch: I cut them into nine and . . .

Theresa: Portion control on this one.

Thunder:And ate them in one big bar.

Mitch: So one of the things I think I run into a lot with my own nutrition is I get into that health food blindness, right? Where I'm like, "These are healthy. Theresa told me I could eat as many carbs as I wanted." And then I have two of these, and then it's like, "Oh, no."

Scot: I don't think she said you could eat as many carbs as you wanted. I think she said you could eat the rice, but I don't believe she . . .

Theresa: If you're thinking about having it as a snack but realize that you're eating a lot of them . . . Certainly think about how many you portion and take with you. Another thing to think about is that I have something else alongside it. So maybe I have a low-fat . . .

Thunder: An exercise bike?

Theresa: . . . plain yogurt. An exercise bike. Hopefully, you're walking around work. Or an apple, something fresh along with it.

Mitch: I have been having an apple with a full-size bar, so I need to reevaluate my life. Okay, cool. Good to know.

Thunder: There's nothing wrong with a full-size bar in the right circumstance, but I think if you're just popping them as a snack, it's probably a bit much as a snack. So maybe a half a bar, a third of a bar, or something.

Mitch: Troy was still a little nervous for the next week, especially when this new recipe had an ingredient that he had never even heard of. So in the spirit of all learning together, I shared a sneaky little tip that I had learned over the past few weeks of cooking.

Theresa: So this is going to be a great combination of lentils, and bulgur, and some nice fresh veggies, as well as a homemade dressing that you'll put on the top.

Troy: So you just said a word there I've never heard before. What was that?

Thunder: Bulgur?

Theresa: Bulgur?

Scot: Yeah. Sounds like somebody that was in "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe."

Troy: Exactly. Who's Bulgur and where do I find him?

Scot: Bulgur smash.

Troy: Exactly. What is that? I have no idea.

Theresa: So it's wheat. It comes from wheat, and it is considered a whole grain, less processed than if you were to, say, have wheat pasta or wheat bread or something of that sort.

Mitch: Troy, the thing that I've been doing lately is that I've just been doing the grocery pickup. So I don't even need to hunt in the store to find things.

Troy: Oh, you just put everything on there and someone finds it for you.

Thunder: That's like cheating.

Troy: That is cheating.

Mitch: Her name is Mary. It's been every Wednesday for the last month. I know her. We chit-chat. It's great. So she's like, "Oh, you're getting something different this week." And I'm like, "Yes, I am."

Theresa: You should share the recipes with her.

Mitch: I might have to.

Theresa: Yeah, there you go.

Mitch: But that's just it. So that's how I've been skipping the "where on earth is this item in the store?"

Troy: That's a really good strategy. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, that's actually a good idea.

Mitch: That next week on Episode 86, "The Guys Get Saucy," we learned a few more tips, and I suggest you check out the full episode for those. But I want to take some time to share my favorite moment from the entire series, where Troy was finally starting to build some confidence with his cooking.

Troy: Okay. I am going to tell you, this salad really kind of was my next step in cooking.

Theresa: Yes!

Troy: So we had a get-together for my brother for his birthday.

Theresa: You cooked it for other people?

Troy: Yes. He said, "Hey, we're going to be having . . . I'm going to grill some salmon and we're going to have some cheesy potatoes and some fruit." And I said, "Hey, can I bring a salad?" And so I actually made it and I took it, and there were six other people there who tried it and provided their honest feedback. I said, "Please give me your honest feedback."

Mitch: So, Troy, is this usually what happens? People invite you over, and you're like, "Oh, I'll make something," or is it grabbing some chips on the way?

Theresa: No. They tell him what we're going to eat and he says, "Okay. Sounds great."

Troy: They tell me what we're going to eat. I'm like, "Cool. I'll be there. What time?" I rarely bring anything. I have never in my life made a dish that I have taken to any event and let other people consume. So this was a first for me.

Mitch: Oh, that's so cool.

Troy: I've certainly bought things. I mean, I've bought things, but I've never made something and taken it. So this was a big deal.

Mitch: How did that feel?

Troy: It was good. I kind of felt like I was putting myself out there on a limb a little bit, but then I was just like, "Hey, guys, it's not my recipe. I don't take it personally."

Mitch: So after the five-week challenge, Troy was awarded the most improved and shared his takeaways from the experience on Episode 87, "Graduation Day."

Troy: Well, Scot, this was definitely a growing experience for me. I came into this, as we talked about, having had experience making pancakes, and that's been my idea of cooking. If it requires more than three or four ingredients, I'm not doing it. So it was a stretch. And that first week, I seriously had doubts if I was going to continue.

The biggest thing, number one recipe for me was spaghetti squash. Absolutely loved it. It was easy to make, and I could think of many variations with that. That is definitely a keeper. And Laura, my wife, has even been asking me, "Hey, when are you going to make spaghetti squash again?" You know you've succeeded.

Mitch: And to wrap up our time together with Theresa, who we came to lovingly call TD, she gave us some words of her professional advice for any person that struggles when it comes to reaching our nutrition goals and eating better.

Theresa: Unapologetic deliciousness is where we should start, right? It should taste good, and it can still be healthy. And I do think we have a bit . . . we as in just Western cultures have a bit of a skewed sense of what healthy is.

And you don't want to point fingers, but I think that the diet industry has kind of exploded this, right? "If you want to try and lose weight, if you want to be healthy, this is the plan that you need to follow. And it needs to be X, Y, and Z, and nothing but."

There's so much more room for choice that it's okay, and with a few skills that I think most of us have explored these four weeks, we can take something from a very plain chicken breast, which is healthy, and peas that are healthy, and make them taste good as well without adding a ton of calories and adding a ton of salt and sugar, which we often associate with deliciousness.

And so we can have both. We can be healthy and delicious, and think about that color, and combining foods, and trying new recipes, and going out on a limb every once in a while.

I'm very much of the practical sense that all foods can fit in an eating plan, right? It's on a spectrum. What do we eat most of the time, and what do we eat every once in a while or in smaller portions?

We're not going to make health changes to our bodies, biochemically or otherwise, on one day, right? Sure, we can have blood sugar spikes and whatnot, but we're not going to affect our overall systemic inflammation, or our arthritis pain, or our cardiovascular disease, and our cholesterol numbers on one day. But what are we doing for the long haul? I think we have to find foods that taste really good that help us to continue to eat that way for the long haul and what's sustainable.

Mitch: That's it for today's episode. If you've been curious about improving your diet in an unapologetically delicious, easy, and nutritious way, you can find the recipes we tried out in the description for each of the Man Meals Challenge episodes, which are all listed in the show notes for this episode.

And if you have any questions about nutrition, or maybe you even try out some of these recipes and want to let us know how it worked out for you, you can always reach us at hello@thescoperadio.com.

Thanks for listening, and thank you for caring about men's health.