My experience with “The Flexible Dieting Lifestyle” (Macro-friendly Recipes)
6 weeks into my 8 Week Fat Loss Challenge, I discovered Zach Rocheleau’s YouTube channel.
I was searching for ways to stick to my calorie-restricted diet of under 2,300kcals per day and was shocked to see the recipes he was pulling off.
Protein cheesecakes under 300 calories, cheesy pizza at under 65 calories per slice, crunch wraps and more. I was instantly hooked.
Turns out it was Black Friday weekend and I instantly bought his recipe book, The Greatest Hits at 30% off the list price.
Even though my 8 week challenge was coming to an end, I was still curious to try his recipes so, for the next few months, I bought the ingredients and set out to test his recipes myself.
Two of the best ideas I discovered through Zac’s book were ‘Crunch Wraps’ and his low fat Mac and Cheese.
It sounds so obvious in hindsight but despite Mac and Cheese having a poor nutritional reputation, you can easily make it low fat but simply substituting the cheese with a low fat version.
As for the ‘Crunch Wraps’, I never thought of wrapping burger patties in tortilla wraps and baking in the oven — pretty cool idea!
But of course, these are pretty easy to pull off without an exact recipe. What I really wanted to try was his recipes for baked goods.
9 Macro-friendly Baking Recipes
#1 Cookie Butter Frosted Protein Donuts
These weren’t made exactly to the recipe as I decided not to include the chocolate chips just yet. I had already bought so many ingredients just to get started and besides, those chocolate chips weren’t gonna help the macros.
My review: came out alright but nothing too exciting to be honest.
#2 Baked Protein Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie Oats
This was actually pretty good. Not the sweetest but the other ingredients definitely masked the taste of the oats.
It definitely tastes a little nicer than a bowl of protein oats but for the extra effort required to mix the ingredients and bake, I’m not sure if it’s worth it.
#3 Oreo Cheesecake Protein Donuts
A similar recipe to the first one but I definitely preferred the chocolate version.
For some reason however, I couldn’t get the icing to hold, even after two attempts.
#4 Cheesecake Stuffed French Toast Sticks
This one turned out to be a bit of a fail.
The recipe held up this time but the filling inside the bread sticks was a little too sweet for my liking.
This could be due to the pudding mix I used (I couldn’t find “White Chocolate Sugar Free/Fat Free Pudding Mix” at my supermarket so I used Coltee’s “Instant Pudding Vanilla Flavoured Dessert Mix”).
#5 Fajita Pizza
This one was my favourite by far.
In all my life, I’ve never attempted to make my own pizza base but Zac’s recipe is super simple and high in protein.
I’m still amazed that you can make a pizza base with pretty much just egg whites, cheese and flour, as Zac shows you in this video.
The one pictured above however, was made with Greek Yogurt. Crazy, huh!
#6 Protein Waffle Sandwich Cake
This one was simply too much.
I was supposed to make it as a stack of waffles but as I don’t own a waffle maker, I decided just to make one big pancake.
The final product had a fluffy but filling taste. It took me two sittings on separate days to devour this one.
#7 Chicken Sandwich
Experimenting with Zac’s recipes, I realised how simple it was to make your own bread and in this case, high protein bread.
While it’s never going to taste the same as white bread or a brioche bun, it’s still tasty and works well with the chicken.
Pretty happy with this one!
#8 Everything Bagels
Very similar to the bread in the Chicken Sandwich above, the bagel recipe in Zac’s book hits the spot and has an easy carb-to-protein ratio of 2-to-1 with virtually no fat.
#9 Protein Sugar Cookies
Was craving cookies over the last week so I decided to try Zac’s recipe for macro-friendly cookies.
In the end - I’m not sure why - they turned out more like little protein pancakes than cookies in the end.
Unfortunately, they didn’t come anywhere close to the taste and consistency of my favourite macro-friendly cookies by Macro Mike.
Other attempts
I made a couple of other attempts at some of the other sweet recipes but for whatever reason, I failed miserably.
The first one was the “No Bake Protein Sugar Cookie”. Somehow, freezing it for one hour was meant to turn it into a cookie but it didn’t work for me.
The second was the pop tart recipe. It was quite an involved process but the thing that destroyed my chances of pulling off this recipe in the end was the consistency of the ‘dough’. Mine was super sticky and absolutely impossible to work with.
Overall..
It’s been an interesting learning experience.
To be honest, I’ve never really tried the alternative to macro-friendly baking before so it’s left me curious as to how people bake normally.
As mentioned, it has been very eye-opening to me to see that you can make high-protein bread from a few simple ingredients and Zac’s recipes overall, have opened my mind up to seeing food in a different way.
I know it might sound weird but one of the most interesting parts of my recent diet was learning more about the macro-nutrients that make up the food I eat.
When it came to Zac’s book, I knew that experimenting with his recipes was always going to be a good learning experience.
The way I see it, taking away just a few lessons from the book could make a big impact to my diet and nutrition over the long term.
And, despite all the failures, I’m glad I gave it a go.
Until next time,
Chris
