My Go-To 1kg Meal That Keeps Me Full
This is the meal I ate almost every day for two years. It is close to one kilogram of food on your plate. It has over 130 grams of protein. And yes, there is rice.
When I was 128kg and finally decided to get serious about losing weight (the full story is here), the thing I was most scared of was being hungry all the time. Every diet I had tried before felt like punishment. A small sad plate of food, waiting for the next small sad plate of food.
This meal fixed that. I am not exaggerating when I say this changed my life more than any supplement, any training programme, or any motivational video.
Bro, this is genuinely more than 1kg of food per sitting. You try to finish it.
What is in it
Three things. That is it.
- 400g chicken breast, raw weight (about 300g cooked after moisture loss)
- 250g white rice, cooked (about 90-100g dry rice in the cooker)
- 400g mixed vegetables (frozen mixed veg, cabbage, spinach, whatever is cheap)
Total on the plate: roughly 950g of actual food. 300g cooked chicken, 250g cooked rice, 400g of vegetables. You try finishing all of that.
The actual numbers
| Ingredient | Amount | Calories | Protein |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken breast (raw) | 400g | 660 kcal | 124g |
| White rice (cooked) | 250g | 325 kcal | 7g |
| Mixed vegetables | 400g | 140 kcal | 8g |
| Total | ~950g on the plate | 1,125 kcal | 139g protein |
Around 1,100 calories and 139g of protein. Close to a kilogram of actual food on your plate. This is designed to be the main meal of your day. If your daily target is around 1,800 calories, this one meal covers more than half of it and keeps you so full you barely need to think about food again until dinner.
Why this actually works
Your stomach does not count calories. It measures volume and weight. When it is full, it sends a signal to your brain saying stop eating. That signal takes about 15 to 20 minutes to arrive, which is why eating slowly matters, but the signal is primarily triggered by how full the stomach is, not how many calories went in.
Chicken breast has 165 calories per 100g raw. Broccoli has 34 calories per 100g. Cooked white rice has about 130 calories per 100g. Compare those to peanuts at 567 calories per 100g or cooking oil at 884 calories per 100g.
By building a meal around the low-calorie-density foods (vegetables, lean protein) and using a moderate amount of rice for energy and fullness, you get a meal that physically takes up a lot of space in your stomach without going over your calorie target. That is volume eating. That is the whole method.
When I was running a 500 calorie deficit per day, this was my lunch. I would have a much smaller dinner after this, something light like canned tuna with vegetables or a couple of eggs. The protein from the chicken alone covers most of your daily target in one go. I was full for four to five hours. No afternoon hunger, no 3pm vending machine visit.
How to actually cook it
Rice: About 90 to 100g of dry rice gives you 250g cooked. Rinse it, cook in a rice cooker with a 1:1.5 ratio of rice to water. Done. If you do not own a rice cooker, buy one. It is the best 50 ringgit you will ever spend.
Chicken: Season with salt, pepper, garlic powder. Pan fry on medium heat for about 5 to 6 minutes per side until cooked through. Or boil it if you cannot be bothered. Or bake at 200 degrees for 20 minutes. All three work. The calories are essentially the same regardless of cooking method, as long as you are not adding oil by the tablespoon.
Vegetables: The frozen mixed vegetable bag from any supermarket is your best friend. Dump it in a pan with a tiny bit of water, cover, and steam for 3 minutes. Or microwave for 4 minutes. Season with soy sauce or oyster sauce. Done.
Total active cooking time: about 15 minutes. The rice cooker does its own thing.
Variations so you do not get bored
I ate this almost every day for two years. I did not eat the exact same thing every time. Small changes make a huge difference to whether you want to eat it again tomorrow.
- Swap the protein: Canned tuna instead of chicken is 116 kcal per 100g and 25g of protein. Even cheaper and zero cooking required. Salmon works too. Eggs work if you use enough of them, around 4 to 5 to hit the same protein.
- Vary the vegetables: Cabbage, spinach, beansprouts, cucumber on the side, tomatoes. All low calorie, all high volume. Mix it up so you are not staring at the same green stuff every day.
- Sauce matters: A tablespoon of soy sauce is about 10 calories. Dark soy sauce, chilli sauce (watch the sugar), sambal (a spoonful adds flavour without wrecking the calories). Do not go crazy with sauces but a small amount transforms how the meal tastes.
- Reduce the rice if you want to cut harder: Drop to 150g cooked rice and replace the volume with more vegetables. You lose about 130 calories from the meal while keeping the fullness roughly the same.
How to adjust for your targets
The amounts above are what worked for me at roughly 90kg, targeting around 1,600 calories per day in a 500 calorie deficit. Your numbers will be different.
Use the calculator on the homepage to find your daily calorie and protein targets. Then scale this meal to fit. More rice if your target is higher. Less rice if you are cutting aggressively. More chicken if you need more protein. The structure stays the same.
The key number is protein. You want to hit 1.6g to 2.2g per kg of your goal body weight, every day. This meal alone, with 300g of chicken breast, gets you most of the way there for the day. That is why it works so well as a cornerstone meal.