how to eat 100g of protein a day without cooking in minneapolis.

by Tommy · May 5, 2026

I'm going to tell you something that took me five years and 150 lost pounds to fully internalize: hitting 100 grams of protein every single day is the highest-leverage thing you can do for body composition, and it has almost nothing to do with cooking.

I'm Tommy, the cook half of tandoco. I lost 150 lbs eating real food, and the unlock — the thing that finally separated the years of Try Hard from the years it actually worked — was protein math. Not a diet, not a macro app I never opened past day three, not weighing rice on a kitchen scale. Just a daily target and four ways to hit it that don't require a stove.

Here's the actual recipe for hitting 100g a day in Minneapolis with zero cooking time. It costs about $12 a day in groceries, takes five minutes of assembly per meal, and works for people who lift, people who don't, and people on a GLP-1 medication who can barely face food some days.

How much protein do you actually need?

The number depends on your body weight and what you're asking your body to do. The honest math, which most internet protein content over-complicates:

• Sedentary, no goals: 0.7 grams per pound of body weight. A 175-pound person → 122g. (The official RDA is lower, but the official RDA is the floor for not-dying, not the floor for thriving.)
• Active or lifting: 1.0 grams per pound. 175 lbs → 175g. This is high; most people won't hit it without intent.
• On a GLP-1 medication (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound): aim for 1.0–1.2 grams per pound. Counterintuitively higher than for someone not on the drug — because the medication suppresses appetite without suppressing your body's need to preserve lean muscle.

For most adults reading this, the realistic target is 100–130g a day. We'll use 100g as the worked example below because it's the most common starting line and the easiest mental anchor.

The four-feeding structure

The single biggest mistake I see is people trying to hit 100g across two big meals. It works on paper. It does not work in practice — your stomach can't hold that much volume, your gut can't absorb that much protein in one shot, and on a busy day you'll skip one of the two meals and you're at 50g.

Four feedings, three to four hours apart. 25g–30g per feeding. That's the structure. Every other rule below exists to fill in those four slots.

That's a real day. I've eaten variations of this exact rotation thousands of times. The math closes, the volume is sane, and nothing in the column on the right requires a stove or a knife (other than a butter knife to spread cottage cheese on a cracker).

The nine no-cook protein anchors that actually work

Anchor every feeding around one of these. You can buy all of them in Minneapolis on a single grocery run — Whole Foods on Hennepin, Trader Joe's on Hennepin, Lunds at Lyndale, or Costco in Maple Grove all stock everything below.

1. 5% Greek yogurt (Fage Total or Two Good). 20g per cup. The single best protein-per-dollar food in any grocery store. Eat it with berries, a drizzle of honey, or stirred into a savory bowl.
2. 5% cottage cheese (Good Culture is the best texture). 28g per cup. Tastes nothing like the stuff your grandmother had in the back of the fridge — modern cottage cheese is a different food. Goes savory or sweet.
3. Smoked salmon, smoked trout, or canned sardines. 15–22g per 3 oz pouch. Protein per dollar isn't as strong, but the variety prevents food aversion (especially important on a GLP-1).
4. Hard-boiled eggs from the deli case. 6g each. Trader Joe's pre-peeled six-packs are the move — boiling and peeling eggs is the highest-effort, lowest-payoff cook you can do at home.
5. Pre-cooked chicken (rotisserie or sous vide pouch). 25g per 4 oz. Costco's rotisserie at $5 is the cheapest entrée protein in the city. Sous vide pouches at Trader Joe's hold 5 days in the fridge — buy three.
6. Lean deli turkey or roast beef (low-sodium, single-ingredient). 14g per 3 oz. Read the label — most deli meat has sugar and starch fillers. Boar's Head Ovengold and Applegate Naturals are clean.
7. Beef jerky or biltong (no added sugar). 11g per oz. Excellent shelf-stable backup; throw a bag in your car or desk for the inevitable day a meal slot collapses.
8. Pre-cooked shrimp. 23g per 4 oz. Frozen tail-on shrimp from Trader Joe's, thawed for 10 minutes under cold water. Eat with a squeeze of lemon and bagged greens. No stove.
9. Protein bakery (a tandoco swole roll, brownie, or chip cookie). 18–25g per piece. The afternoon-snack slot is where most people fail because they want something sweet at 3pm and a yogurt isn't it. Real-ingredient protein bakery closes that gap. (We made tandoco's bakery line for exactly this slot.)

The four mistakes that wreck the math

1. Trying to hit it with shakes alone

Whey shakes work on paper. They taste fine. But on most people, two shakes a day causes GI distress within a week, and on a GLP-1 medication the high-volume liquid frequently triggers nausea. Solid protein from whole-food sources is almost always tolerated better. Shakes are a fine supplement to fill a gap; they should not be the foundation.

2. Eating only chicken breast

Chicken breast is the cheapest dollar-per-gram-of-protein food in the world. It is also the fastest path to food aversion. After two weeks of eating chicken breast five times a day, your brain will start refusing it before you take the second bite. Variety is a medical-grade need, not a luxury. Rotate between four to six anchors per week.

3. Forgetting the afternoon slot

The 3:00–4:00 PM slot is the slot that kills the daily math. People are at work, blood sugar is dipping, and the easiest path is the vending machine — which gets you 4g of protein and 30g of sugar. Plan this slot the night before. A protein cookie or hard-boiled egg in your bag at 8 AM is the most reliable intervention I know.

4. Trying to track macros forever

Track for seven days, then stop. Logging is exhausting and most people quit by week three. Once you've logged 5% Fage three times, you don't need an app to tell you it's 20g. Use the tracking phase to learn the menu, then live by it.

The Minneapolis no-cook grocery map

One run, one weekend morning. Total time: 30 minutes door to door if you go to Whole Foods on Hennepin or Lunds Lyndale.

• Whole Foods Hennepin. The deepest selection of pre-cooked proteins, single-ingredient deli meat, and quality cottage cheese. Price is what you'd expect.
• Trader Joe's Hennepin or Excelsior. The pre-peeled hard-boiled eggs, sous vide chicken pouches, and frozen tail-on shrimp are the highest-leverage items here. Cottage cheese selection is weaker.
• Lunds Lyndale or Calhoun. Best for Fage 5% (always in stock at the 32oz size, which is the bulk play) and the deli has clean low-sodium turkey.
• Costco Maple Grove or Brooklyn Park. Rotisserie chicken at $5 is the deal of the year. Buy two on Sunday and you're set through Wednesday.
• tandoco at 1369 Spruce Pl, Minneapolis. Sunday pickup, 11am–6pm. One stop covers entrées, bakery, and smoothies. Designed around exactly the four-feeding structure above. (We're biased.)

How tandoco fits into this

Everything I just laid out works. I lived on it for years. But it requires planning, two grocery runs a week, and a fridge full of Tetris.

The reason we built tandoco was so that the rotation runs without you running it. Every meal we make is 35–55g of protein. Every bakery item is 18–25g. The full week — entrées, bakery, smoothies — gets cool-packed on Sunday morning and you grab it in one trip to our minneapolis kitchen. No grocery list, no assembly, no math.

If you'd rather DIY the no-cook grocery flow, the guide above is exactly how I'd do it. If you'd rather skip to having the week handled, order your first week — every dish is macro-labeled, the protein math is already done, and the Sunday pickup window is built around the same four-feeding structure.

This post is informational and is not medical advice. If you're on a GLP-1 medication, in active training, or have specific dietary restrictions, double-check protein targets with your healthcare provider.