Welcome to Fit Eats & Cheats!
I started Fit Eats and Cheats because I got tired of two things: recipes that take a full scroll and a life story to get to, and "healthy" food that leaves you hungry an hour later.
Hi, I'm Joe. I lift, I do CrossFit a few times a week, and I like to go for a run when I feel like it. I also like to eat. Most of the time, I try to eat well — not obsessively, not as a personal identity — I just want food that actually fuels what I'm doing and keeps me full, without turning dinner into a math problem.
The principle is to keep the train on the tracks. Keep it simple. Keep it sustainable.
That's the whole idea behind every recipe here. Three things guide the recipes:
- Energy — enough to actually fuel an active life, not a stripped-down "diet" portion that leaves you running on empty by 3pm.
- Satiety — food that fills you up and feels like a real meal, because restriction is a surefire way to fall off eating well in the first place.
- Variety — because eating the same three "safe" meals on repeat gets boring, and boring is how burnout happens.
Every recipe gets the same treatment: I make it, adjust it, then make it again to be sure. Every photo on this site is food I made. While I sometimes use AI to help me brainstorm what to cook next when I want something genuinely different from what's already here, the recipe itself, the testing, the tweaking, and the photos and videos are 100% me, 100% real. If it's posted here, I made it, ate it, and would be happy to serve it to you.
You won't find a wall of text and a life story between you and the recipe. You'll get the clickable shopping list, the recipe, and instructions simple enough to follow after a long day — because that's what I actually want when I'm the one cooking.
About Joe
For much of my adult life, I’ve had a fixation with TV and internet chefs, like Lidia Bastianich, Gordon Ramsay, Jacques Pépin, America's Test Kitchen, and most especially, John Mitzewich of Food Wishes YouTube fame. Cooking was and is its own thing in my life, quite apart from any nutritional considerations.
I love to cook — mostly because I love to eat — and nutritional concerns grew out of other areas in my life.
Those other areas revolve around various sports and physical activities. I played ALL THE SPORTS growing up. I've spent a good chunk of my life in gyms, on bike trails, and on golf courses. I’ve been a recreational runner, a cultish crossfitter, a cycling enthusiast, and a wannabe scratch golfer, among other things.
I hope you enjoy the recipes here. I hope they make your life easier in those times when you want to eat (mostly) well but are finding it hard to do so.
I live in Columbus, Ohio. Aside from roaming area golf courses, I roam area metro parks, Whole Foods, and Sur La Table(s). I also have a black lab named Jack who is a very nice boy and keeps the kitchen floor spotless.
