Bodybuilding veteran Lee Priest mastered his diet to become one of the most prolific athletes in the IFBB Pro League. On June 16, 2025, he shared his cheapest go-to high-protein bulking meal for adding quality size.
Priest was known for gaining substantial weight in the off-season, and while some doubted his abilities off the stage, he always showed up in shape for contests. He showcased remarkable conditioning levels, routinely challenging the best the sport had to offer. Throughout his tenure, he managed to defeat Ronnie Coleman seven times.
Although he has stepped away from competing for years, Priest hasn’t forgotten the proven strategies he adopted to achieve success. Below, he lays out how he approached bulking on a budget, revealing a pair of dishes that are not just cheap and easy to make, but savory and delicious.
Lee Priest Shares His Favorite High-Protein Bulking Meals
In the recent YouTube video, Priest stood by ground beef, sharing that it’s one of the cheapest high-protein meals on the market. He said it’s versatile and can be paired with different carb sources like rice or pasta.
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“I would say the cheapest meal to bulk would be just buying cheap ground beef. Well, you can get ground chicken too I guess. Just ground beef and rice or pasta. Then, you can just chop up onions and tomato and stuff like that.
It’s easier to keep a big thing of it if you cook it up big and want to add some sort of sauce, spaghetti sauce if you want but I just prefer having it just like a savory mix where you can add vegetables to the mix that way I might have it with rice one day, the next day I might have it on toast, or spaghetti.”
While he credits ground beef as his cheapest go-to meal with rice, potatoes, or oatmeal, he also recommended skim milk to add extra protein to protein shakes.
“I’d say ground beef would probably be the cheapest go-to with rice or potatoes or oatmeal,” he shared. “If you want to also bulk, just getting some skim milk, making normal protein shakes that way with skim milk and you can add protein powder. I was going to say eggs, but eggs are expensive.”
If making your own patties isn’t in the cards, Priest said you can buy them pre-made. He recently purchased some that contained 25 grams of protein each.
“Generally, meat is always a pretty stable decent price. Even if you don’t buy the minced, sometimes I’ll get the meat patties already made.
You can buy a thing of them with maybe 10 meat patties in them, minced meat patties, the ones I had, the thicker ones were like 25 grams of protein in each patty. You can get the lean ones.”
Another meal option he favors is chicken breast, which he throws into the slow cooker with tinned apricots, potatoes, and carrots.
“I’d just get like drumsticks or chicken breasts, I put both in the slow cooker and just make apricot chicken. Put apricot in there, get the tinned apricots and apricot juice, throw potatoes in and carrots. Sometimes you’d just have it on top of rice or whatever. That chicken is really good.”
Priest is adamant he’s done more damage to his body with McDonald’s throughout his career than performance-enhancing drugs, underlining the importance of picking the correct food sources:
“I’d die more from off-season McDonald’s than [steroids],” he shared. “I’d probably done more damage with the chemicals in McDonald’s than what I injected into my body.”
Bulking on a budget can be a major challenge. Priest believes ground beef and chicken breast or drumsticks are affordable options that are high in protein and packed with taste.
Watch the full video from the Sam’s Fitness – Gym Equipment YouTube channel below:
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