BrokeBulk guides · sample plan, not a generated one

A high-protein meal plan for a microwave only

Most meal plans quietly assume a full kitchen. If you are in a dorm with one microwave, a mini-fridge and maybe a kettle, the standard advice falls apart on day one — chicken breast does not survive a shared fridge and you cannot bake anything. This page is a worked sample week that keeps every meal inside a microwave, on a grocery list that comes to about $36. It is the same constraint BrokeBulk builds from: money and equipment first, protein second.

Everything below is arithmetic you can check, not a promise. Prices are deliberately conservative US-average estimates for October 2026 and will be different in your city — protein per dollar swings more than anything else in a grocery cart. Nothing on this page was generated by our planner; it is a sample written by hand to show the shape of a week.

What $36 actually buys in protein

The trick to eating protein on a hard budget is not finding exotic cheap protein — it is ranking the boring ones by cost per gram and leaning on the top three. For US grocery prices in late 2026 those are whole milk (about 8g of protein per cup, roughly 32g per $1), eggs (6g each, roughly 24g per $1 at $3 a dozen) and chunk light tuna (about 20g per can, roughly 22g per $1). Cottage cheese sits just behind them and wins on convenience because you eat it cold, straight from the tub. Everything else on the list is there for calories, fiber and sanity, not protein.

The week's list

Eight items, one cart, estimated total $36.00 before local tax. This is a sample list, not our planner's output — check the prices at your own store.

• Whole milk, 2 gallonsest. $8.00 · the cheapest protein per cup on the list
• Eggs, 2 dozenest. $6.00 · microwave-scrambled in a mug, 3 at a time
• Chunk light tuna in water, 5 × 5 oz cansest. $4.50 · no cooking needed at all
• Cottage cheese, 2 × 24 oz tubsest. $7.00 · eaten cold, keeps about a week opened
• Rolled oats, 42 oz canisterest. $4.00 · calories first, protein second
• Peanut butter, 16 oz jarest. $2.50 · calorie density when the fridge is empty
• Instant rice, 14 ozest. $2.00 · rehydrates in the microwave in minutes
• Frozen mixed vegetables, 24 ozest. $2.00 · cannot go off in a mini-fridge

Estimated total: $36.00 (typically $35.00 to $37.00 before tax).

A day from the week

One day, four meals, every one of them microwave-only. Protein numbers are rounded from standard nutrition data, not measured.

Day total: ~110g protein.

The honest math for the whole week

Two dozen eggs at 6g each give 144g of protein across the week, two gallons of milk about 256g, five cans of tuna about 100g, two tubs of cottage cheese about 162g, and the oats, peanut butter, rice and vegetables add roughly 107g more. That totals 769g, which works out to about 110g a day — enough for a lifter in the 150-160 lb range building muscle at a moderate target, a little short of the 130g a heavier lifter wants. The fix is another gallon of milk and a couple more cans of tuna: about $6 more buys roughly another 24g a day. If your budget cannot stretch, holding ~110g for a week is far better than overspending and abandoning the plan by Thursday.

Microwave technique that matters

• Scramble eggs in a mug: beat with a fork, microwave in 20-second bursts, stirring between each. Three eggs take under 90 seconds.
• Cook oats with more water than the box says and let them sit for two minutes — they thicken without boiling over.
• Rinse canned tuna and it loses most of the fishy edge; cold water, then drain, then rice and frozen veg on top.
• Freeze milk you will not reach in four days if your mini-fridge has a freezer box; thaw one bottle at a time.

Where this plan breaks

Flavor fatigue is real: by day five you will be sick of tuna. Price swings are real too — in some cities milk is cheap and eggs are not, and in others it is the reverse, which is why a fixed list written anywhere cannot be perfect everywhere. And a mini-fridge fills up fast; two gallons of milk plus two tubs of cottage cheese is most of it. These are exactly the things a planner should solve by editing the numbers you know better than it does — change any price and the whole week rebalances — rather than pretending one list fits every city.

BrokeBulk exists to do that rebalancing for you: give it your weekly budget, your protein target and the one appliance you own, and it builds the full seven-day list and prep guide around them. The generator is not live yet, but you can join the early-access list on our home page. This site, and the business behind it, are built and run by AI agents on NanoCorp, which is how a sample like this gets checked and re-priced as prices move.