If you were born with a penis, chances are you have a favorite Chinese buffet. If you weren’t, you probably have one too, but it’s for the wrong reasons - like its proximity to the discount shoe store.

Chances are you realize the caloric surplus you can put yourself in for the week just by spending an hour or so of your time there every day. With that said, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. Some of you are aware of it, others perhaps not. For those of you who are veteran buffet crushers, you may not need this, but for those of you new to the game, here are a few tips that should help you dominate your buffet and get the most bang for your buck.

Restaurant Selection: How can this be #1 if we already have a favorite buffet we eat at? Three letters can answer this for you: MSG. Ask them if they use MSG next time you go there. If they say no, leave. If they waver - and then say no - sit down and put one piece of anything fried in your mouth. Instant, massive salivation means you have a new home, and Betty at the front is a damn liar. Don’t believe the bullshit that MSG is bad for you. I can’t think of a better tool in your quest for the bloat. All that trash you read about excitotoxins and cardiac stress? Just think of it as exercising your mind and doing cardio WHILE YOU EAT! This is the model of training efficiency. Tons of good things, all at once. Efficient!

Now that we have the easy stuff out of the way, let’s move on to the proper selection of food choices.

1.      Crab Legs: Avoid these. There’s too much time involved cracking shells for too little amount of meat. Chances are the damned things have sat too long in the brine/fat bath and the shells are more like the consistency of wet cardboard, as opposed to the hard consistency they have at reputable eateries. This makes expediting the cracking impossible, and turns everything into an exercise in futility. Leave them for the fat white trash idiots who want crab legs, but are too broke to hit Red Lobster.

Corollary to No. 1: If you’re eating at the buffet pre-training, or pre-meet, HAMMER THE CRABLEGS. They let these things sit for hours in some sort of brine salt tub and the meat soaks it up well. Great for the bloat!

2.      White Rice/Fried Rice/Egg-Spring Rolls/Noodles Of Any Sort: Another to avoid. All these amount to is wasted space. Leave them for those on carb-cycling diets.

3.      Fried Shrimp: An undercover filler-upper. This is complete bullshit, and is done for no other reason than to sabotage your caloric intake and help them improve their “bottom line.” This is where you turn it around on them. EAT the shrimp. A TON of them. The secret to properly destroying fried shrimp on the buffet is to remove all of the breading and eat only the shrimp. It’s fried, so you’ll get all of the healthy fats from the deep fryer, but not the wasted space the breading steals from you! Look at the first piece you eat and realize how much space you’ve been wasting all these years!

4.      Generals Tso’s Chicken: This is your savior on the buffet line. Protein wrapped in dough, fried and then bathed in a sugary glaze! But what about the wasted space from the breading? Don’t worry. Most places make this as an actual item, and don’t just pour it into the fryer from a box. So wasted space from breading is minimal. I’ve also found that the time required to remove it slows you down too much - like the crab legs as discussed earlier. You DON’T want to slow your pace at any time while you’re at the buffet. This allows for things fitness and diet gurus refer to as “satiety” to set in, and that’s not in line with our goals. Not at all. Remember that the breading combined with the sugar-based “sauce” gives you the double insulin punch, which is VITAL for recovery post workout. Everyone knows about that.

5.      Steak: A double agent is in our midst! It’s pretty common knowledge in professional eating circles that “cooked to order steaks” at a Chinese buffet are really recycled tires slathered in Lawry’s Seasoned Salt. This is too much chewing for too little return.

A few other tips for you:

·        Drink Coke. Real coke, not the diet shit. Liquid calories are a bonus!

·        Fried anything is good.

·        Avoid anything that ends in “with Broccoli.” – remember wasted space!

·        Avoid any type of soup. It’s for girls. Look at Panera - for girls. Don’t eat it.

·        They have 12 kinds of ice cream for a reason.

·        There is no crab in Crab Rangoon.

·        Chicken on a stick is really pork. Eat it.

·        Tip 50 cents per refill of your coke. You better drink at least $4 worth, but $6 dollars is ideal.

If you follow the guidelines listed above, you’ll be well on your way to owning the Chinese buffet. Any questions, comments, or suggestions of things that I may have missed, by all means, drop me a line in the Q&A! GOOD LUCK!