Kevin Curry of Fit Men Cook

Building the dream body has long been the goal of millions of people each year. Whether they join the “new year, new me” trend, or flock to the gym hoping to find a slender frame at the end of the month, tons of people look for ways to improve their health, overlooking the kitchen and sprinting straight toward disappointment. For Kevin Curry, disappointment was his destination for the last time in 2012. After feeling ashamed of his appearance in a friend’s photo on Facebook, Curry — like so many others — tried to out-train his eating habits. 

“I was just at a point in my life, I was pretty desperate just looking for a change,” he confessed. “I was tired of working with personal trainers and then not having the money to be successful with them for the long haul. I just knew that I needed to make a change, so I started to take my health into my own hands and started to study nutrition and just begin to prepare meals.”

Later that year, Curry created Fit Men Cook, originally a Tumblr page where he could share his experiences along the way and surround himself with people who would keep him accountable.

“The way that Fit Men Cook got started was I went to social media to basically crowdsource my diet,” he said. “I thought that if I could just share every single meal that I was eating then people would share it back with me and it would just be a great conversation — it would be a great thing for me and I can get that free advice. Then the reverse kind of happened. I realized that people, they're out there just like me looking for something better, looking for something flavorful. And so they just began to follow me.”

Initially showing off less than impressive creations including a bland chicken breast with a boiled egg in a bell pepper, people were slow to get onboard — most posts in the first year getting fewer than 50 likes. But through consistency, Curry’s audience grew, and so did his skill in the kitchen, bringing forth meals like Lamb Chops & Spicy-Sweet Potato with a dried Cranberry Waffle. People began to comment on his posts and share his creations to their own audiences.

“Just following along the journey and being themselves in the journey did well,” he said. “I only share things that I make, that I eat, that I really would like and so people can see seeds of in that you're just trying to experiment with different foods and diets. It's grown tremendously. It's gone from just a passion project, but it's something that is much more the global community.”

From there, Curry set out on a journey to create health-conscious habits in the kitchen that weren’t only good for the body, but also tasted good in the process. What he ended up with is more than 300 recipes that can impress even the pickiest of palates. From sweet & sour glazed salmon to low carb cauliflower tots, Curry has amassed a vast collection of recipes with health and fitness at the forefront.

“It started with me basically taking meals that I really, really liked and deconstructing them and basically deconstructing recipes is just like breaking them down to their like essential ingredients and then looking at ways that you can cut the calories from those,” he explained. “So usually you'll see things like oils and butters you can cut, but it's also higher calorie things like cheese and and trying to basically imitate the texture and flavors of those, but with ingredients that are a little bit more heart-healthy for you.”

Although countless sources suggest diet hacks like meal prepping every meal for every day, for many people, especially those with kids, this lifestyle usually isn’t practical. Curry, instead, offers a more blended approach.

“I tell people on the extreme end, prep no more than five days,” he explained. “I myself prep only three days, and that's because I've seen that's the sweet spot for people. You kind of get tired of the same foods after day three and so by just prepping less food and keeping the times of cooking shorter, people are able to replicate with meal prepping a lot more throughout the week without the stress on their time. But the good thing is they're preventing food waste and they're also eating something that they're gonna really enjoy.”

Since growing Fit Men Cook beyond the bounds of a Tumblr page, the brand has taken on a life of its own, allowing Curry to take a more active role in helping others create healthy meals and healthier bodies with the creation of The Fit Cook, his line of spice and seasoning blends. 

“It's something that I've just been wanting to do for quite some time to get into people's kitchen in a whole new way,” he exclaimed. “I feel like a part of the big struggle with meal prepping is health because people don't know how to make it taste good. I remember those days when I first started out, looking at my pantry and there were all these spices — there was dust on them really. I didn't know how to use them — how to put them together. So I thought it was a low hanging fruit idea, showing people how to make food flavorful just through the spices would be a great idea. And what I like about these is that they're low sodium, they're low sugar, so that you can really mix and match them into all diet plans.”

“There's no fillers in there,” he added. “You see in the market, and some of these big, mass produced ones — there's tons of sodium, tons of fillers in there so that they can preserve on the shelf much longer. Ours are freshly ground, freshly limited spices that will expire in two years. But I don't think that's going to be a problem. Most people are going through theirs in about a month because they're really enjoying the flavors.”

The Fit Cook features six distinct flavors, each catered to specific elements in order to create tantalizing dishes with just as much variety as Curry has come to be known for.

“What we came up with was a pretty cool spice system,” he explained. “So you've got the everyday blend which can go on everything. It serves as a great base. People will quickly pick out the garlic and onion flavor, but there's a lot more there. And then there's a Land spice blend, which is for things that roam on the land. So whether we're talking about plants that grow or things like poultry or beef that roam the earth, that's what the land blend is for — it's super earthy. Then the sea blend is much more citrus and Mediterranean based so people can know from those systems what to place them on. And then we have three specialty blends. Those are really my favorite — one of them is a nod to my Southern heritage: Southern Creole blend.”

For easy access to tons of recipes and video tutorials, download the FitMenCook app.