What James Eats: Meal Prep & Breakfast

Most people's omega intake is an afterthought. Mine isn't — not because I'm disciplined, but because I got lazy in the right direction.

I don't wake up and decide to eat well. I decided once, on a Sunday, and let the week coast on that decision. My rule is simple: Seatopia twice a day. A morning anchor, then one of lunch or dinner. Hit those two and the numbers take care of themselves

Here's how the system works, and why it exists at all.

Life spaces that inspire the habits

It wasn't willpower. It was three sets of circumstances that left me no other option:

The boat.
I lived on a sailboat for nine years and sailed more than ten thousand miles — San Francisco down through the Sea of Cortez, eventually to the Galápagos. Offshore, you learn fast that the real skill isn't provisioning before departure; it's minimizing the cooking you do underway. There are stretches at sea where staying upright is a full-time job, let alone balancing over a gimballed stove. So you do the work in calm water: meals that keep, that travel, that can be eaten cold or one-handed. That was my first education in cooking ahead of hunger instead of in response to it.

Two kids, eighteen months apart.
Anyone who's done that stretch knows it demands the same posture as provisioning a boat. If dinner isn't already halfway made on a weekday evening, dinner doesn't happen — or it happens badly.

A remote town.
We now live somewhere with very few dining options that meet the standard I want to eat to. There's no ordering my way out of a bad week. What's in my fridge is what I get.

Put those together and you don't end up with discipline. You end up with a system.

The foundation: Sunday prep

The whole week rests on one ritual. It actually starts Saturday, with defrosting: fillets on a quarter-sheet tray fitted with a wire rack, each wrapped in paper towels, thawing dry and clean in the fridge overnight instead of sitting in a puddle.

Sunday, I build the boxes:
Miso-broiled Ora King — the anchor. About twelve pieces, broiled skin-on, laid into stainless bento boxes. It was one of the first things I learned to cook that turned a hot piece of fish into a genuinely delicious cold one — and that translation is the entire trick to eating this way.

Spicy salmon tartare — steelhead loin or Bakkafrost Atlantic, folded with crunchy garlic and a little mayo. The oil coating actually helps it hold for days.
Cured steelhead loin, sometimes — citrus zest, coconut sugar, good salt, four days, then sliced thin with a slick of olive oil and fresh zest on top.

By Monday morning I have a week of protein I already trust. I'm not deciding anything. I'm just opening a box.

The nightly move: 30 seconds

On top of the prepped foundation sits one small habit: every night, I move a couple of packs of Caleta Bay cold-smoked steelhead from freezer to fridge.
That's it. The lox is the additive layer — it tops up breakfast, becomes a fast lunch, gets raided by the kids as a snack, and rounds out whatever dinner actually got planned. The foundation is what I prepped; the lox is what makes the in-between effortless.

Breakfast

Breakfast alternates between the two anchors — a piece of the miso king salmon, or the lox — both already sitting in the fridge. No cooking decision, just which one I'm in the mood for.

Around it, the plate builds itself: eggs, a spoonful of kimchi or sauerkraut, some fresh fruit. Ferment, protein, something bright. Four minutes and I'm out the door with a real meal in me instead of a coffee and a vague intention.

When I want to feel like I tried, I'll do a crudo: Seatopia fish sliced thin, a dab of yuzu kosho on each slice, a whisper of tamari, a light coat of olive oil. The oil does something clever — it lets the slices layer without collapsing into a pile. Easy to plate, easy to eat standing up.

The eggs have become their own hobby. My reliable fallback is a 7-minute soft-boiled egg — genuinely one of the most useful things anyone can learn — often pickled overnight in tamari and mirin. A jar of those upgrades any plate.

The numbers, and where I pay attention.

I aim for roughly 3,000–4,000 mg of EPA + DHA a day, from food, tracked as a real number rather than a good feeling.

Why a number at all? Because of the Omega-3 Index — a validated blood biomarker measuring the percentage of EPA and DHA in your red blood cell membranes (Harris & von Schacky, 2004). It's the rare wellness metric you can actually test: a lab value, not a vibe. Most Americans sit well below the 8% associated with the best outcomes in the research; peer-reviewed work puts the intake needed to move toward that target at roughly 2,000 mg/day of EPA + DHA (Walker et al., 2019). My daily aim is that, with headroom.

My last reading came back at 11.4%. I'm not chasing 8% anymore — I'm curious how high a genuinely marine-forward diet can push it.

Two honest caveats, because they're the whole point of doing it by the numbers. This is a biomarker and a self-experiment, not a health claim — the research is about associations, not proof that any single food changes an outcome. And individual response varies: baseline, body weight, and absorption all move the result. What I can say is that it's measurable, it's mine, and it's falsifiable. Track your own number before and after ninety days and the data argues for itself.

No extraordinary behaviour, just extraordinary seafood

This isn't a supplement stack, and it isn't fish at every meal. Two Seatopia touchpoints a day, and the miso Ora King does most of the lifting on its own.
Lab-verified figures from the rotation, per portion:

A typical day: miso king salmon or lox in the morning, spicy salmon over sushi rice for lunch, or a branzino for dinner. Two touchpoints, not six. The number is downstream of the habit, not the other way around.

A 15min backup plan

When I've prepped nothing, I reach for branzino or sea bream — both defrost fast and cook faster. Parchment, a light coat of olive oil, capers crisped in the same pan, a squeeze of citrus. A 6 oz branzino still brings roughly 1,357 mg EPA + DHA; the sea bream about 1,187 mg. Fast food, in the literal sense, with nothing given up.
The kids, and the fancy stuff

Two toddlers, and they'll eat every single thing above — the steelhead sashimi especially, and what we call "salmon roe bumps": little spoons of Yarra Valley caviar, each a small, real hit of DHA I find quietly satisfying to hand a two-year-old.
When friends come over I get to show off — scallop crudo, grilled shrimp, nigiri if I'm feeling brave, salmon roe on nearly everything. But those meals are the celebration, not the foundation. The foundation is boring, repeatable, and already in the fridge.

Why: Full circle

When I eat this way — clean, marine-forward, prepped ahead — I feel like myself. On the occasions I eat out, my body tends to let me know it disagreed with the decision.
So the prep isn't discipline, really. It's self-interest with a head start. Plan one Sunday, coast one week, and never once stand in front of an open fridge wondering what to eat.
Mostly, breakfast is handled.

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Every Seatopia omega figure above is drawn from our third-party lab data at the listed portion size. Portions and preparation are James's own routine — not a health claim, just what's in his fridge.