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Eating Healthy
Tejs
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ok, so I've eaten junk food and basically whatever tasted awesome for 24 years now. However, I find myself with the drive to eat 'healthier' and try to control my weight some more. How do I eat 'healthier'? This honestly isn't a joke, but a serious question. There are a couple of unresolved questions:
1) The biggest issue for me... how do you deal with hunger? Eating smaller portions leave me feeling unfulfilled, so it's sometime unconscious to find something to snack on. If you 'fill up' on lower calorie foods, is it really that simple?
2) How do you find variation? It seems like the entire spectrum is sandwiches, some salads, and those ridiculous healthy choice meal things. I'm not trying to give up everything good, but in those instances where I can manage it, I want to eat a bit healthier.
3) Price and Selection - everyone says buying from wal mart or other superchains is the wrong way to go. Does the healthier community really recommend hitting the smaller stores? For anyone that has also gone this route, how has your food budget changed?
4) Work Lunches - my work lunches are extremely flexible. I've eaten out every day at work for just about 3 years. So while I can save a bunch of money by not eating out as much, what meals are suited for making a lunch out of?
5) Are there additional steps you guy take? I've thought about multi vitamins and what not, but considering my current hedonistic diet it seemed like a waste.
6) Do you guys have any cool recipes for healthy meals that I could steal?
1) The biggest issue for me... how do you deal with hunger? Eating smaller portions leave me feeling unfulfilled, so it's sometime unconscious to find something to snack on. If you 'fill up' on lower calorie foods, is it really that simple?
2) How do you find variation? It seems like the entire spectrum is sandwiches, some salads, and those ridiculous healthy choice meal things. I'm not trying to give up everything good, but in those instances where I can manage it, I want to eat a bit healthier.
3) Price and Selection - everyone says buying from wal mart or other superchains is the wrong way to go. Does the healthier community really recommend hitting the smaller stores? For anyone that has also gone this route, how has your food budget changed?
4) Work Lunches - my work lunches are extremely flexible. I've eaten out every day at work for just about 3 years. So while I can save a bunch of money by not eating out as much, what meals are suited for making a lunch out of?
5) Are there additional steps you guy take? I've thought about multi vitamins and what not, but considering my current hedonistic diet it seemed like a waste.
6) Do you guys have any cool recipes for healthy meals that I could steal?
Tejs on
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don't keep junk food in the house, period. buy baby carrots and broccoli and snack on those when you get the munchies, but don't slather them in ranch dressing.
As you get accustomed to eating with less salt, everything will start tasting better as your palette wakes up.
However, once you get used to this, if you try to eat stuff that's too salty you will immediately notice it, and may be unable to continue. After being on low sodium meals for a long time, I tried to eat a Miso Soup and couldn't even go beyond a couple spoon fulls of it because it was just so salty, and I used to eat a whole bowl like nothing. Gave me a headache.
Let's put it this way. You could fill up on celery (no dressing) OR eat one of those small 100 calorie snack packages. Which would fill you up more?
They cast a shadow like a sundial in the morning light. It was half past 10.
Actually not all that healthy, and usually loaded with sodium to make it taste better. Really the easiest way to eat healthier is to cook all your own food; even the unhealthier stuff you like to make will be made less often because it is more of a pain in the ass to cook. Actual from scratch macaroni and cheese, for instance, takes ages to prep and can be easy to fuck up, if you're usually reaching for a blue box meal every time you want something noodley forcing yourself to make it from scratch will cut way back on your mac and cheese habits. Same with donuts, every now and then a donut sounds good but if you know you're going to be putting 5 hours of work into it (including rises and deep frying time) you're a hell of a lot less likely to have a donut for breakfast every day.
Don't try to jump straight into amg only fruits and veggies right away, but do buy at least a week's worth of groceries with no prepackaged food and no bags of chips and fries and such (if you want chips and fries... make your own out of a potato, less fat than crap that comes out of a bag and relatively easy if just time consuming) and see how you make out with that. Try to find recipes that keep and reheat well so you can take them in to lunch with you, like chili, stirfry, lasagna (ok this isn't like the uberhealthiest cause it has lots of cheese but it's definitely an improvement over prepackaged), ratatouille. Try finding recipes for things you know you like but usually buy in cans and boxes, and make it from scratch.
And it is easier to fill up on healthier foods, calorie per calorie, pull out 100 calories worth of potato chips from a bag. Pretty small portion, isn't that like 8 potato chips? Now pull out 100 calories worth of frozen veggies, and you're pushing a cup or more depending on the vegetable.
This is all really spot on. Check the sodium levels of anything you buy that says 'low fat'. There is a good chance the sodium will be so high it is going to be worse for you than the 'regular' version of that meal.
If you can join a CSA that's a great way to regularly get some great veggies. Meat CSA's are just as awesome.
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