I am a full time worker and a full time night student so my eating habits have been very undesirable for losing weight and generating muscle. I do Filipino martial arts for cardio and recreation. I live in Washington which is a climate that is usually dreary and cold. Not one of the best climates for losing weight by any measure of the word.
:o
I generally don’t have time to figure out what to eat and so I turn to the cheaper easier to find junk food at fast food joints. I am looking for some type of compilation of places that aren’t bad to eat at and what I can eat there. Also I can go to the store for food but I can’t afford too expensive of products because i’m poor.
Hope you guys can help me and am very receptive to questions to better your understanding of my situation.
Planning is everything. If you’re really committed to a healthy diet, learn to make your week’s worth of nutrition on the weekend and buy about 20-30 ziplock or glad containers. I take my containers to work with me because I know myself well enough that I will otherwise be eating out and eating junk food all the time.
Every weekend (ideally), I buy about 7-10 chicken breasts, an oversized steak, and a huge chunk of some kind of fish (I like catfish and salmon), a few pounds of lean ground beef, and a few cans of beans (you know, beans and ham type-thing).
I buy lots of broccoli, a few large onions, some tomatoes, a bunch of parsley, several large cartons of spring water, juice for post-workout, brown rice, lemons, and bulgar wheat. I also buy olive oil, parmesan cheese, garlic, and basil if I don’t have any of these left over from the week before.
I boil the ground beef in water, potassium salt, and salt until it’s starting to cook, then I simmer it for about an hour. I put it in the fridge overnight and the next morning I peel off all the extra fat. I take one of the onions and sautee it in a little olive oil. Once the onions are cooked, I add all the de-fatted ground beef along with chili powder and some steak spice. I let this simmer for about 1 hour. When it’s all done, I split it all between 7 containers and leave it in the fridge. Every morning, I crack one open and add about 1/2 a cup of canned beans to it and cart it, along with the chicken and parsley salad (below) to work.
I cook the chicken breasts in boiled salt water like the ground beef and add it (less the water) to pesto sauce that I make from the basil, some of the lemon, salt, a little vinegar, olive oil, and parmesan cheese. I add this to a batch of brown rice I make on the weekend and split it all 7 ways and leave it in the fridge.
The steak and fish, I just cut each in to 5 even portions and seperate into 5 containers each and grill up one serving of the meat or fish in the morning (usually the fish) and one fifth at night for dinner (usually the steak). On the weekends, I usually let my diet slide a little in the morn and evening. If I get bored with these two, I’ll have some eggs and ham/bacon.
The parsley I cut up along with one mint leaf and add to diced tomatoes and crush the juice out of about 2 or 3 lemons and cut up half of a remaining onion (usually the red spanich onions). I add a little olive oil to it and put it all in a container and keep it in the fridge. I eat this stuff with one or two of my meals each day.
The whole process takes a few hours and leaves a mess to clean up, but it does the job for me. It covers most of the bases and is fairly nutritionally sound in my book - but then, I guess it depends on whose book you’re reading.
Like the Dr. said - it’s all about planning and then it becomes all about habit.
Sundays should be the ‘Shopping and Prep Days’ that set you up for the week.
If you have the food bought and cooked you’re less likely to stray from your diet.
Also you can work out total caloreis and deficits alot easier.
Dr. Hollis’ example is exactly the way I do my own diet, with small changes in the food sources.
I really like the idea of boiling the beef to remove the fat - I’ll have to try that some time - because I recently stopped the whole ground beef thing because even the 90% lean beef was starting to get too ‘fatty’ for me.
My best firends are my Tuppaware collection my ‘George’ and for a treat my wok!!
That is a great post for anyone serious about their diet.
