Diet and martial arts

[PaiLumDreamer]

This has been posted before, im almost sure of it. Sorry about that.

My story: I eat like crap. Fast food, microwaved dinners, candy. Bleh. Im getting sick of it all, and my body feels overall yucky. I feel heavy (Even though im a twig), low energy, etc.

My question: Give me some advice! I plan on consulting more than just this forum, but I decided to start here since it is the most readily available. What can I eat?! I know the whole healthy foods section...but I cant cook, number one. Number two, I need something that is tasty and "easy to make". I get bored with rice after a while. Also, something easy to bring for a take-out-lunch. Im away from home a lot, and I dont want to eat any more fast foods.

Thanks.

[Toby]

Originally posted by PaiLumDreamer
My story: I eat like crap. Fast food, microwaved dinners, candy.

Sounds like Iron's diet .

Originally posted by PaiLumDreamer
My question: Give me some advice! I plan on consulting more than just this forum, but I decided to start here since it is the most readily available. What can I eat?! I know the whole healthy foods section...but I cant cook, number one. Number two, I need something that is tasty and "easy to make". I get bored with rice after a while. Also, something easy to bring for a take-out-lunch. Im away from home a lot, and I dont want to eat any more fast foods.

My advice? Learn to cook. Cooking's fun, and pretty easy. It's just a set of directions that you have to follow. Most of the time I can take a new recipe and make a good first-time attempt at it. Even fairly exotic ones. But start easy. Cooking for yourself? What about easy stuff like tuna casserole:

Some pasta (shells, spirals, whatever).
Can of tuna
An amount of thinly sliced or grated cheese (e.g. cheddar)
Can of corn
1 or 2 capsicums in pretty colours (what Americans call bell peppers)
Whatever else you want e.g. some chopped onion, cauliflower, broccoli, cans of various beans (soy, lima, lentil), etc, etc, etc.

1. Cook the pasta according to the directions on the
packet.
2. Mix in other ingredients (excluding cheese).
3. Put in oven dish and layer or sprinkle with cheese till covered.
4. Bake at 350F for a while (until cheese is nice and crisp on top).

Soooo easy, and I really like it too. Pour some lite milk or cream in with the pasta/ingredients mix if you want it more moist. Vary ingredients to your heart's content.
3.

Tuna salad:
Can of tuna
Lettuce
Capsicum in pretty colours
Can(s) of beans
Cubes of cheese
Croutons (take some (stale) bread and fry it in a pan with some olive oil 'til brown)
Snowpeas
Tomato
Couple of boiled eggs
Whatever

1. Mix in large bowl with salad dressing of choice.
2. Eat.

Lasagna - do a search against my name and lasagna. We discussed a few recipes a while back. Easy and oh-so-tasty. Plus you can make bulk lasagna and freeze some and have enough for weeks.

Meat and three veg:
Meat
Veg 1
Veg 2
Veg 3

1. Cook meat (barbeque, grill, oven, panfry) to your liking (mooing through charred). Vary marinades etc as you get more experienced.
2. Cook vegetables. Most can be boiled in water for a short time (couple of minutes). Potatos and corn take longer. Some vegies can be grilled, BBQ'd, etc.
3. Serve with condiment of choice.

Stirfry:
Meat
Multiple vegetables

1. Slice everything into small strips or cubes.
2. Buy a premixed stirfry sauce until you are confident to make your own.
3. Heat a wok to hot-hot-hot.
4. Cook meat until just before it goes brown (couple of minutes max).
5. Throw in vegies for another minute or two.

The secret to stirfry is super-hot cooking and short time spans so everything stays crisp. You've got to keep stirring/mixing so it doesn't stick and everything gets heated - you can't leave it so simmer.

Mexican:
1. Buy a packet of tortillas/burritos/chilli powder/whatever.
2. Buy ingredients listed on back of packet under "Recipe suggestion".
3. Follow instructions according to "Recipe suggestion".

Cooking is sooo easy. Put some recipe books and quality kitchen utensils on your Christmas list and just try it out. Once you get confident, there are no rules and you are free to experiment as much as you like. I especially like experimenting with marinades/sauces. It rarely turns out bad and if it does, you can always get take-out that night. A lot of meals take just as long to cook as it would take to drive down to a take-out joint, or as long as it would take the pizza guy to arrive. Plus you can save lots of money. The best cooking advice I could give is to SOAK YOUR PANS/OVEN TRAYS/UTENSILS/ETC and RINSE YOUR DISHES/GLASSES/UTENSILS/ETC as soon as possible after use (without being anal). If you leave it even for a few hours it can make a world of difference come clean up time. If OTOH you rinse or soak soon after using, cleaning is a breeze. Just fill e.g. your oven tray with water and put e.g. the wooden spoon in there.

Lunch ideas? Cans of tuna, biltong/jerky, fruit, vegetables, trail mix, granola bars. Quick, easy and cheap. But a decent lunchbox and pack it each morning. Takes me about 1 minute to pack. I also take a thermos of green tea with me each day.

[Oso]

Two words:


BEER


PIE

[PaiLumDreamer]

Wow Toby. Thats...a really good reply.

The only problem is I hate cheese



At least SOME people can give constructive replies

(Beer is bad.)

[Oso]

Nope. You are incredibly misinformed.

Beer is very...very good.

[Toby]

Lol! Well, I hate American cheese, so that makes two of us .

O.K. scrap the tuna casserole and lasagna. Don't put cheese in the tuna salad and you can still eat that.

Homemade burger:

Some hamburger mince
1 egg
Chopped onion
Chopped capsicum

1. Mix all ingredients in a big bowl.
2. Shape into patties.
3. BBQ/pan fry/grill patties.
4. Layer on bun with your choice of sauces and accompaniments. E.g. fried eggs, bacon, cheese (not you, other people ) capsicum, lettuce, onion, tomato, pineapple (an Oz thing?), beetroot (ditto?), etc, etc.

Homemade burgers taste waay better than takeaway joints, plus you have a bit of quality control present. You can even make your own mince if you have the equipment.

Shepherd's pie:
Hamburger mince
Carrots
Onions
Capsicum
Peas
Potato

1. Cook mince until brown.
2. Mix in everything else but potato and put it in an oven dish.
3. Boil some water and put in peeled potatos. Boil them until done. They're done when you stab them with a sharp knife and try to pick them up. If they slide off the knife easily, they're done. If not, leave them longer. You can cut them into smaller pieces first to make them cook faster (unless you're making whole boiled potatos for your side dish). Boiling spuds takes a while. Maybe +-30min for a whole one.
4. Pour out the water and add a little butter and a splash of milk. Varying these will vary the viscosity of your mash.
5. Mash with a potato masher until smooth.
6. Layer the potato mash over the top of the meat mixture.
7. Bake in 350F oven until potato starts to brown on top.

Eat with loads of ketchup or your favourite sauce (ketchup on this is great). You can also experiment with flavouring the meat mixture. Maybe some brown sugar, soy sauce, red wine, garlic, etc. Mix it in a side dish to test out the flavour. I generally try to balance out some salty stuff with some sweet stuff, so e.g. equal parts BBQ sauce and soy sauce for example (+ other ingredients) might make a good base. This is another where you could make a lot and freeze some for later. Doing that sort of thing you can make a week's worth of meals on the weekend and just take them out in the morning before work and cook 'em when you get home.

Honey mustard fish:
Some dijon mustard
Some honey (equal amount?)
Some lemon juice
Breadcrumbs
Some nice fish fillets - a nice firm fish rather than a flaky or delicate one.

1. Mix honey, mustard, lemon in a bowl. Maybe add a pinch of salt and pepper.
2. Breadcrumbs in another bowl. Maybe add some herbs. Thyme, rosemary, tarragon, sage, etc.
3. Make sure the fillets are well boned and scaled. Otherwise it ****es me off. Wash them in salty water and pat them dry with paper towels.
4. Dip them thoroughly in the honey-mustard mix. Really cover them well.
5. Straight into the breadcrumb mix. This whole process is pretty messy, but easy. Make sure they're well covered so no wet mustardy bits are left.
6. Into a greased oven dish or tray.
7. Into a hot oven (400F?) for a long while. 30-45min.
8. Hopefully the breadcrumb coating will start to darken and crisp.

The fish will cook inside the "batter" and it'll keep them moist. This takes a bit of tuning to get a nice crisp coating, but even if it doesn't it tastes good. Accompany with side dishes of steamed or boiled vegies. You know how to make mashed potato (see Shepherd's Pie) so you could use that. Carrots panfried in some left-over honey maybe? Something green as well - boiled/steamed spinach? Brussels sprouts? Pretty healthy.

More mashed potato hints - add some (cooked) peas, capsicum, spanich onion, whatever and mix it all up. This works great to get kids to eat all the stuff they usually wouldn't. Tastes pretty good, too . Just pretend you're a kid.

Homemade chips:
(a) Potato version
1. When you peel potatos for mash, keep the skins.
2. You can either:
2(i) Oven roast them in a hottish oven.
2(ii) Panfry them in oil.
2(iii) Deepfry them in a deep fryer or pot filled with oil (messy and a waste of oil).
Potato skins make excellent chips. Sprinkle with salt, vinegar, etc.

(b) Bread version
1. Buy a packet of Lebanese/pitta bread.
2. If they're in "pocket" form and fresh, try to separate them into two halves. If it's too hard (often is) don't bother.
3. Spray lightly with a spray can of healthy oil (e.g. canola, olive, whatever). Or you could lightly butter/margarine them or brush with oil with one of those soft kitchen brushes. I'd prefer a healthy oil to butter/margarine.
4. Sprinkle something over the top. In Oz if you look in the herb/spice section you'll find stuff like chicken flavouring, lemon pepper, steak seasoning, etc, etc. All these work well. Lemon pepper's my favourite. Not too much or it'll be too strong.
5. Bake in moderate oven until crisp (wait until they start to go golden brown).
6. Take out and leave for 1 minute so you don't burn your hands (or bugger it and eat straight away).
7. Break into chip sized pieces to share, or just crunch away at the whole thing if you don't care about manners or have guests.

Yummy entree that can make a super-easy meal:
1. Go to continental deli.
2. Buy baguette and spicy sausage (e.g. chorizo).
3. Slice sausage thinly and space out on an oven tray.
4. Grill until it starts to get crispy.
5. Pour some olive oil into a small bowl.
6. Pour some balsamic vinegar into the bowl.
7. Dip pieces of baguette into the oil/vinegar mix.
8. Scoff down the spicy sausage.

Hmm, not particularly healthy that one, but put a salad on the side to make you feel better about yourself.

Fruit crumble (e.g. apple):
1. Buy some tinned or fresh fruit.
2. Buy some granola or as we call it, toasted muesli. A nice toasty, sugary one will work best.
3. Slice the apples so they fit in an oven dish. Anything smaller than a 1/4 apple should do, but I prefer a bit smaller. If you buy a tin of other fruit e.g. peaches, it will already be sliced enough. If it's fresh fruit, you might want to pour some juice in with it to make it a bit more liquidy. Doesn't matter what sort, but preferably a quality juice. Orange works well for everything.
4. Thickly cover with the granola. If it's not sugary enough, mix it with a bit of brown sugar. You don't want the crunchy bit to be too coarse or fine, so check that.
5. Bake in oven for a while. Maybe 20-30min.
6. Impress the wimmins by serving them your crumble with a dollop of cream and some ice cream. Maybe a glass of red wine.

Breakfast - this one is awesome. Made it last weekend. Used to get it in Austria in a past life. You can have this breakfast, lunch or a sweet dinner (or dessert after dinner). It's called kaiserschmarrn.

5 eggs.
4 tbsp castor sugar.
1 1/4 cup (or 1 cup?) plain flour
little milk (1/2 cup?)
1 tbsp sour cream (optional)
1/2 pinch salt
Maybe some vanilla essence
Bunch of raisins or currants or berries.

1. Separate the yolks and whites into two large bowls.
2. Beat the whites until stiff. This means you can turn the bowl upside down and it won't fall out. Or, more safely, you can pull your whisk out of the bowl and it'll stay sticking up where you pulled the whisk out. Takes a while and is a pain in the ass.
3. If you've got raisins or currants or other dried fruit, boil some water and add a splash of rum or brandy or something similar (optional).
4. Put the dried fruit in the hot water and leave to "plump" (absorb some liquid and get soft again). Just do this while you do the other steps for example.
5. Mix the rest in together with the yolks. Takes about 30s. You'll have to experiment with the milk to get it right since I forget how much. It should be like a thin paste. Not margarine thickness, but not quite pouring thickness.
6. Fold the stiff egg whites in with the yolk mix. Fold means gently mix with e.g. a wooden spoon. Doesn't have to completely mix, just gently stir for 30s or so. Super slow - you don't want to spoil the work you did beating the whites.
7. Mix in the fruit.
8. Pour everything into a hot frypan. Leave it for a bit so the bottom gets hardish.
9. You're supposed to flip it. This is hard depending on the size of your frypan. We've got a monster one so I cheat and put the frypan under a preheated grill for a little while to brown the top first. Also, the thicker your poured mix, the harder it'll be because the middle will stay soft. Doesn't matter if it breaks - that's the next step.
10. While still frying, start to chop it up with e.g. a spatula. You're aiming for large bite-sized pieces, so not too fine. Continue mixing to ensure it's all cooked.
11. Sprinkle with icing sugar. You can either do this while cooking and it'll melt and disappear and coat the pieces or do it after and end up with nice white sprinkled stuff. Your choice.
12. Serve with e.g. some nice dark jam (complementing the fruit you used) and optional cream.

This is truly awesome. Makes enough for 2 super hungry people or 3 average ones. Maybe google for "kaiserschmarren" or "kaiserschmarrn" for other methods. My recipe is a mixture of some stolen ones off the web.

Maybe I should just write a cookbook .

Oso's kind of right - beer can make a good marinade/sauce base . Some beer and some sweet sauce or sugar, some garlic, salt, pepper, etc. You can also liberally splash it over your BBQ meats while cooking.

[Toby]

My last message was too long

Omelette:
3-4 eggs.
Some ham, bacon, cooked, sliced beef, whatever. Gotta be pre-cooked though.
Capsicum in pretty colours.
Whatever (cauliflower, onion, tomato, beans, etc, etc)
1. Chop the meat and vegies finely.
2. Beat the eggs in a bowl. Maybe a pinch of salt and pepper, hot sauce, whatever.
3. Pour beaten eggs into a frypan.
4. Cook a bit (until it just starts to firm up - you can tell by picking up the pan and shaking it).
5. Pour in meat and vegies evenly sprinkled.
6. Leave a bit, then fold in half so you're taking up half the pan.
7. Leave a bit longer, then serve.

That's how my wife does it. I prefer to mix all the ingredients together into the beaten egg, then just pour it all in the frypan together. When it starts to firm, just flip the whole thing upside down and cook the other side for a short time (shake the pan - if it slides easily, it's hard on the bottom side. If it sticks, it's still wet and needs more time). Soooo easy. Takes a couple of minutes from whoa to go and tastes really good. Eat it with sauce if you want.

[Toby]

Baked beans on toast:

1 can baked beans
2-3 pieces of bread

1. Put bread in toaster.
2. Pour beans into saucepan. Add some salt, pepper, hot sauce if you want.
3. Stir beans. Takes about 1 min.
4. Take finished toast out, butter.
5. Pour hot beans over toast.
6. Eat.

Takes about 3min start to finish. Healthy, easy. If you fill the saucepan with hot water straight after emptying it, it almost cleans itself.

[manofkent]

I just spent 40mins writting up tonnes of great tips that i used to loose 2stone in 4months, without ever getting hungry. and still eating my takaway foods once or twice a week, but my pc crashes before i finished. Ive been reading lots of book this yr and found a way to make you stomach shrink by eating small amounts 6 times a day, this way ur not staving urself, and ur not bloating urself. anyway, email me at manofkent7421@hotmail.com and i'll forward you some great dieting website that i used.

I understand ur position, dieting is not just about cooking healthy meals, its about what u snack on during the day.

Toby - What are u trying to do... kill the guy!!!
If someone wants to loose weight the last this they want to be eating is 3 bits of toast with beans at dinner time. U only eat carbs in the morning or the carbs turn to glucose and glycogen and form in to fat while u sleep. Dont eat carbs unless u intend to burn them off####111

[Samurai Jack]

Originally posted by manofkent
What are u trying to do... kill the guy!!!

Carbs Ahhhhhh!!!! You're gonna die! Your ALL gonna DIIIIE!!! (runs screaming from building)

[IronFist]

Originally posted by PaiLumDreamer
This has been posted before, im almost sure of it. Sorry about that.

My story: I eat like crap. Fast food, microwaved dinners, candy. Bleh. Im getting sick of it all, and my body feels overall yucky. I feel heavy (Even though im a twig), low energy, etc.

Sounds like what I eat. Maybe you don't eat high quality frozen dinners

[Chief Fox]

There's a great web site called fitday.com. Setting up an account is free and they don't bombard you with spam. basically it's a huge database of all different types of food. Just log what you eat. It will keep track of the protein, carbohydrate and fat breakdown. By doing this you soon realize what the bad stuff is. Then all you need to do is find healthy replacements for the bad stuff.

Here is an example of what I eat in a day.
7:00am raisin bran with 1%milk.
9:30am Meal Replacement Shake from GNC.
11:30am an apple or banana.
1:30pm a side salad from the McDonalds $1 menu.
2:30pm 1/2 peanutbutter sandwich on whole wheat bread or leftovers from last nights dinner.
3:30pm 2 servings of lowfat cottage cheese.
6:30pm Grilled chicken with rice and green beans
8:30pm some whole wheat saltines or pretzels.

Drink plenty of water.

As far as cooking goes. The more you do it, the better you get. Here's some ways to make it easier.
1. Get a George Foreman grill or something like it. This makes grilling chicken and beef very easy.
2. Start a spice rack. Spices make bland food taste better and are very low in calories.
3. Get a rice maker and buy the big bags of rice. Making rice becomes very easy and if you add some spices you can come up with some tasty stuff.
4. The microwave is your friend. I microwave veggies all the time.

Other things I like to make are:
1. Egg substitute Omletes with Boca breakfast patties.
2. Oatmeal with cinamon.
3. Hard boiled eggs.
4. Beef Stroganoff - beef chunks cooked in a frying pan, boil some egg noodles, pour a can of campbells fat free cream of mushroom soup in the pan with a can of beef broth. Mix in the noodles and heat it all up. pour in some worchestershire sauce and you're good to go.

One thing to think about if you're tired all the time is that you may just be eating too much carbohydrates. If you replace some of those carbs with protein you'll be heading in the right direction. An easy way to do this is to start off the day with a protein shake. Go get a small tub of protein at GNC and try it out. You can also buy cheap protein online. Just do a google search.

Good luck.

[Toby]

Originally posted by manofkent
Toby - What are u trying to do... kill the guy!!!

Doesn't sound like he has a weight problem:

Originally posted by PaiLumDreamer
im a twig

Originally posted by manofkent
U only eat carbs in the morning or the carbs turn to glucose and glycogen and form in to fat while u sleep.

Myth. (Paraphrasing) Minimal glycogen gets converted to fat. What happens is that your glycogen stores become saturated and any fat gets stored as fat. You can eat as much carbohydrate as you like and no fat, and minimal fat will be stored. The golden rule in eating is eat:
(i) protein and fat together
(ii) carbohydrates and protein together
(iii) not carbohydrates and fat together
(iv) make the fats good fats
Baked beans with three bits of toast is super high carbs, sure. But as long as you don't overdo the butter/marg on the bread, you won't be getting much fat from it. The baked beans we get in Oz are about 2% fat. Some beans (don't recall if baked kidney beans) have pretty good protein content too.

Originally posted by Chief Fox
Get a George Foreman grill ...

Amen.

[Hau Tien]

I'm so sick of seeing "carbs are bad!!!!". Your body needs carbs. Period.

I was doing the 5 or 6 small meals a day for a while. I lost about 70lbs over a few months (obviously with exercise as well). I included carbs with every meal.

It worked great, but then I hit a plateau at 175lbs and 12% body fat. I wanted to get to about 10%, and it wasn't working anymore.

I read up again and decided to switch up my diet and workout plan. Found something called "The Warrior Diet" and realized that this was how i used to eat, naturally, before I put on all the extra weight. So, I decided to give it a shot.

Nothing changed for about 2 weeks. I sat at 12% and 175lbs without moving. It was discouraging. Then, almost immediately after two weeks, I started dropping fat again, and I hit 10% and 170lbs as of this morning! WOOT!

That brings me to a total of 76lbs lost so far and a reduction of my bodyfat from 30+% to 10%. Saying you cannot lose weight while eating carbs is obviously not true.

[manofkent]

From a weightloss point of view, you dont need carbs.
From an exersise point of view you only need carbs 2hrs before you work out. Its ok to eat more, but if you do then u wont make as much progress. you simply dont need carbs after a work out cos uve stopped burning them.

I went from 16%body fat to 15% in a month when i started working out properly.

then when i stopped eating carbs apart from breakfast I went down to 10%body fat in the next two months. Keeping to the same training program!!!!