qft

For a while i was consuming 2 to 3 cups a day. Crazy

Oh yea that's a lot.

That's not to say I haven't done it before with regularity...

Yeah, that's a lot. Reminds me of the time when I had a Chinese roommate who had an amazing rice cooker. Fill that sucker up with some good rice and throw in lots of chicken broth. Oh man. I just ate rice for days...

Crap. This isn't helping, is it?

Well, if it makes you feel any better, I got fat for it. I had a double-chin within a couple of weeks sayin', "I thought rice was supposed to be healthy!" Hahaha.


It's called the Freshman 15.

I dropped 20 pounds the first year of college.

I adopted this great little rice cooker m my girlfriend and so it began. I actually hadnt gained significant weight in the time I was eating so much rice but I am still self concious of how I was eating.

Nah dude. I'm a JUNIOR. So it'd have to be the junior five.

Actually, I ate a lot more freshman year (granted, I was rowing 4-6 days a week back then) and still lost weight. I've never been above 145 lbs until now. Probably the beer.

Got the E Book of Good Calories Bad Calories.... its my next read... I'd like to lean up a bit.

On the subject of cereals, how's Cheerios and soy milk? I need to start watching my diet a bit more.

What about raisin bran and fat free milk?

lol... tell us quaker carleton!

Load them into any calorie counting app and see. I'm not going to do it for you.

If you're going to eat cereal, Cheerios is one of the better ones. But it is higher in salt, so be careful there.

Raisin Bran is one of the worst. Tons of sugar. The flakes and the raisins are both covered. And raisins have lots of natural sugar as it is.

Milk is fine, skim is best. It's not like drinking a coke. But milk does have calories, so you should be aware of that.

If cereal and milk are the worst things you're eating then you're doing ok.

Don't forget you still need at least 2000 calories a day, even if sedentary, to maintain your current weight (all of us athletic types will need more). The point is you can get those 2000 calories from foods that make you feel full and don't make you feel like crap or hungry an hour after eating them.

The Paleo folks pretty much believe all grains are bad and cut out most carbs and legumes. Been reading the Paleo Solution Diet lately by Robb Wolf and has some good info although I'm not ready to go that far. They make some pretty big claims about glutens and inflammation that I'm not sure I buy unless you really have Celiac disease which I think is the disease de jour.

A good rule of thumb though is to shop around the perimeters of the grocery store where the fresh food and meats are kept and avoid the inner aisles where all the packaged stuff is.

Personally, I don't really eat any packaged foods or drink soda and I've limited my consumption of rice and pasta and pastries and find I can maintain my weight pretty well along with running, biking and swimming and feel good which is more difficult than you might imagine as you get older. There are a lot of people who start going to hell in their late 30s/early 40s when you are less athletic and all your poor eating habits start catching up to you.

That's a GREAT way to look at it...and that's exactly what I do. I was shopping last night and I passed aisle after aisle saying, "Nope...nope...nope...nope...". Literally, I only went down one aisle and that was to get peanut butter. Everything else came from the perimeter (beef, chicken, eggs, etc...).

It truly is amazing how once you start eating fresh and "healthy" you realize how much crap there is in the grocery store. Over 80% of it I would never eat....

This is now a Training & Nutrition thread I guess, but for the record, I'm reading Oliver Twist by Dickens.

And cereal with 1% or skim milk tastes fine.

Great read, especially for us foodie types!

Downloaded that MyFitnessPal app carleton spoke of. Works really well. I'm impressed. Time to lean up.

That being said, we (ssfg) should have a training and nutrition thread...hm?

Almond butter is your best bet on a substitute for peanut butter, although you probably knew that.

Percentage of fat in milk is a lie, by the by.

Fat content of milk - courtesy of Wikipedia

Nutrition
 

By popular request.

(I'll start moving posts over)

Hurray!

Now my dissertation on The Plight of Legumes can begin.

I've been trying to get my 23 year old little brother to realize that weight and health are not one in the same. He eats as though he was a 7 year old turned loose in the grocery store. I cook the meals for us at the house we share, and he won't touch hardly anything with a vegetable. But he doesn't gain an ounce, and maintains a pretty decent six pack, so he thinks he's being healthy.

I wisened up a little earlier. I'd been a soccer player my entire life, which helped me maintain a pretty decent level of fitness. Then when I was 20 I had a knee surgery, moved to Chicago (the best food city in the world), and started working crazy hours. The end result was that I got up to 215-220 lbs. by age 22, about 50 lbs heavier than my "playing weight" when I was 17. So I bought a bike and lost 40 lbs, down to the 180 where I am now, and am pretty content.

I know I could lose another 10 pounds if I wanted to, but I don't feel like it. I know a couple guys that are super serious about their weight and nutrition, and frankly they are no fun to be around.

To me, moderation is the key, as well as paying attention to what's actually in the food you eat. I stay away from corn-fed food and processed foods containing corn by-products. I don't eat the healthiest of foods (you'll get my wings, beer, and burgers when you pry them from my dead fingers), but I don't overdo it. You don't have to read a book or pay a nutritionist to know that a triple bacon cheeseburger is bad for you. I also eat a lot of pasta dishes because I'm broke, and pasta is a good way to fill up on a budget. But the pasta dishes that I make are veggie and protein heavy, so I'm not filling up completely on noodles. I also make all my pasta sauces myself, so I know exactly what goes into them. I've tried switching to whole wheat pasta, and it's just not for me. With the amount of salt I put on it to make it palatable, it just isn't worth it.

Comes out to 208 a serving (Cheerios+soy milk).

http://i.imgur.com/2Lpn9.jpg

Looks like no more bagels+cream cheese though.. 450 with a ton of carbs and salt seems bad man.

http://i.imgur.com/KzkqV.jpg

Don't kill yourself. 450 calories for a bagel and cream cheese, which (for me, at least) is a full breakfast, doesn't seem too bad. Assuming you're an active guy, I'd imagine your caloric needs are probably around 2500/day, so your bagel represents only 20% of that. There are also plenty of options out there for low fat cream cheese, low carb or whole wheat bagels, and just about everything has a low-sodium version.

For you rice lovers out there..

Take your rice cooker: put rice, (presoaked) lentils, a bouillon cube, and appropriate amount of water and cook it.

On a pan, simmer thinly sliced mushrooms, garlic, and onion in sesame oil until almost cooked, then pour 3/4 of a cup of broth into the pan, along with fresh kale. Then cook until all of the greens are wilted.

Serve over the rice/lentils. Its pretty awesome.

Holy smokes. this is one of the best threads I have read on this forum.
I have really changed my eating habits in a major way over the last year. I tried everything before that... counting calories, lowfat foods, P90X, whatever, and none of it worked. I was 6' 1" and 240lubs. Felt like crap. Chronic heartburn. Miserable.
Started doing some research and stumbled on a website dealing with stuff like this, and read up. Used some other sources for backing, and then dove in. I have dropped 50 lubs since then, most of it in the first four months, and have kept it off. Can't begin to tell you how much better I feel. Went to the doc and he was very pleased and my checkup went without a hitch.
One thing I heard that really sums it up best about what we stuff in our face is this: The quicker it goes bad, the better it is for you. Packaged stuff is out, fresh stuff is in. And I have not felt a hit in the wallet since changing it up either. Also "lowfat" and "nonfat" are out. I have actually increased my fat intake (avocados, eggs, tree nuts... good stuff.) I don't really pay attention to calories, just what it is. No bread, grains, sugar, artificial sweeteners. For milk I use almond milk and occasionally coconut milk. Almond butter instead of peanut butter. I make my own "energy bars," and man are they good.I could go on.
All I gotta say, is I feel a ton better, I am not beat at the end of the day, and I sleep like the proverbial baby.