permanentjaun

Ok. Please advise me on what I should do, if anything, and what I can add to my diet?

I'm 24, 6'0", around 190 lbs. I started commuting to work this week. 27 miles every day. I also ride longer on the weekends.

I don't like to cook, and a lot of what I eat is either ridiculously simple, microwaveable, or both.

Each day I have one bowl of cereal in the morning. Right now it's honey nut cheerios.

After I commute to work I have one bag of easymac. At lunch I eat one bag of Ramen noodles. I drink a lot of water at work, and might snack on some oat grain bars there as well. On random occasions I'll go out to eat with a coworker, so it's not always Ramen noodles for lunch.

When I get home I cool down by having a whey protein shake made with 2% milke. For dinner I have the choice of easymac, ramen, eggs, pasta, white rice, or cereal. I haven't touched the easymac and ramen at home yet just because I already had them earlier in the day. If I have eggs I'll eat 5 cooked sunny side up. On random occasions I'll order a pizza and have that over two days.

On the weekends I tend to visit my parents and get fed well there; typically some sort of meat.

I also sip on gatorade around the house and use it for some rides.

Is my diet healthy? Where do I need to improve? Is one ramen a day going to kill me? What are some other easy and cheap foods to make? Buying in bulk is a plus.

I'm not necessarily looking to lose weight, but it would be nice so that I could climb faster and become an overall better cyclist. I think my commute is certainly helping a bit considering I'm increasing the amount of riding I'm doing by about 5 times since I used to only ride on weekends and the rollers a couple times a week. Also, when I drive to work I tended to have a a Burger Kind value meal #4 with cheese and a Dr. Pepper EVERY DAY. That's a junior whopper with cheese. Some people will hate me, but that's the type of body type I am. I can eat that crap for lunch every day and not gain a pound.

So what do you all think I can do?

Thanks,
Matt

UmneyDurak

I don't think easy mac, and instant ramen noodles are healthy. Last time I looked at the nutritional information of instant noodles in Costco it made my stomach ill. Waaay too much fat, sodium, etc, etc. Cooking stuff yourself is the best way, but if you can't/don't want to try getting some of those instant weight watchers, or other "healthy" meals sold in your local supermarket. You can find them in frozen section. Although it's a bit expensive.
Honey nut cherios have too much sugar, and not much nutritional value. I like oatmeal. There is entire thread dedicated to it either on this sub forum, or commuter sub forum. Protein shake... It's not really necessary for ammount you are riding, but other then maybe adding extra calories not that bad.
Burger King well thats crap food, and you said as much in your post. It will eventually catch up to you. If anything that is the biggest negative in your diet. Dr. Pepper really depends on how much. One can a day is ok I think. The giant gulp thing that looks like you can drown a bunch of kittens in, not so much.
As for gatorade, it has it's place.... That being said drinking it just for the sake of drinking it is empty calories. Even for exercise I think people are over doing it with sports drinks.

Here is an easy recipe:
La tortilla factory tortilla
Kirkland roasted beef
rice
Refried beans (I like vegerita brand ones).
For dressing Fat free Fage greek yogurt mixed with some chipotle salsa. Makes for very nice burrito. Fast to make, and you can warm it up in a microwave.
Variation of this is to use lavash bread instead of tortilla. Just line a bowl put stuff in side cover it with more lavash bread, and eat it with a spoon. Tastes pretty good cold.

Another fast recipe:
Turkey burgers, or those vegetarian burgers. Cook them on a skillet, about 3-4 minutes per side. Wrap it in some Pita bread add some vegetables, and some greek yogurt (I like Fage non-fat), with a bit of soy sauce.

In general bulk=Costco. You can buy pre sliced ham or turkey or roast beef, or canned chicken, tuna, roasted beef and just experiment with different additives.

ericgu

Your diet is not atypical for somebody your age, but it's pretty much a nutritional nightmare. You may be able to eat that way when you're 24, but you will likely reach an age (around 35 for me) where it will catch up with you. Depending on how much muscle you have, you may already have a few extra pounds.

But, wholesale changes are unlikely to stick, so I recommend making changes gradually. Here's my advice.

* You have a ton of processed grains - white rice, white bread, white pasta, cheerios. There are healthier choices for all of those - brown rice, whole-wheat bread, pasta, granola.

* I didn't see a single fruit or vegetable in that list. Figure out the ones you like raw, and start adding them into your diet.

* There's a whole lot of refined sugar in your diet. Try to reduce that, except that it's okay during riding.

EatMyA**

Your diet sucks! You know it. Thats why you asked. STOP IT!

stick to the classics. this is a no brainer. jeez! Did you know that people have been eating for thousands of years? In that time they came up with some pretty ****ing efficient food combinations. here are a few.

rice & beans

meat & potato

rice & chicken

pasta & cheese

bacon & eggs with toast

For snacks/treats people came up with different mixtures of fruits & nuts.

For drinks people used of all things WATER. Also fruit juice, and wine. all are perfectly fine.

Veggies for nutritional value are useless unless you grew them yourself. They are ofar gone by the time it gets to your store. If you grow them yourself they can be great vitamin and mineral sources, they provide good roughage for digestion. Unless you have soft stool just get a multivitamin, preferably the silver kind, the ones for old folks. IMHO I feel they are better suited for todays lifestyle. oh and veggies are good to flavor your favorite dishes.

This is not rocket science...Although I did do the same stupid things when I didn't know better

EatMyA**

Oh and I am 6'5" 220

I changed my eating habits as an adult and at the time I weighed 135lbs. yup 6'4" 135lbs fully grown. world vision had nothing on me.

a thing to note: when gaining weight and eating out, I require 8000kcal to start gaining and half of it is fat.

when I eat in it takes only 4000kcal to start to gain and almost none is fat. HALF the calories. twice the nutrition. why? because most places use vegetable oil. very hard to digest, and when it gets on your food it makes the food very hard to digest. About the worst thing you can eat along with ice cream. At home if I need it, I use lard, lots of calories but easily digested.

Cook at home! I can make 4-11 of the same dish eating in, for the price of ONE eating out.

MessenJah

It's blindingly obvious what's missing from your diet: whole grains, fruit and vegetables. But everyone else has already pointed that out, so why am I even posting this?

Sjared

Your diet is not healthy.
This is not about maintaining your weight as long as you're 20 and starting to gain it when you're 40.
This is more importantly a lack of nutrients which affects everything right now including your energy levels, athletic results and disease risk. A lot of diseases are triggered by flawed nutrition.

I learned that the point of a diet is to get the maximum amount of nutrients for the minimum amount of calories. And supplements will never solve this problem as they can supplement but can't substitute.
A diet of powder proteins, oils and multivitamins althought virtually complete in the nutrients would soon make you sick and deficient in major nutrients. There's also no evidence that people with nutritional devicencies because of poor diets can correct them with supplements alone while maintaning their poor diet.

For example a typical mistake people make is to eat relatively healthy foods in small amount and covering them in olive oil or butter. The calories of oils sabotage whatever balance might come from consuming those healthy foods. But more important oils are caloric dense and nutrients deficient. Except for fats and vitamins E they're not nourishing foods. So you consume your caloric allotment with nutrition devoid foods. If you dress a big plate of pasta with lot of oil you have a non-nourishing caloric bomb which will make you hungrier quickly. Most foods need the addittion of fats to be palatable and satisfying. So if the fat choice is a sauce made with nuts, veggies+cream, olives, avocados you balance the dish by making it palatable, less caloric dense and 100% more nourishing.

Studies show that veggies, even those from supermarket, are still filled with load of nutrients (just check studies comparing the nutrients of supermarket veggies to organic veggies, the nutrients are all there and the differences are rather small)

By making veggies the centerpiece of each plate you balance the calories, get satiated with less calories, make the dish palatable with the addition of nourishing fats versus naked-calories and increase the nutrient potential of each meal massively.

As for cooking, it must be done even if you don't like it.
There are a lot of things we don't like but do anyway for your health.
I don't like brushing my teeth twice a day but I do it anyway because I like having healthy teeth.
You don't need to become a chef but the more you rely on ready made foods the less healthy your nutrition will be and by consequence your health as well. Just reflect on the fact that 50 year ago you wouldn't have a chance to live on ready made industrial foods but would have not starved because of this.

There are very easy meals to make that are satisfying and respect all the rules of a good nutrition (nourishing, calorically balanced, palatable, satiating, healthy)

A typical example is stew.
Just combine a veggie, with diced meat, with a fat source with spices.
The combination are infinite, the time preparation is minimal and you can make a big pot in the weekend and eat it all the week. It's easy than eating a steak, which requires you to become practical with the cooking time and the quality of the meat.

Another example is frittata
Just combine a veggie, beaten eggs, parmesan and a fat source.
Again infinite combinations, minimal time preparation and can be prepared days before.

Another easy preparation is chili
Just combine a tomato sauce, canned beans, diced meat, a fat source and hot spices.

If you think in term of preparations rather than foods or meals it is easier to come up with healthy meals because you just have to get familiar with the kind of meal and the combinations become infinite. Once you have a general scheme you can vary the ingredients all you want maintaning the same effortless and time saving preparation.

As for pasta and rice, adding veggies is the only way to increase palatability without increasing calories excessily hence reducing satiaty massively.

At Wallmart they have those devices to cut veggies into cubes in a second and they're unexpensive.
Stir-fried diced veggies should be the main ingredients of a dish of rice or pasta.
Sincronize the time and you can cook both in the pot and water.
You have just to add a fat source, spices or parmesan and butter for the rice.
The best rice is basmati because it never become overcooked and is already flavoured per se.

Fish is the harder food to use because it's not easy to prepare, to cook properly, to make tasty and so on. The exception are shrimps

I suggest you learn some time learning basic food preparations because they're in my opinion the only solution. The more calories per 100 grams a food has the less satiating it is. The more satiating a food is on the other hand the easier is to get cravings and binge. Industrial foods is palatable because of all the additives and artificial flavours they put on it. When you switch from such foods to rice and chicken or a steak and a salad you get hugely disattisfied with your food. The solution is usually to add massive amount of dressing to make the food palatable (oils, salad dressing, butter, mayo) but it's a flawed approach. You just decrease the nutritious potential of your food, decrease the satiety and increase the calories.

Combining an hypocaloric satiating and an hypercaloric non-satiating foods together using better fats and spices to add palatability is the best way to have a satisfying interesting diet, maintain a caloric balance and if desired lose weight, be satiated and never suffer hunger pans and increase the nutritive potential of your diet with clear athletic, health, productivity and mood benefits.

permanentjaun

How much whole grains, fruits, and veggies are necessary? As I said, when I go to my parents on the weekends or eat out for lunch, I tend to eat better. Much more rounded meals.

Sjared

There's no standard amount.
An ideal diet would be 100% good healthy food.
But if 80% of the foods you eat are healthy and a 20% is less so, that's already a big improvement over the western diet which is making people so sick.
To know how much to eat you have two choices.
Either you eat as much healthy foods as needed to feel satiated but not bloated or either you calculated your caloric expenditure and try to match it with your foods.

Shadiyah

I would cut out all of the prepackaged foods and replace them with whole foods in as much of an unprocessed form possible. Try stir frying some veggies with chicken or fish, and then serving that over rice. Maybe some oatmeal with fruit in the morning? Salad and nuts for lunch?

The_Spaniard

dont eat top ramen, no nutritional value at all. The way they process there wheat is they take out pretty much anyhting nutritional and when you eat it, it just goes right through, and it has a crap load of salt too. Easy mac is alright try just making regular mac N cheese and buy some real cheese and put that in along with some lean ground beef. Really simple , also just go get some topperware and put the excess intneh fridge and it will actually be easier to eat than easy mac just put some in the microwave. I use to be kinda like you lazy to cook food, i still kinda am at times, but i make it easier by cooking more than i will ea ti that sitting and sotring it in the fridge for later consumption. Really try to find some easy recipes that you like and work with them get into a habbit of cooking for yourself, a couple months form now cooking will be nothing , easy etc. Make it a habbit. Your riding should incredibly improve. Also i cant sip gatorade while jsut at home theres too much salt for me i start gettin dehydrated. Try regular water or juice like said above. Also for the cereal cherios aint bad, Try hunny bunches of oats, or some type of whole grain cereal. Doesnt cherios have a whole grain version? There are tons of easy quick healthy recipes online, most will have the nutitional table along with them also.

ericgu

25-35 grams of fiber per day is a recommended amount. You can add it up based on what you eat, but I'd be surprised if you're over 10.

If you like books, Carmichael's "Food for fitness" is a good reference.

DataJunkie

Salsa is a nice way to get your veggies. Throw it on top of chicken or whatever suits your fancy.
Make your own and it gets even better. God I love salsa.

Machka 

1) Add raw fruit and veggies.
2) Lose the Ramen noodles, or use them occasionally rather than regularly.
3) Lose the Gatorade, you'll save money by just eating sugar cubes instead ... if you feel you need that much sugar in your diet.


Some sites of interest, which might answer your questions:


Try logging your food on FitDay:
https://www.fitday.com/
Run the reports and see where your nutrients are.

Have a browse in the Nutrition Data site:
https://www.nutritiondata.com/
Lots of good info.

Here's the Canadian Food Guide ... the new and improved version of what we were taught in school.
https://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-gu.../index-eng.php
More good info there!

Pedal Wench

toss some fresh spinach leaves into anything you cook. Your noodles, easy mac, pasta sauce, whatever. They cook down to nothing and add lots of nutrients and fiber. Frozen chopped broccoli in the mac n cheese. Shredded cabbage (sold next to the bagged lettuce as 'cole slaw mix') into a can of soup.

DataJunkie

Spinach salads are awesome. I like turkey burgers and throw fresh spinach on it as well.

permanentjaun

What about all that electrolyte stuff that we lose when we sweat? That's primarily why I put the gatorade in the diet. I bonked on my tour, started drinking powerade and felt 100 times better. From then I realized the importance of sports drinks.

Does sugar help me produce all the electrolytes I need?

Machka 

Bonking is low blood sugar. The powerade has sugar in it, which raised your blood sugar, and so you felt better. Nothing to do with electrolytes. You could have eaten a chocolate chip cookie and had the same thing going for you.

And sugar has nothing to do with electrolytes either. Electrolytes are minerals mainly consisting of sodium and potassium, but also including a few others like calcium and magnesium.

You said you are drinking gatorade at home "around the house" ... nothing like drinking pure sugar with a dash of salt in it for a casual beverage!! You might as well save yourself the money and throw a bunch of sugar cubes in water. Or better yet ... stick to plain water if you'd rather not rot your teeth and put on weight.

On a ride your sports drink can be useful, mainly for hydration, but also for energy and electrolytes to a small degree. But you can also get your energy and electrolytes from food. For example, salted almonds are loaded with electrolytes ... and they provide some energy. Dried apricots are on the top of the list for potassium ... and sugars for energy.

DataJunkie

Endurolytes by hammer nutrition is good stuff.

The_Spaniard

like someone said gatorade has its place, tis great to drink during workouts, races. but for me at least theres too much salt in it for just drinking it when you hanging at the house or something jsut drink water and juice, save the gatorade for what its made for workouts and racing. And machka Gatorade has its place , works way better than taking sugar cubes and water when your working out haha

Machka 

There are much better sports drink choices out there than Gatorade. Personally I prefer the ones with maltodextrin ... a complex carb ... over something like Gatorade which essentially has table sugar in it. First ingredient in Gatorade ... sucrose.

DataJunkie

For me gatorade = severe acid reflux even with the 300 mg of GERD meds I take each day.
It also tastes horrible. There are plenty of better tasting and more effective electrolyte replacement drinks.
*cough* HEED *cough*

Machka 

Drinking Gatorade makes me feel like I'm growing mold in my mouth ... my tongue, teeth, and everything get a really fuzzy feeling. And then after several hours of it, I start developing mouth sores.

In addition to that, if I take a bite of an energy bar and try to wash it down with Gatorade, I get this really nasty taste, and my mouth goes all tingly. Not a good thing. Before I discovered HEED, I had to make a point of washing my energy bars down with water, so that there wasn't even a particle of them left in my mouth, before I could drink any Gatorade.

MrCrassic 

Machka, have you tried diluting the Gatorade with water? For me, even when I'm riding, I can't stand drinking Gatorade (or any mainstream sports drink) straight. I need to dilute it in at least 50% water.

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MrCrassic 

When my financial situation gets a little better, I'm going to try and get some HEED. I would like to have an alternative drink for when I ride. Right now, I use Powerade distilled in water, which works okay.

Just in case you thought that was horrible, before that I used orange juice distilled in water (!!!).

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