One of my best friends is a 300+ pounder. I don’t even know, maybe 350 or more.
I’ve seen him go to physical trainers and get an exercise routine designed for him. Easy to read, easy to follow.
I’ve seen him go to a dietician and get an easy to read, easy to follow meal plan for a month at a time.
Neither worked. Asking people to take control for you and tell you what to do because you can’t do it yourself just isn’t going to work. Not with anyone struggling with weigh loss I’ve ever known.
What does work, as evidenced by testimonials in this thread, is change. Add exercise, eliminate certain foods, change the foods and the amounts you eat. Do all of the above.
But just asking for recipes is asking for someone else to do it for you, and that’s just not going to work.
I know I’m hurting feelings, so this will be the last I participate in this thread. But damn it, I’ve got obese family and friends and I hate watching them find ways to pass control over to someone else. “Tell me what to eat. Tell me how to exercise. Tell me how to control my life.”
We can’t. You have to learn how to control your own life, and learn to like it the way it is. Salads don’t taste like shit you know, and walking and running aren’t punishment. Dessert after every meal wasn’t proscribed in the bible and as far as I know, it’s not a food group on the nutritional pyramid. I lost my mom ten-twenty years too early due to obesity and all its accompanying problems.
I hate to sound like a broken record (I’ve mentioned this several times already on the board), but I started food journaling at The Daily Plate on www.livestrong.com on October 1. I’ve lost 12.5 lbs. I’ve tried food journaling before, but never online. This is so easy! Almost every food I’ve tracked has already been in the database. I’ve learned how many calories my body needs to have on a daily basis, and now I try to get the most value I can out of those calories. I don’t do well on regimented plans, because invariably, there will be something on the plan that I don’t like. The Daily Plate also gets you thinking about portion sizes. I had cheesecake today, but a small slice. I had a grilled cheese, but only one. The biggest change that I have made is not drinking calories anymore than necessary. Water is the mainstay beverage.
Go in there and put in the foods that you ate today and start from there. I don’t think that having a plan for what you want to eat is gluttonous at all. I think it’s smart. Without a plan, when I go to the grocery store, I not only overspend, but I also put things in my cart that maybe aren’t as nutritionally sound as they need to be. Using Livestrong’s TDP has made me more aware about what I am putting in my body for fuel.
lev, nobody’s asking for us to do it for them. The OP is just asking us to help find tools to make it simpler. And I totally understand wanting tools to make something simpler, because the harder and more complicated and bigger pain in the ass you make something, the more people want to cut corners. If you can streamline the process and make doing things right simpler…well it helps reduce the urge to just say “aw, fuck it, I’m not screwing around with this garbage.”
Personally, I like Crockpot cooking for healthier stuff that’s really convenient. Spend ten minutes cutting stuff up in the morning, and you’ve got food pretty much ready when you come home at dinner time. Pretty much anything that needs to cook low and slow can be done in the 'pot–soups, stews, beans, roasted meats. And a lot of those recipes make good leftovers for freezing or packing for lunches. Being able to just grab a container out of the cold box and nuke it gets rid of the temptation to nuke a processed dinner or run through the drive-through.
I’m also a big fan of recipes where you can use tonight’s leftovers in tomorrow’s dinner, or where you can do multiple meals’ prepwork at the same time. Roasting a chicken and having salads or quesadillas the next night, that sort of thing. If you keep a big bowl of cut up salad stuff in the fridge, you can just throw in whatever leftover meat you got on hand, a little cheese, a few nuts, whatever fruit you have on hand–healthy, filling dinner in 5 minutes.
I’ve also heard good things about freezer cooking–you make great big batches of something and freeze meal-sized portions so you can just warm them up and go on. I’ve not really tried it on a big scale, but I can see how it would make life a lot simpler.
I ask for healthy recipe ideas all the time. Of all the things I make on a regular basis, I didn’t dream up any of it from scratch. When I started, I had no idea how to find healthy recipes or how to modify existing recipes to make them healthier. You have to start somewhere.
Here’s one of my web pages, which shows a rough outline of what I eat. It’s mostly vegan, but I eat small amounts of fish and skinless white meat poultry. When I do eat fish or poultry, the rest of the meal is vegan, including all ingredients used in the preparation of the fish or poultry. These recipes are under the headings ‘pesca-vegan’ and ‘pollo-vegan’. Some people would consider these designations to be oxymorons (which they are), but I use them anyway for lack of a better nomenclature. Thinking in these terms allows for easy transitioning to a completely vegan diet if and when it becomes desired. As you can see from the sample menus, fish and poultry are only eaten for dinner. I think a happy medium can be achieved by eating fish two nights a week, poultry two nights a week, and selecting a completely vegan option the other three. Eventually I’ll eliminate the poultry and just eat a small portion of oily fish twice a week, which will then become my only concession towards eating animal-derived food. This is a very sensible and sound approach to permanent health management—one that a person can easily adopt as a lifelong pattern of eating. At least try some of the recipes—I’m sure you’ll like them.
I went vegan. I didn’t do it for moral reasons (morals? I don’t need no stinkin’ morals!) so I don’t freak out if occasionally I want something full of animally goodness. For example, tonight I’m going to eat turnip greens and it has fat back in it. I’ll just need to work extra hard at the gym tomorrow and be more strict for a few days. But for the most part (say, 99% of the time) I eat vegan. I highly recommend it and if you want a piece of cheese every once in a while it’s not like it will kill you.
I know what you mean about it being a pain in the ass. Here are my suggestions:
start off slow, by buying 100% whole wheat bread and tortilla wraps. Buy some Vegannaise and some Ener-G Egg replacer. Make your own peanut butter using just a little bit of honey for sweetness but without all the added sugar and crap that goes with it. Do all of this in bulk so you don’t have to think about weighing the healthy choices with every meal. Make your house a place where you can pick up whatever is there to eat without worrying about what is in it.
Here is a soup I make that I eat alot. Keep in mind, I know it’s not restaurant worthy but it’s good for warming you up and filling your belly and it is cheap and easy as shit to make:
Frozen or canned vegetables with no potatoes. Canned tomatoes. Spicy V8. Heat. Add spices - I go through a spice rack and add whatever smells like it would taste good. I’ve done a spicy curry and cumin mixture, I’ve done a basil and oregano mixture. Depends on what I’m in the mood for.
Heat it up.
You are done.
When I want more heft I will add some whole grain brown rice - it’s a pain to make so I make a whole big bag and break it up into smaller servings in the refrigerator. I think of it as my human kibble.
I have other stuff like this if you are interested.
We share recipes in CS all the time. I was talking about a behavioral pattern I’ve seen. It doesn’t apply to everyone.
Some people ask for recipes to learn. Some people ask for recipes in the hope one of them will be good enough they won’t scarf a dozen doughnuts afterwards. You can’t have the doughnuts, and there’s just no other way around that.
On preview, one of the biggest guys I’ve known, a coworker - even bigger than 300+ guy, was a vegetarian. You wouldn’t believe what he could do at the all-you-can-eat buffet with salad, bread, stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc.
ShelliBean, check the calories in that tortilla. It can easily be as much, or more, than bread.
Post away; I’m always looking for new ideas. And try my ‘Mock Egg Salad’–you’ll be astonished at how good it is. Most people think it’s actually egg salad until I tell them otherwise.
I checked and it is the same as one slice of bread (only comparing what I had on hand - which is not my usualy brand anyway that may very well be much higher in calories). However, I have been eating three where I would only have two slices of bread at a time.
Well damn.
I agree with you about the vegetarianism. That is why I prefer vegan - not as much cheese, sour cream, egg-based “meat replacement” foods and the like. Mostly I stick to either no salt added canned or frozen vegetables and fresh vegs like squash, carrots and tomatoes for dipping (hummus, which is not the best for you) or grilled squash and zucchini. Beans are my downfall, but at least I get good fiber. I have no hard and fast rules - but I have gotten to where when I do decide to eat meat I get nauseated. But long story shor (too late!) yes, Virginia, there are fat vegetarians.
Washoe - I bookmarked your page. I will post recipes when I can (about to do the kids + bath thing). Keep in mind I live mostly off soups and fake cheese quesadillas so I’ll see if I can’t come up with some of the things I cook that aren’t so, well, stupid.
I have to recommend the book “Eat to Live”. The basic gist of which is to ignore the protein vs carbs diets and instead pick foods that have a high nutrition per calorie ratio. This makes losing weight basically automatic but without the loss of energy that comes with just limiting overall food intake or carbs.
