**I Have Hippos In My Garden ** is looking for attention, which she’s getting. I was the same way.
Anyhow, to contribute:
Breakfast: 1/4 c. Flax and Oatmeal with 6 oz yogurt. Coffee.
Snack: 2 hardboiled eggs.
Lunch: Cup of leek soup, egg or 3 oz turkey, piece of fruit.
Snack: Salt-free cottage cheese and fruit or veggie.
Dinner: 3 or 4 oz. meat, 1/2 cup carbs, 1 cup veggies.
Snack: Pumpkin seeds, or maybe some ice cream or an oatmeal cookie. Tea with honey.
Lots of water.
Well, don’t take this as a representative sample of Dopers or even Western cultures in general. If it were representative you’d see a lot more “Baconator for breakfast, Big Mac, large fries and 32 oz. of Mountain Dew for lunch and a whole Domino’s meat lovers pizza for dinner. And a pint of Hagen Daz.”
BWAH! I was wondering if anyone would post a 6000 calorie daily diet including 4 cheese bugers, fries, shakes, Domino’s, KFC, deep fat fried pork hocks, etc…
I’ve seen the picture threads on here before!
Not my daily diet but here’s what I had yesterday.
Breakfast: One glazed doughnut, 3 cups of coffee.
Lunch/dinner: A bag and a half of movie popcorn (one bag at one movie, half a bag at another)
Glass of white wine
Some portion of a “small” (32 oz!) Mr. Pibb
A couple of Dove chocolates
A few strawberries. Let’s say, six.
People who who know or suspect they are eating badly are highly unlikely to even read a thread entitled “What is you daily diet?”, much less share their actual intake. People who are trying to lose weight and thinking actively about their diet, on the other hand, are very likely to post their diet, not necessarily mentioning any slip-ups. All of ther responses here read to me like people who are actively trying to either maintain or lose weight.
In short, I have Hippos, the responses in this thread are likely to be an underestimate of the “average” daily diet. I don’t know what your motivation in starting this thread was, but I wonder if reading the responses is helpful or healthy for you.
Yesterday’s diet:
Cereal for breakfast.
Poutine (fries with cheese and gravy) for lunch.
Pizza with bacon, zuchinni, and feta for dinner. Oh, and garlic cheese bread.
Flourless chocolate cake for snack.
Popcorn.
Yesterday was a Nutritional Write-Off day- kid was sick, no one wanted to cook, and we’d already had Vietnamese and Chinese take-out recently. We didn’t eat Baconators, but we came close.
I’m a really picky eater, I don’t enjoy most fruits or vegetables…but I try to eat then when I can.
Breakfast: either 3 scrambled eggs and 2 pieces wheat toast or cold cereal - usually honey nut Cheerios, Frosted Flakes, etc. Love my sugary cereal. Always a big glass of skim milk. Trying to eat less eggs lately though. Sometimes, often when I am staying with my boyfriend, we will make pancakes or waffles or muffins, or go to Panera for a bagel and a muffie. That is like once a month though, maybe twice.
Lunch: I don’t have a normal schedule right now so I don’t really eat lunch. I eat breakfast after 9am
Snacks: Hidden Valley granola bars, 100 calorie packs, “real fruit” fruit snacks, I like granny smith apples pre-sliced but they are hard to find (eating the whole ones is so messy but I do it anyway sometimes)
Dinner: lots of turkey burgers with 2% american cheese, low fat chicken or turkey lunch meat with colby jack, always mustard too. Usually baked chips or pretzels, maybe a 100 cal pack of cookies for dessert. Usually skim milk. Found out I like sugar snap peas so started eating those. I also like chicken breasts, steak, cheesy pasta, bread, potatoes of various kinds, corn, seafood. When I go out to dinner I eat pretty bad, but I don’t go out that often anymore.
I try to drink a lot of water. I also have a Mountain Dew problem and diet soda is completely disgusting to me so I drink all those calories. This past week I had about ten beers, but that won’t continue forever, I’m only 22, and it was Superbowl so I had an extra night out. 
I used to eat a lot worse than this. Pizza, toasted ravioli, chicken fingers (all dipped in ranch dressing!) pop tarts, bagels and cream cheese, etc every day. I still eat those things sometimes, I just try to eat a more normal portion in comparison to the ridiculous ones they serve in restaurants. It worked, I lost 20 pounds last year. I just learned to eat as well as I can but also indulge myself a bit when I think I need to so I don’t crave really bad shit constantly. And learned to get my ass in the gym.
I work out a few times a week, but I don’t really pay too much attention to my diet. I would if I wanted to get in prime shape, or get my body fat into single digits. I’m pretty happy with where I am so far, so I haven’t made the effort for a detailed diet yet. I managed to lose 10 kg in a year and a half with just exercise and occasional checks to make sure my food portions weren’t wishful thinking.
I don’t eat a lot of fatty or especially sugary foods, I’ve got a general idea of what constitutes a reasonable amount, and I eat a lot of vegetables. I haven’t weighed food since my last spot-check about six months back where I found that I eat somewhere between 2,200 and 2,500 calories a day. I’m a guy, 176 cm (5’9") holding steady at about 75 kg (165 lbs.) for the last few months, body fat in the low teens. I’m slowly creeping up in muscle mass, but my body fat probably hasn’t changed much. Obviously since my weight has maintained, the fat loss is about in equilibrium with the small muscle gains. For bigger changes I’m going to have to work out at least one more day a week (average 3 days right now) and probably change my diet a bit, as in actually tracking and planning my meals.
I don’t eat the same things all the time, but I try to have a little bit of protein with every meal or snack. I eat between 4 and 6 times a day, but I don’t eat large portions most of the time. I’m rarely hungry or actually full. I drink mostly tea or water during the day, with a very occasional soda when I feel like it.
Today I had some yoghurt with sweetened dried cranberries and half a sliced banana; homemade egg McMuffin (1 egg lightly fried, couple slices of ham, on English muffin, ketchup for flavoring); and a glass of apple juice for breakfast. Snack was a left-over slice of thin-crust pizza with various toppings. Lunch was sukiyaki-don (pork and vegetables boiled in soy-based sauce served over rice). I’ll have a snack when I go home. Yesterday it was half an apple with some peanut butter. Day before it was a few carrot and celery sticks with a couple pieces of jerky. I’m planning to have a baked chicken breast, salad with vinaigrette dressing, and something else on the side for dinner. That’s a pretty typical day.
I might have alcohol a couple of times a week, about two to three glasses of wine or beer. I occasionally have dessert, usually a small portion of ice cream, yoghurt with fruit, or something my wife baked. She’s been trying out muffin recipes and banana bread recently.
If I were “using” I would come in and admit it as a way to punish myself in some attempt to wake up, but since I was able to rationalize my behavior, I doubt it would have changed anything. It would have looked something like
Bfast two sausage egg and cheese McMuffins, two hash browns
Lunch medium pepperoni and extra cheese pizza
Dinner pasta with fatty sauce
Dessert box of Little Debbie cakes
It still sounds pretty good.
Thats okay. I didn’t mention anything about my problems in the OP because I didn’t want to sway the responses in any kind of way. I realised posting my diet in a later post was a mistake in that it did draw attention to myself, but then it was too late to do anything about it and I thought it might bring out an interesting discussion anyway.
I was encouraged by my therapist to think about ‘‘what normal people eat’’ (her words) and compare what I eat in comparison. I find I still very easily fall into the eating disorder bubble and think there is nothing unusual about my diet and have no clue about how anyone else eats, and so this was the closest thing I could think of other than actually going out on the street and asking people. Also, and I don’t know if you found this, but any nutritionist and eating disorder recovery book print a very standard diet and I was wondering how realistic this is. And as most eating disorder books etc are written by people who have either had an eating disorder or work in psychiatry I’m not sure how objective the opinions on what is right for a person to have are.
I didn’t think it would be particularly triggering for me, and it hasn’t been. Probably because it is a message board on a computer and that forms some kind of barrier for me.
Yes, alice_in_wonderland put it very well. It wasn’t what you said that was insensitive it was that you came across as having a hard tone. It didn’t upset me, I just found the tone in your voice made it seem as though you still have issues that are maybe easily triggered by someone else with similar issues? And so because of that it did feel a little condescending. And also because I don’t feel as though I have wasted my life because of the eating disorder so far, and I am relieved about that. I’m in my mid twenties, have had problems since I was 11, but I have a good degree in Psychology, travelled around most of Asia, Europe, lots of America, Africa, got one of the best college results in the country, have a lovely boyfriend, a brilliant family, an amazing group of friends, a job and am pretty financially secure. I feel I have lived my life pretty well so far…it would just be a lot better without an eating disorder and all the crap that comes with that.
I’m not sure whether the responses are ‘healthy or unhealthy’ but it has been interesting to read. I was wondering how much diet varies between different cultures, age etc, and actually I don’t think it does that much. It felt like pretty repetitive reading really. Only a few people’s diets stood out in some kind of way. Like I said before, my motivation for starting the thread was from talking about my diet with my therapist and her trying to persuade me that i’m stuck in a bubble.
One thing that is interesting is that it feels a lot more healthy and encouraging (in terms of changing my diet) reading something like this than something out of a self help book or a menu sheet from the dietician. Maybe because there isn’t any pressure here, or maybe because on the whole the responses have been written without an undercurrent of ‘to get better you have to eat like this…’. My university dissertation looked at the motivation in recovery, and I found that after someone recognises they have an eating disorder motivation to recover can decrease because any form of help doesn’t take them outside of their bubble they are stuck in. The eating disorder becomes their identity and they live through it.
I was thinking about that, and wondering if it EVER possible to find a norm with anything (I don’t think so). However, the times I’ve been in America I have only eaten in restuarants and the serving sizes are really different to the UK, and so I was wondering if this is just a restaurant thing or not. It made me wonder how an American ate at home.
I ummed and errrd about responding to this comment because any response I give could just sound wrong. But when I saw it I sighed and kind of laughed. I wasn’t looking for attention, to start with I was asking a general question that had no relation to any kind of problem. I didn’t even put I had an eating disorder. But if I had had some other problem…like if I was a compulsive eater and trying to recover from that, and so posted the same question, would you have said the same thing? There is something about anorexia that always makes people jump to the conclusion of ‘attention seeker’. Sometimes it is about that with some people. And somethings I do are because of neediness, but this was because I was interested in what other people ate. Nothing more. Everybody is an individual and has their own reasons and causes for their problems, don’t always jump to that conclusion because it was that way for you.
If you were just interested in what people ate in an effort to aid your recovery, you wouldn’t have posted what you ate.
Compulsive overeaters (fodd addicts) are told there’s no such thing as food addiction and they are just using an excuse to overeat.
So, I have Hippos In my Garden, I’d love to hear about what changes you’ve made, or are planning on making, to your diet, in light of the responses you’ve had here?
I hope that this isn’t too much of a derail but I went through a similar thing once except that I collapsed from exhaustion before I did any real long-lasting damage. I was struggling to get myself to eat 500 calories a day also. Do you see other people of average weight as being overweight too? I didn’t, so there were a lot of ‘tricks’ that helped me to regain perspective and some weight back. Of course I gained too much back and now have to lose a few pounds again. I’m not sure that I’ll ever be normal about food which is why I stick to the regimented diet. It leaves some room for treats and exceptions but it doesn’t let me go under 1100 calories a day when I get impatient.
I’m in my 30’s, slim, living the single guy life.
Usually nothing for breakfast, maybe a drink of 100% fruit juice or water. Sometimes a Subway cookie.
For lunch on weekdays usually a Subway sub, ham or turkey with tomatoes, olives, green peppers, sometimes cucumbers, and mayo. Usually a Dr. Pepper but I’m trying to switch to water.
Dinner of course varies a lot. Pizza, cereal, scrambled eggs, Hamburger Helper, or maybe a chicken sandwich from McDonalds. To drink normally a soda, but I’m switching to fruit juice or water.
This is where I am, too. I used to have an ED, then I gained too much back, got pregnant and didn’t lose enough after. Then I found out I have a cholesterol problem, but it can be managed with diet & exercise. So now I eat to stay healthy and feel good - I was given another problem to solve (cholesterol instead of being fat, or perceiving myself as such), so I shifted my focus.
It’s scary losing weight when you have a history of ED (though I’m sure it is without it - I wouldn’t know because I’d been on a diet since I was 8 or 9), so you have to watch yourself fairly closely and walk that fine line without getting too weird about it.
Anyway, good for the OP for seeking help and may you get to a point someday soon when food isn’t an obsession or a game of control that you play against yourself.
Seeing as none of us in this thread are Hippos’ therapist I think it’s perfectly ok if she elects NOT to discuss her treatment with us.
Even if she started a thread about it and got everyone curious. She doesn’t owe us anything.
Oh absolutely, I thought I made that clear by saying I’d ‘love to hear’ rather than demanding she tell us, but perhaps it wasn’t as clear as it could have been.
Breakfast: Either 6 pack of Dolly Madison Donettes, or 3 Scrambled eggs with a lot of salsa and 2 slices buttered toast.
Lunch: 3 packs Nature Valley granola bars (oatmeal and honey), and 1 pint of cinnamon tea.
Supper: Lasagna TV dinner.
Midnight snack: 6 ritz crackers and peanut butter and milk.
Variety is for chumps.