There are lots of dieting threads on the Dope and we even have a group on SparkPeople, which is a free and very useful weight loss website. It makes one mistake that every other dieting program I’ve ever seen makes, though. When it provides menus for you, they are completely unrealistic from the shopping-and-leftovers point of view.
They’ll have completely unrelated breakfasts and lunches every day, and their “handy” shopping guides never take into account the possibility that you’d want to be preparing the dinners for the whole family–or worse, that there’s going to be a 23 more fruit-juice-sweetened whole-grain muffins that you baked, than they’re telling you to eat. The lists always look something like this:
28 almonds
1 oz mozzarella cheese
1 cup strawberries
etc etc etc
What is UP with that nonsense? Why can’t dieting websites glom on to the fact that ease of preparation is key to adherence? And why don’t they pay attention to all those studies that suggest having the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day is a really, really good weight loss/maintenance strategy? Arrrgh.
This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the
power of computers:
Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct
the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a
minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The
results are that one should eat each day:
1/2 chicken
1 egg
1 glass of skim milk
27 heads of lettuce.
-- Rev. Adrian Melott
Well, for me it is because I am diabetic, and 100 grams of grapes = 14 or whatever it ways on my chart. I need to portion specific amounts at specific times - so I may have a listing of 2 tbsp hummus, 6 mini carrots and 14 grapes as a snack. I may have a meal that is one quarter cup mashed potatoes, 1 cup of cooked cabbage and 3 oz corned beef.
It isnt that they want to be a pain in the ass, it is they are very careful about portion control. Most people know absolutely nothing about portion control. The average bagel is actually 3 or 4 portions of carb. A giant muffin is essentially what I would eat for all day.
I think the complaint is that the menu will then ask for other grocery items completely unrelated to those for the rest of the week, such that you need to buy extra of everything and will have wilted unused fruits and veggies by the end of the week. They don’t take into account real-world food container/volume sizes.
Yes, this drives me crazy too! My favorite is a lunch plan calling for 1/4 of an avocado. Yes, Diet Plan, I’m made of money and wish to use small percentages of unstorable produce each day.
Also, many plans seem to think you have access to a full kitchen at lunch time. Sorry, dieticians, most people can’t make themselves an egg white omelet and a fruit smoothie in the break room at work.
Usually when I do well with nutrition, I have one or two types of breakfast each week. I make a whole pot of grits or oatmeal and nuke leftovers. If I feel bored I’ll switch to toast with peanut butter or something for a day. I also learn how much of each ingredient I can use and be in calorie range, which makes life easier. Who wants to shop for 7 different breakfasts, work like hell measuring, chopping, and cooking each morning, then throw out mouldering leftover ingredients at the end of the week?
Yes, that’s my problem. I have no problem eating 2 tablespoons of hummus every day for a week, because that will pretty much use up the container by the end of the week. I have a problem with eating 2 tablespoons of hummus once.
I complicate things by not having a sweet tooth (sorry): I’d love to find a diet generator or book which doesn’t insist in adding sweets/fruits (the sweeter, the better) to every menu But yeah, “one slice watermelon” - ok, and what would I be supposed to do with the rest of the 11kg watermelon? There’s a period when those are the small ones!
It is up to you to use the building blocks of the menu planner to make it work. If you see that on monday it calls for hummus, then you need to match up with more hummus during the rest of the week, or let the kids use hummus as a snack.
I just buy the little hummus single serve pucks at BJs. Wastage is not a problem then.
And if you OK a smoothie and an omelet without facilities to make them, you are nuts - though you can make egg white omelet in a microwave, you know … many breakrooms do have microwaves.
May I recommend One Touch Gold’s menu planning site? You do not have to be diabetic to register for it, it is free, and it can go single serving, whole meal or family size meal. You can tag menu items you like, and you can shuffle stuff around before printing out the menu plan, shopping list, and recipes.
That’s totally news to me. I’d think you’d want to prevent people from getting bored. I mean, we’re omnivores, aren’t we? Isn’t eating a variety of foods sorta built-in to our nature?
There was also some article I read (last year?) that was about how people who eat the same thing every day are generally happier individuals.
But IIRC, the article didn’t specify whether eating the same thing every day is what made them into happy people, or if they were already happy people and that was how happy people ate.
ETA: BTW, I have the same frustration generally with recipes. Like sliced water chestnuts come in 1/2 cup cans, and the recipe requires 1/3 cup. My wife just messes with recipies so it all fits.
Depending on which diet you are following this isn’t always possible. Some give rigid breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack menus for each day of the week for a few weeks and call for very small amounts of ingredients that only come in large quantities.
I agree it is a big problem so I have my own solution to it which is to pick the healthy meals I like from the several million diets I have tried and stick with them, that way I know that I am going to like what I am eating each day and I know it is healthy which makes it easy to stick to. I don’t buy into food-combining or magic ingredients or eating different coloured foods on different days, I just stick to calories in/out as the most reliable way to maintain weight loss and try to think of it as a permanent change to a healthier eating style rather than a time-limited diet that will end.
But yeah, “one slice watermelon” - ok, and what would I be supposed to do with the rest of the 11kg watermelon? There’s a period when those are the small ones!