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Nutrition Am i eating healthy

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Gary W

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I have 250ml oat milk and 150g granola for breakfast every morning, normally workout before.
Thing is thats 120g carbs in one meal i have 250ish by the end of the day.

I know theres a lot of sugar in granola but at end of the day im at about 60/65g which i dont think is too bad is it?
Im 37 180lbs male

Totals at the end of the day would be about
140/150protien 250ish carbs 100ish fat
30ish fibre
Total of about 2700 cals

Is that reasonable?
I find it really hard to eat super healthy cost wise and my job driving up to 1000 miles a week
 
I have 250ml oat milk and 150g granola for breakfast every morning, normally workout before.
Thing is thats 120g carbs in one meal i have 250ish by the end of the day.

I know theres a lot of sugar in granola but at end of the day im at about 60/65g which i dont think is too bad is it?
Im 37 180lbs male

Totals at the end of the day would be about
140/150protien 250ish carbs 100ish fat
30ish fibre
Total of about 2700 cals

Is that reasonable?
I find it really hard to eat super healthy cost wise and my job driving up to 1000 miles a week
Hey Gary...
You didn't give us a lot to work with here. Some other good things to know would be...
  • Your height
  • Your % body fat if known
  • What are your eating goals for? Weight loss? Gain? Performance?
  • What else do you eat?
  • Do you have any dietary restrictions?
  • What type and volume of training do you do?
In general terms eating quality food trumps quantity in most cases.

And often times yes, good high quality food can be pricey, and difficult to find 'on the road'
 
Hi, thanks
Well i pretty much eat the same monday to friday bar dinner which is what ever the other half cooks normally meat,potato veg

Workout or stretch

brekfast
250ml oat milk
150g granola
2x fish oil caps

Mid morning
80g chicken mayo tortilla wrap
20g lacto free cheese
20g daek choc

Lunch
80g chicken mayo wrap
20g lacto free cheese
50g peanuts
1 Apple

Dinner
Meat potato veg

Late evening
3 whole eggs
2 egg whites

Thats a typical day mon-friday.

Im 5'11/6ft tall

Workout 3x a week at mo just got into kettlebell bodyweight circuit's
Before that 3 day push pull legs at a gym

Guess as im 37 now i train more to be healthy and keep up with the kids.
I try and eat at around maintance hoping ill drop a little fat guessing around (15%) and gain some muscle at the same time

Dietry restrictions would be i just found out im lactose intolerant so ive had to cut milk and all my protein shakes out of my diet, which to be honest was a good thing as i cant really afford it anymore lol
 
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You could be doing worse. Assuming you're not hitting up too much gas station food on the side;). I guess the question is "are you happy where you're at?" and apparently the answer is "no, or at least not quite."

There's plenty of different things you could try, but overhauling your diet can be more trouble than it's worth.

My first suggestion would be to play around with meal timing. A little time restricted feeding, i.e. you don't eat in the morning.

It would improve your insulin sensitivity, which would in turn improve all sorts of long term health markers. It could also tune up some other hormone levels and help drop some fat. There's a nice bonus of your body learning how to fend for itself without food, which does some pretty neat things with regard to hunger and mental clarity. Make sure to roll over you breakfast calories to lunch and/or dinner, so you don't start to drop muscle mass. One of the nice things about intermittent fasting/time restricted feeding is that it does what it does without caloric restriction. You still get to eat until you're satisfied. You just eat less often.

Maybe try pushing your breakfast and midmorning snack back until you're skipping them altogether. Don't try to force things too fast. Just postpone eating for the first time each day until you've been hungry for 20 or 30 minutes, and work back. Don't worry about "refueling" after your morning workout; that's more myth than truth.

Gaining muscle while you burn fat is definitely doable, but would likely require some pretty significant dietary changes.

Those are my thoughts. I have more, but I guess it all depends on what you want to do.
 
Hi thanks for that, i have tried IF before as it goes. Think i had a 8hr eating window if i remember correctly.
I liked it but got a stinking cold after a week and put it down to IF so i stopped.

I might give it another go, i could litrally just take my cereal to work and have it for lunch instead.

I defo dont eat gas station food, only on rare occasions!

Guess im trying to lose fat and lean out a bit but without loosing weight as already skinny. I know thats not really possible, so thats probably why ive been stalling and stay as i am for so long really.
Just not really sure how to reach that goal, and as im getting older its getting harder to gain muscle mass and stay injury free!
 
Interesting isn't it ? Do you think it's healthy ?
Show your diet to a knight of the keto army and they'll choke on their coconut coffee. Show that to a gluten intolerant and they'll cough up their ridiculously expensive piece of seeded cardboard. A LCHF peep will question the need for diabetes promoting sugar hits in the morning. Those carnivores will chew on their dinosaur drumsticks and laugh at your weakness and those vegans? Well they'll hunt you down, paint your house red and place a car bomb in the boot of your car as you set off to work, detonating via mobile whilst eating a mung bean and quinoa salad in a nearby vegan cafe - one less meat eating savage populates the planet.
What's a healthy diet these days? I've no idea. It's so heavily loaded with beliefs and radicalised viewpoints.
I'd chuck in more green things but you know I really won't judge you nor beat you with asparagus until you submit to my ideology. And, where's the wine?
Looks like you have a balanced food intake, to me, give or take. Moderation is the new radical.
 
Haha good points well made, good to know im not going drastically wrong though!

Interestingly today I thought I would try intermittent fasting I normally have my breakfast about 7 a.m. I just thought I would have it when I was hungry and that was about 12:30 p.m.!
 
@ali being as perceptive as ever. Indeed, balance probably lies somewhere militant mung bean consumption and chest-beating carnivory.

I defo dont eat gas station food, only on rare occasions!
Good deal; Cheetos, Snickers, and Rock Stars are the downfall of many a well-intentioned traveler.


Interestingly today I thought I would try intermittent fasting I normally have my breakfast about 7 a.m. I just thought I would have it when I was hungry and that was about 12:30 p.m.!
Nice! I always try to tell people to work with their body when they do any kind of IF. Pushing too hard too fast can really make the whole experience pretty unpleasant. External stressors can affect your ability to fast comfortably as well. During days of excessive stress or inadequate recovery (think sleep deprivation the night before) the extra stress of fasting can sometimes be a little much. Like any potent tool, there is a bit of a learning curve that goes with it.
 
So if i decide to give intermittent fasting ago it dosent necessarily have to be low carb?

I can still eat what i have been just in a 8hr window for example?
 
So if i decide to give intermittent fasting ago it dosent necessarily have to be low carb?
No. While I'm personally a fan of low carb, I did a few months of higher carb eating mixed with IF and it worked fine. I think the IF allows you to spend enough time burning body fat that your body doesn't "forget" how to do it, which would be a concern for someone eating more frequent meals. Any extra carbs you eat will get stored as fat and used the next day.

For the sake of simplicity I would recommend just eating more of what you eat for lunch and dinner. That being said, as long as you stick to things that are more "real food" and not so much "food products," you can't go too wrong. I think the oat milk, tortilla (from the wrap), and chocolate are the only processed foods I would be cautious about. Maybe the granola, depending on what's in it. But again, you're already eating them and you know how you're responding to them, so for now I would just introduce the IF and see what happens.
 
Yeah ok i will do just that for now, i would like to drop the granola but its 650 cals i struggle to replace
i have tried recently to lower my carbs as i sit all day i dont think i really need 250g carbs a day, would be happier around 100-150
The problem i have is keeping withing our weekley food budget as a family of 5 it can be expensive as it is!

I struggle to find cheap ish foods for low carb that suit my life style, cant heat things up in the van etc
 
Actually, i tried a little while ago to lower my carbs just found what i ate on my fitness pal

Breakfast
Fish oil caps
3 eggs 2 egg whites
Coconut oil butter coffee
1 haas avacado

Lunch same as above
Chicken tortillas x 2
Dark choc 20g
Lactofree cheese 40g
Peanuts 50g
Apple

Dinner whatever she cooks

Late snack
Mattersons pork sausage 65g
100g green peas
10g butter

That was about 140 protien 150 carbs 160 fat
 
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I struggle to find cheap ish foods for low carb
That's trouble, isn't it. This isn't really a nutrition suggestion, but I recommend looking at mygrocerydeals.com. You put in your location and what you're looking for (beef, eggs, avocados, etc.), and it pulls the sales from the cooperating stores in that area (which is usually most of them).

I'm eating a lot of beef right now (almost all steak), and I never pay more than $3/pound. You can find pork and chicken for even less. I know meat tends to be the large part of the grocery bill, so you can probably do yourself a solid by stocking up on meat every couple weeks, when a sale goes on. You might have to re-wrap it with plastic because meat doesn't freeze as well in the foam trays, but that's easy enough to do.

I know a lot of people don't like cold boiled eggs or cold meat, but those are my usual on-the-go foods.

Like I said before, if you want to cut down on the carbs, more power to you. You'll probably lean out better that way, and if you replace the carbs with [mostly] protein you're more likely to push your muscle mass in the right direction. I'm just always wary of encouraging people to make a lot of changes at once, although you seem to have a pretty good command of your situation.
 
For a cheaper low carb approach, which is more or less how I eat now, I recommend the following staples:

  • Eggs (whole and liquid whites)
  • Sardines (tinned in olive oil)
  • Lentils and beans (tinned in water and then thoroughly rinsed; this should eliminate any digestive issues)
  • All of the vegetables (my go-to's are brocolli, green beans, spinach, and kale, but I will eat more than just these regularly)
These food choices are partly inspired by Tim Ferriss' Slow Carb Diet (Google it or buy the Four-Hour Body; time and money well spent!). They are cheap, satiating and full of goodness.

Best of luck! Nutrition is a tricky thing, especially with all of the conflicting information out there!

:)
 
Never eaten sardines, the thought makes me want to vomit haha

The other thing i find is the sheer amount of these foods i seem to have to eat just to get to 2700/800 cals a day, and thats just to maintain my weight now!

Thanks guys, im gonna give IF a go, slowly drop my carbs starting with the granola, that alone will cut 100g carbs and 20g sugar!
 
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IF is great since it fits most lifestyles way better than eating 3-5x/day.
Plus there is some promising research that going without food for a prolonged period of the day (~12-20h) might be beneficial in terms of overall health.
But don't make the mistake of believeing that it is some kind of silver bullet/magical pill and will fix everything. I encourage you to try it out for yourself (I myself am a practitioner) but don't feel bad if you do not like it or prefere 3 squares a day.
Keep in mind: if building muscle is your no 1 goal IF is probably not optimal. I do not say you can't but having 3-4meals a day each with sufficient protein spread out over the day is probably a better bet.

Also, what is healthy?
Avoiding gluten or lactose will do exactly zero to one's health unless the individual does not tolerate it.
Same goes for sugar, carbs, organic ...

Know your goal calories, then split it up into macros: ~0.8 - 1.5g of protein per lbs of bw; 20-40% of calories from fat; rest of calories from carbs; 30-60g of fibre prer day.
Have a wide variety of starch free veggies (and starchy veggies within your carb count) and some fruit.
Fill up the macros with foods you like. Mostly "adult foods" but don't worry if you are having white bread as a carb source as long as you hit your fibres/veggies. It is all about context and continuum, not black/white.
 
Know your goal calories, then split it up into macros: ~0.8 - 1.5g of protein per lbs of bw; 20-40% of calories from fat; rest of calories from carbs; 30-60g of fibre prer day.
Have a wide variety of starch free veggies (and starchy veggies within your carb count) and some fruit.
Fill up the macros with foods you like. Mostly "adult foods" but don't worry if you are having white bread as a carb source as long as you hit your fibres/veggies. It is all about context and continuum, not black/white.

Great advice. If everyone would start here, there would be a whole lot less diet problems to solve.
 
I agree that is a good way to go when starting out, thats pretty much got me to where i am now.

Just for me recently i cant help feeling i need to change things to be the best i can, feel that sitting all day and working out 3 days a week doesnt require me to have all them carbs
Sometimes feel sluggish around lunch time, so going to skip all the carbs for breakfast and see if it changes anything
 
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