The easiest eating routine?

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sarger17
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The easiest eating routine?

Post by sarger17 »

Hey All,

Apologies if this is redundant, didn't find a thread that covered this specifically. So I'm 31, relatively healthy and in good shape- play ice hockey on the weekends, workout during the week, but I haven't always ate as healthy as I should. No candy or sweets as I don't have a sweet tooth but certainly my fair share of beer, burgers etc.

I want to clean up my diet more. Every time I google healthy meal plans, it's almost some kind of marketing or some kind of selling of meal plans or work out plans etc. Or when I find something that offers general healthy eating without the marketing side of it, the recipes are 5 paragraphs long and utterly unnecessary. I want SIMPLICITY. Something I can do repetitively with slight variation from time to time. I would rather not spend 3 hours of my Sunday planning food for the week. I want to plan quickly and spend less time focusing on food.

My question is- what do you eat? What's your routine? What would you recommend for the most simple, healthy, straight forward diets?

Thanks in advance!

prognastat
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by prognastat »

Well I pretty much do exactly what you don't want to do.

I meal prep on Sunday, generally made in my instant pot, to make food for Monday through Fridays that way all I have to do after work for those days are pop my meal in the microwave and reheat it. Saturday and Sunday I generally make my food on the day of as I am off, have a little more time and can that way vary what I want a little more.

As for my advice regarding healthier eating. Eat fewer carbs and fewer calories in general. Other than that it really is up to what works for you.

sarger17
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by sarger17 »

prognastat wrote:
Thu Apr 04, 2019 9:23 am
Well I pretty much do exactly what you don't want to do.

I meal prep on Sunday, generally made in my instant pot, to make food for Monday through Fridays that way all I have to do after work for those days are pop my meal in the microwave and reheat it. Saturday and Sunday I generally make my food on the day of as I am off, have a little more time and can that way vary what I want a little more.

As for my advice regarding healthier eating. Eat fewer carbs and fewer calories in general. Other than that it really is up to what works for you.
Yeah, I know I'm going to have to prep and prepare somewhat. I just don't want it to consume ours of my Sunday. That's time spent I could be doing stuff around the house, with my spouse etc. Appreciate the reply tho!

prognastat
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by prognastat »

While it costs a little time on Sunday, but it also saves me 15+ minutes on cooking Monday through Friday.

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Jean
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by Jean »

One cup of rice, one cup of lentils or bean, 4 cups of water, salt, everything in the pressure cooker. Until it whistle, then cut off the fire.
When I can open it, it's ready. If you use a bigger cup, it goes for several meals.
I refry it with onions, or add mayonaise (home made, mix one egg for a few second, then gently add oil (not olive) while still mixing, add salt, lemon, pepper), or maybe cheese.
Othewise, wathever cheap vegetables I find, fried in a pan, with some mayonaise.
That's very easy, quick, and reasonably healthy.

Dream of Freedom
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by Dream of Freedom »

The Shawn Baker diet.

You need:

Red meat
Water

Salathor
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by Salathor »

I eat the same thing every single day of the week, with some variations on the weekend.

Breakfast: 16 oz smoothie that I make with frozen spinach, mixed berries, yogurt, chia seeds, and half a banana
Snack: A homemade cookie and about 1-2 oz of peanuts
Lunch: A burrito made with crockpotted pinto beans+spices, mexican rice, cheese
Snack: A bowl of oatmeal + milk + applesauce + cinnamon
Dinner: Some kind of home cooked meal that usually involves either brown rice, whole-grain pasta, some kind of bean/lentil, and a SMALL bit of meat
Alcohol: 1-2 drinks of either an inexpensive beer or liquor.

This has been my routine for about 5 years. It costs $4 per day to feed a 6'2'' man with a varied and healthy diet. The ONLY downside is that it's time consuming to produce all the food. My wife is an excellent home economist and is able to save us an absolute ton of money by doing our home cooking. I recommend our plan!

sarger17
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by sarger17 »

This sounds really good! Esp the burrito!

Salathor
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by Salathor »

It is good! And pretty healthy! But I recommend making the burritos in batches of 10-20 since it takes so long to crock them. They freeze and reheat really well.

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Lemur
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by Lemur »

Stuck with this through all of March and dropped 13lbs...might keep this up for a while, all whole foods, raw incredients, filling, healthy:

Breakfast: A bowl of homemade Whole Yogurt with Blueberries and Oats
Lunch: (prepared on Sunday for m-f work week) Chicken Breast, Potato, Onion, and some type of green veggie slowcooked in tomato sauce (add salt, pepper, basil, a little bit of lime). Apple and Orange.
Dinner: Two potatoes and a can of pinto beans
Before Bed: If I'm hungry, I may eat another piece of fruit.
Last edited by Lemur on Fri Apr 05, 2019 2:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Kriegsspiel
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by Kriegsspiel »

I'll make 4-6 days worth of a meal at once unless it requires like 2 mins of prep time. So if I want to make something that requires chopping or any other kind of complexity I do it in bulk, but I'll heat up a bit of water to pour over oats, or make a protein shake every day.

An example of a bulk meal would be:
3-3.5lb ground beef
1.5-2.25 cups lentils
1 can tomato sauce or diced tomatoes
some home-pickled peppers
garlic
salt & spices

Brown the beef and drain off the fat, then add all the other stuff you got ready while it was browning, bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 mins. Turn off the heat and let it sit for another 20 mins. It takes a bit of time to do it all (not 3 hours), but then you have food for days. Or do a big crockpot full of something. Or boil some eggs. Baked items like quiche are also good as leftovers.

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fiby41
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by fiby41 »

Lentil rice

oldbeyond
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by oldbeyond »

There are a few strategies you can employ:

Outsourcing.
We all do this do some extend (people tend not to make their own cheese or grind their own grains, even around here). Leveraging this further than you currently do will mean greater financial outlays and/or less control (you could theoretically employ and and micromanage a private chef and not loose much control, but that would of course be extremely expensive, not a serious suggestion but simply to make my point). In some instances it might be worthwhile to spend a bit more if you see big gains in quality, time saved, variety, taste etc. Overall simply leveraging outsourcing will likely not be the best move in terms of web of goals, as it will be costly and not build skill. But to give an example, perhaps buying pre-cooked beans is worth it in your situation.

Reducing complexity.
I've leveraged this quite a bit. Some tasty, healthy food is very easy to make, while some is quite involved. I tend to do fancy stuff on the weekend or when I'm otherwise lounging around at home. When I'm busy, it's more efficient* dishes only. Some tips that work for me are salads, wraps, pastas, couscous, cold rice noodles, stir-fries and sandwiches. This can be combined with outsourcing in some instances, for example making a wrap with pre-cooked beans and store bought salsa.

Scale.
Some dishes require a bit more time and effort, but are easy to scale, so the amount of work to make 5 or 10 servings is little more than what you’d expend making a single portion. Stews of various sorts, pies (including lasagna and the like), roasts/bakes (pork, beef, chicken but also raw sausage or fish), curries, some soups.

In a given week, you don’t really need to cook X times, rather you need to cook X portions (if you never eat out and only include lunch and dinner under the umbrella of cooking, that’s 14 servings). So you can make a serious dent in your weekly production quota in one go. If you have enough space in the freezer, you can increase variety by freezing some of what you make in a given week and eat a few previously frozen meals.

If you are really serious you can cook two dishes with similar ingredients in parallell, say doing a big batch of tomato sauce and adding indian spices and cream to half of it and fried minced meat/salsicca and herbs to the other to make ”bolognese”.

Personally I use all three strategies, sometimes in combination (making something simple that scales, and outsourcing some of the components). I feel thinking in terms of a production quota helps me a lot. Usually I end up with a surplus and wind up cooking a bit less than I thought I had to.


* measured in taste*nutrition/time ?

take2
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by take2 »

If your main goal is to lose a bit of weight and generally be healthier while conserving time look into intermittent fasting.

I generally don’t eat between 9pm and 1pm which means one less meal a day to worry about. You’re way past the point of growing, and if you aren’t body building you simply don’t need that much food.

It can take a bit of getting used to but if you couple it with reduced carb intake after a few days hunger tends to subside (it did for me). For actual meal prep it’s best to shop for only single ingredients (whole foods - I stick with raw meat and green vegetables) and stick to the tried and true sautée or roast cooking methods.

Sauteeing some meat and vegetables with whatever spice you fancy shouldn’t take longer than 15-20 min. Double up for dinner that night and lunch the next day. Roasting is even easier - one pan for meat/veggies and you can do other stuff while it’s cooking. 30-40 min. Olive oil, salt, pepper, some chilli flakes (if you like heat) is really all you need to make a delicious meal.

After you start doing it you may find yourself enjoying it at which point you can start into more time consuming techniques (stews, braising) or branch out into different spices and flavours.

Nomad
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by Nomad »

I basically make something very similar every week and I make a lot of it on a Sunday and put it into Tupperware for work.

There is fried onions, garlic, mushrooms, bell-pepper, courgettes, quinoa, spices etc. Sometimes I add chicken.
Then I add vegetables and peeled plum tomatoes and turn the heat down and let the veg 'steam'.
Veg includes Broccoli, green beans, lentils, beans, carrot etc.
Sometimes I have hummus or nuts or olives too.

For supper; I have grilled sardines.
That is my at-home diet, when I go out I will eat whatever is available ;)

Note that the combination of those two meals gives just about every vitamin/mineral but includes no simple carbs.

Also, I don't eat breakfast at all.

mustafayacoob
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by mustafayacoob »

Normally for a healthy diet I would suggest you some tips which I've used in my daily life such as,
1. Get on board with the Mediterranean diet.
2. Check the nutrition label before you buy.
3. Eat whole foods—that is, foods that you could actually grow.
4. Eat crunchy foods.
5. Eat more mindfully.
6. Drink more water.
7. Don't skip meals.
8. Snack more often.
9. Keep healthy snacks handy.
10. Remove the constant temptation of the snack cupboard.
11. But definitely treat yourself from time to time.
12. When fresh fruit isn't an option, go for the frozen stuff.
13. Don't bother with "low-fat" or "diet" versions of foods you love.
14. Choose real fruit over "fruit flavor."
15. Actually eat dinner at a table.
16. Watch out for beverages with lots of added sugar.
17. Don't assume all smoothies are healthy.
18. Choose meat that hasn't been processed.
19. When grabbing a bite on the go, choose simple snacks.
20. Cook at home more.
21. Create a meal plan.
22. Learn to love meal prep.
23. Pack up your leftovers right away.
24. Turn one meal into many.
25. Cut yourself a break!

sarger17
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Re: The easiest eating routine?

Post by sarger17 »

I just finished reading "eat to live" by Dr. Fuhrman. 10/10 book. He recommends a 99.9% vegetarian diet with either vitamins to make up for b12 deficiencies or very little meat. Like chicken or salmon as salmon at least has some of the lowest mercury levels compared to other seafoods.

So 1-2 times a week I do intermittent fasting (don't eat from 8-1 PM) but mornings I do eat I eat fruit for breakfast, some sort of salad for lunch and either a broccoli casserole dish I make on Sunday's for dinner throughout the week or another type of salad. With healthy snacks in between. Been working well so far.

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