The Offspring - Gone Away

Now after I posted everything that I ate yesterday, I got to thinking that while it might be useful, it's not good for anything but examples. So now I'm going to look a little bit deeper into what rules I use for eating.

Like most people, I have my favorite foods that I don't want to give up. What you saw yesterday was my need for mexican food. Now here's the thing. Most foods that you like and eat right now, can be made healthier. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the times it will be slightly different from what you eat at your typical restaurant. Can I make a damn good pizza? Yes I can. Can I make a pizza that's dripping with grease like something from Pizza Hut? Nope.

That's the bad news. The good news is that once you start cutting out a lot of the saturated fat from your diet, you don't even miss it. To be perfectly honest, whenever I'm eating the way I should, anything with a ton of saturated fat makes me nauseous. One of my favorite things when I'm in my college fast food mode is Mucho Nachos from Taco Bueno. When I'm in 2000-2004, July-present mode, they feel like a brick in my stomach and don't taste all that good either. So take comfort in the fact that you won't miss the high fat versions of these foods.

That brings me to the myth that eating right means eating salad all the time. Bull...shit. I like salad. I eat it occasionally with a good organic asian sesame dressing that I like. When I do happen to eat it, though, it's often as a side or before the meal. Relax...eating right doesn't mean giving up what you love.

Some examples of what I eat on a regular basis are: chicken/steak fajitas, turkey burgers (or ground sirloin), shish kebabs, french toast & eggs, 3 egg omelets, orange beef stir-fry, pizza, etc. Now maybe you have much different taste in food than I do, but there are some general rules I follow that will help you out.

• Cut out full calorie sodas. This is the very first rule I put into place back in February 2000 when I started eating better. Now I haven't succeeded in completely cutting them out period, because of their convenience, especially at school. I do try to avoid a few things, though: aspartame, caffeine, high sodium. I've found a root beer I like that only has a couple problems.
  
• Unless you're baking, use light/low-fat versions of everything. Often times the taste isn't all that different, if at all, and you usually save in both calories and saturated fat. If you're cooking, you need to experiment with what works and what doesn't. Fat-free cheese, for example, has less moisture (due to less fat) than regular cheese, so you need to up the moisture to compensate.
  
• Realize you eat more meat than you should. The average person should eat 4-5 oz of meat at dinner. That's about the size of a deck of cards or the palm of your hand. Meat is good, I love it. I'm from the midwest, and everything is about meat and potatoes. Too much of a good thing, though...well you know the rest.
  
• Fruits and vegetables are good. I know not everyone is as into them as I am. I can eat practically any of them raw and love it. You can, however, combine them with meals you eat on a daily basis to enhance those meals. They give you so many vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that it's a bad choice to overlook them.
  
• Use only oils high in unsaturated fats. This means sticking with oils like olive, safflower, and sunflower. Avoid ones like palm, coconut, and butter where possible.
  
• Drink a lot of water. Water is necessary for helping you digest food and good for replacing the water you lose every day. Not only that, but often times people confuse the signal from their body that it's dehydrated with being hungry. Drink up.

Now I could type out a lot more about all of this, and maybe I will in the future. You have to take this stuff into your own hands, because no one else is going to do it for you. We live in a country where the media tells us we need to look a certain way (small and toned for girls, large and ripped for guys), yet bombards us from every direction with crap we shouldn't be eating. How many times have you seen a Nike ad with a bunch of super fit people taking themselves to the limit, just to be followed up by an ad from Sonic or McDonald's and then Nestle cookies just for good measure?

You don't have to go organic like I do, or even eat as healthily as I do. Just start to notice the little things that contribute to your weight gain. If you switch from one Coke a day all year long to Diet Coke or water, you won't have 15 pounds to work off. If you use mustard instead of mayo on your daily sandwich, you'll drop 5 pounds.

I'll answer any questions posted in the comments section. If you're really serious about getting in shape, I'd suggest talking with a nutritionist.

Labels: nutrition

The Used - Under Pressure

Snack: PB&J

• Nature's Own Double Fiber Wheat
  
• 2 tbsp Smucker's Natural Peanut Butter w/ Honey
  
• 1 tbsp Smucker's Strawberry Preserves with Splenda

Two things. First is that I can't seem to find a natural peanut butter with honey that's also organic. Second thing is that I plan to switch to just plain strawberry preserves once I'm done cutting, but that 35-40 cals right now is just too important. Oh, and I also avoid drinking anything sugary at night, otherwise I would've had my normal Horizon Organic lowfat chocolate milk with it.

Nutrition Facts
Calories: 290
  From Fat: 162
Total Fat: 18g
  Saturated Fat: 3g
Carbs: 32g
  Dietary Fiber: 12g
Protein: 15g

Labels: nutrition

Family Guy

Dinner: Chicken fajitas and roasted chili-lime corn

• Chicken Fajitas
  (Extra virgin olive oil instead of vegetable oil, and omit salsa)
  
• Roasted corn with chili-lime butter
  (4 ears instead of 6, half the butter and chili powder; lightly salt)
  
• Kroger's black bean pico de gallo and Guaca Salsa used on the fajitas
  
• 16 oz Kroger Light Fruit Punch

Nutrition Facts
Calories: 643
  From Fat: 204
Total Fat: 24g
  Saturated Fat: 4g
Carbs: 69g
  Dietary Fiber: 12g
Protein: 45g

Labels: nutrition

Bob Schneider - Boombox (Live from The Aardvark)

Lunch: Turkey Sandwich

• Nature's Own Double Fiber Wheat
  
• Oven roasted honey turkey
  
• 1/4 cup organic broccoli sprouts
  
• 1 thick slice, organic tomato
  
• .8 oz slice swiss cheese
  
• 2 tbsp Nayonaise
  
• 16 oz Crystal Light Lemonade

Nutrition Facts
Calories: 305
  From Fat: 152
Total Fat: 16g
  Saturated Fat: 5g
Carbs: 25g
Dietary Fiber: 10g
Protein: 25g

Labels: nutrition

Beck - Loser

Snack: Schlep's Protein Shake

• 1 cup Horizon Organic Fat Free Milk
  
• GNC 100% Whey Protein - Vanilla
  
• 1 tsp Splenda
  
• 5-6 medium organic strawberries
  
• 1 small organic banana
  
• 14-15 ice cubes

Using a blender, combine all above ingredients. Start on lowest setting and finish on highest setting, until no ice chunks remain. I also take my multivitamin and green tea extract with this snack.

Nutrition Facts
Calories: 315
  From Fat: 20
Total Fat: 2g
  Saturated Fat: 1g
Carbs: 44g
Dietary Fiber: 4g
Protein: 30g

Labels: nutrition

The Offspring - Amazed

So about a month ago I made this post about going back to healthy eating, and exactly how far I'd go with my desire to eat organic foods instead of genetically modified and chemical laden foods. I ended up deciding on a halfway point. To be honest, I don't like the local natural foods store at all. The people who work there are kind of creepy, and the whole store could be mistaken for an oversized 7-11.

What I decided to do was buy as much organic as I could from Kroger, and make a monthly or so trip down to Sprouts to buy bulk items like oats, crackers, etc. I'm not sure where organic fits into it, but I feel ten times better than I did when I was on my fast food diet. It's hard to explain the benefits, because until you see what it does for you personally, they'll never sound as good as they actually are.

I've had a few people ask me what I eat in a normal day, and so today I'm going to actually update several times during the day and give you a glimpse. I'm going to preface this with two thoughts that may not click with some people. First, I don't care about carbs. There are certain carbs that you should never eat (white bread, white rice, classic table sugar, enriched flour cereals, etc), but I don't eat that shit except for in orange juice. Oats, 100% whole wheat bread, wheat flour, brown rice, fruits, and vegetables are things I eat with every meal. I don't see this changing.

The second thought is that I'm a firm believer in dividing meals up into 5 or 6 a day, and usually eat something an hour or two before bed. I have a hard time falling asleep if my stomach is busy saying "screw you" to my brain every waking second.

Now that that's out of the way, I'll give a short description of what I'm doing. I'm on a 1900-2100 calorie a day 'diet'. While hitting the exact calorie amount is nearly essential when you're cutting, it's something that I don't stress out over. If I go a little bit over or under, I figure it'll all balance out in the end so long as I'm aiming for that range. Plus, this isn't a diet for me, it's a way of life and was for quite a while. I fell off of it earlier this year when I got Link, because of the convenience of bad food. Now that Link is almost all growed up, I have the time to eat right again. No wonder people with kids gain so much weight...

Breakfast: Oatmeal

• 3/4 cup oats
  
• 1/2 tsp Splenda Brown Sugar Blend
  
• 2 tsp Splenda
  
• 1/4 cup Horizon Organic Fat Free Milk
  
• Organic raspberries
  
• Organic blueberries
  
• Tropicana Light N' Healthy OJ w/Pulp

Bring 1 1/2 cups water to a boil. Add a pinch of salt, oats, and reduce heat to medium (or slightly lower with stainless steel). Let cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Turn off the stove, but leave the pot on the heat. Allow the oats to soak up the rest of the water. Stir in Splenda and Splenda Brown Sugar Blend. Move to bowl, add milk and fruit, and enjoy.

If you would rather use apples, simply peel and dice them. When you add the oats to the boiling water, add the apple as well. I use cinnamon instead of brown sugar with apples.

Nutrition Facts
Calories: 324
  From Fat: 35
Total Fat: 4g
  Saturated Fat: 1g
Carbs: 61g
Dietary Fiber: 7g
Protein: 12g

Labels: nutrition

Rangers @ Tigers

Synopsis: The futuristic tale unfolds in a Great Britain that's a fascist state. A freedom fighter known as V (Weaving) uses terrorist tactics to fight the oppressive society. He rescues a young woman (Portman) from the secret police, and she becomes his unlikely ally. imdb


Review: I'm really not sure what prompted me to drop $15 for this movie at Fry's the other day, not knowing anything about it. What a great impulse buy. From beginning to end, the movie is absolutely enthralling. Everything is pulled off well in the movie, and the transfer on both audio and video is great. The only unfortunate issue with the movie is how few people will realize who plays V. Other than that, great movie, especially for guys.

Rating: Buy

Labels: 1mr, movies