What are healthy meals?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, if you want to track one simple thing, look at fiber. Try to hit 25g per day. There is literally no way to do it without a decently healthy diet. It takes several servings of fruit and vegetables as well as a handful of beans or lentils here and there to get it consistently.

Removing processed food is a great goal but it takes a long time to shape your tastes. So, I like focusing on appreciating new and healthy foods.

The other important thing is noticing how you feel when you eat well (or poorly) and taking a moment to register that connection. It helps build your preference for healthy stuff.

This! It’s so important when you are changing your diet to start by adding things rather than subtracting. Add in naturally fiber rich foods. Whatever tastes good to you. If you do that you will be less hungry and then you can gently pull back on the things in your diet that are less nutrient dense. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yep Op. My eating was also disordered. What you do for yourself and what you do for your kids may need to be different though. You’re getting mixed messages here. So, I recommend two things. One, make a few appointments with a nutritionist— to get ideas and answers about how to meet your own nutritional needs and your kids nutritional needs in a healthy sustainable manner.

And two, talk to a therapist who specializes in disordered eating. You recognize your own issues. What you might need help with is how to be a healthy example to your own kids. You want to feed them nutritious foods and teach them healthy eating. But that’s impossible if you don’t know what healthy eating looks like. You really don’t want to do a massive, all at once diet overhaul for your kids and strictly limit them— because how did that workout for your dad? A therapist can help you recognize bad patterns from your childhood and find a path to doing better by your kids without turning them into teens who binge unhealthy foods in private.

I would see a dietician rather than a nutritionist.

+1. I’m the PP on this and ai would agree. I worked with an RD, not a nutritionist. The “nutritionist” was careless typing. The larger point is it’s tough to crowdsource your way out of decades of having a distorted relationship with food. And almost impossible to do so which also modeling healthy behavior or kids. You want legit professionals, not DCUM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since you asked for it to be explained to you like you are 5

The only things that belong on your plate are things that come from
an animal (ie fish, chicken, meat);
and from the ground or earth (nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, water)

If you are eating anything else, it is processed food. This includes soda, cookies, crackers (even ‘healthy’ ones) cereal, tortilla chips, ice cream, breads (even ‘healthy’ ones), yogurt, cheeses. You cannot avoid all processed foods but you can make smarter decisions about the types of cheese you select (Not Kraft Slices!), and eat Greek yogurt for example. Read the labels. The fewer the ingredients the better.

One way to shop at the grocery store it to buy from the perimeter - meat and seafood counter, fruits and veggies section, dairy section. Anything you buy in the middle aisles that is boxed, canned, frozen, packaged is processed food. And you should be eliminating them to create a healthy diet.

Good luck OP! You’re asking the right questions and learning a healthy diet takes time. Give yourself a year to re-wire your thinking, your recipes, and your family lifestyle but you can do it

I love this. What a great way to look at it, thanks PP.

Have you never heard of this before? I thought it was quite common knowledge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear you, OP. I'll toss out some "real food" ideas that some on DCUM will think are horrible, but they work for a real family.

Breakfast: Oatmeal with fruit; scrambled eggs on toast; whole wheat toast with peanut butter and banana; a bowl of yogurt with nuts and fruit

Lunch: A small turkey sandwich with fruit or some raw vegetables; leftover pasta; quesadilla; soup; a slice of pizza with fruit or veggie sides

Dinner: Endless possibilities, but most meals have a protein, lots of vegetables, and carbs as a side rather than a focus.

Try to add in as many healthy foods as you can. Doesn't mean you have to take away all the unhealthy foods. If you eat a lot of processed foods, try cutting them down to a couple of times a week. Make salads fun and nourishing ... throw in nuts, or cheese, or avocado to keep people full and prevent them from seeming like a punishment.

Try to get everyone cooking ... makes you appreciate food more.

Not horrible, but there’s a lot of sugar here. I’d make small adjustments to get the sugar out and still have a fully satisfying meal

Replace all fruit with berries only - rasp, blue, black, straw
If you need something crispy with scrambled eggs, cheese crisps instead of toast
Replace peanut butter and banana (sugar and sugar) with Avocado Smash on toast
Nuts, seeds, berries and two scoops of yogurt instead of a bowl
Turkey lettuce wrap instead of sandwich
Cauliflower pizza instead of regular pizza and salad instead of fruit
Chicken Salad or Egg Salad instead of leftover pasta (don’t make so much that there are any leftovers)

NP. I know you mean well, but these kind of tips don't work at all for an overweight person with disordered eating. If you tell me even a banana is bad, then I may as well eat cake. If I can't have a slice of pizza, I just won't diet and will eat all the carbs I want. The PP struck a nice balance that isn't so overwhelming.

Exactly, the info out there on nutrition and the disagreement can make your head swim but the PP gave OP a reasonable workable approach.

I was a huge fan of the Cooking Light magazine. You can still find the cookbooks. Lots of good recipes.I also really like Skinnytaste and her suggested meal plans on her blog. Perfect should not be the enemy of the good for OP.

[Anonymous]

All of the above sounds overwhelming for me.

I order healthy food on Hungryroot and have it delivered. I am not a foodie. I want simple as possible, as healthy as possible.

[Anonymous]

For lunch I'm having baked chicken breast, about a third of a cup of couscous made with bone broth, and carrots. This is a healthy meal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For lunch I'm having baked chicken breast, about a third of a cup of couscous made with bone broth, and carrots. This is a healthy meal.

That's not terrible. But I'd skip the pasta (couscous is not a grain, but basically teeny pasta) and add more vegetables. Ideally some green ones.

[Anonymous]

If you get the right kind of peanut butter it does not have sugar in it.

And while the eat mostly plants, not too much, blah blah blah is a cute little saying if you exercise rigorously at all and follow it you will be absolutely starving about thirty minutes after you eat. Some of this advice is just so unrealistic. You cannot eat mostly plants and not be extremely hungry especially if you are at all active.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All of the above sounds overwhelming for me.

I order healthy food on Hungryroot and have it delivered. I am not a foodie. I want simple as possible, as healthy as possible.

Can you tell me more about this? I am also not a foodie, I am a picky eater, and I hate to prep and cook food.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yep Op. My eating was also disordered. What you do for yourself and what you do for your kids may need to be different though. You’re getting mixed messages here. So, I recommend two things. One, make a few appointments with a nutritionist— to get ideas and answers about how to meet your own nutritional needs and your kids nutritional needs in a healthy sustainable manner.

And two, talk to a therapist who specializes in disordered eating. You recognize your own issues. What you might need help with is how to be a healthy example to your own kids. You want to feed them nutritious foods and teach them healthy eating. But that’s impossible if you don’t know what healthy eating looks like. You really don’t want to do a massive, all at once diet overhaul for your kids and strictly limit them— because how did that workout for your dad? A therapist can help you recognize bad patterns from your childhood and find a path to doing better by your kids without turning them into teens who binge unhealthy foods in private.

I would see a dietician rather than a nutritionist.

+1. I’m the PP on this and ai would agree. I worked with an RD, not a nutritionist. The “nutritionist” was careless typing. The larger point is it’s tough to crowdsource your way out of decades of having a distorted relationship with food. And almost impossible to do so which also modeling healthy behavior or kids. You want legit professionals, not DCUM.

+1

I worked with a professional with legit credentials who helped me to improve my diet over an extended period of time. I logged what I was eating and she reviewed the logs and she helped me to identify where I was going off the rails and gave me alternatives. I got easy rules of thumb to follow when looking at portion size, amount of carbs in an item, amount of protein and fat. She helped me develop useful strategies for making better food choices at work events and while traveling, and ordering food at restaurants. When I had bad days, we’d troubleshoot together so that the pain point, once identified and analyzed, could be mitigated. Like realizing I need a shelf stable grab and go meal for those days that I find myself running out the door for school pickup and I haven’t had lunch yet. If I don’t eat something, I will make worse food choices for the rest of the day but it also needs to be balanced and have protein, fat, fiber, something green. (My travel “snack pack” is seaweed, a meat stick, 1 string cheese, almond flour crackers, an apple, and a few nuts.)

In general, before working with her, I was eating nutritious and real foods as a pescatarian, but I learned I wasn’t getting enough protein, over eating carbs (in reaction to my body craving more protein, I think), eating too irregularly and going for sweets for quick energy boosts, and eating too much fried food. I also had bloodwork done and my bad cholesterol was too high (though my overall cholesterol was okay), so she also had me pull back on saturated fats. Although a lot of it was generally applicable information, the solutions were very tailored to me, what I like to eat, and the realities of my life. I made minor diet tweaks on a meal by meal, week by week basis that amounted to major changes over time. Some changes were super easy to make, like having fewer carbs (which shocked me because I’m a carb girl through and through) and having more protein. Other changes were much harder, most notably cutting sugar (I have always said I don’t have a sweet tooth, but craving sugar as an easy energy boost was a real bad habit to compensate for not getting enough sleep, not exercising enough, skipping meals, being stressed out. I would eat sugar then crash then eat more sugar and largely felt terrible on this blood sugar rollercoaster).

I think there’s so much food noise and it’s really hard to figure this stuff out on your own. I don’t know that I would have ever figured out the super easy rules of thumb, or troubleshooted my own life, which would have tripped me up significantly otherwise without working with someone over an extended period of time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For lunch I'm having baked chicken breast, about a third of a cup of couscous made with bone broth, and carrots. This is a healthy meal.

That's not terrible. But I'd skip the pasta (couscous is not a grain, but basically teeny pasta) and add more vegetables. Ideally some green ones.

There's nothing wrong with having some starch with some of your meals. I had green for breakfast (avocado) and dinner (salad with romaine and broccoli). I look at the overall day, and don't worry too much about each meal being nutritionally perfect. That allows me the space to not become neurotic.

[Anonymous]

The advice to shop the perimeter of the grocery store is good, to a point.

There are a lot of minimally processed foods which are very healthy - whole wheat pastas and rice are on the shelves; legumes are on the shelves both dried in bags and cooked in cans; crushed diced and whole tomatoes are in cans on the shelves as are many other vegetables; the frozen vegetables and fruits are just as healthy and maybe more so than what’s in produce section because frozen fruits and veggies are picked and frozen immediately and don’t travel for days if not weeks to get to your store; nuts and seeds are usually on the shelves in bags or plastic or metal jars etc.

Spices and herbs are also in the middle and they are very healthful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since you asked for it to be explained to you like you are 5

The only things that belong on your plate are things that come from
an animal (ie fish, chicken, meat);
and from the ground or earth (nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, water)

If you are eating anything else, it is processed food. This includes soda, cookies, crackers (even ‘healthy’ ones) cereal, tortilla chips, ice cream, breads (even ‘healthy’ ones), yogurt, cheeses. You cannot avoid all processed foods but you can make smarter decisions about the types of cheese you select (Not Kraft Slices!), and eat Greek yogurt for example. Read the labels. The fewer the ingredients the better.

One way to shop at the grocery store it to buy from the perimeter - meat and seafood counter, fruits and veggies section, dairy section. Anything you buy in the middle aisles that is boxed, canned, frozen, packaged is processed food. And you should be eliminating them to create a healthy diet.

Good luck OP! You’re asking the right questions and learning a healthy diet takes time. Give yourself a year to re-wire your thinking, your recipes, and your family lifestyle but you can do it

I love this. What a great way to look at it, thanks PP.

Have you never heard of this before? I thought it was quite common knowledge.

NP, Another thing Michael Pollan popularized. Not sure I’ve it outside of him or people paraphrasing him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you get the right kind of peanut butter it does not have sugar in it.

And while the eat mostly plants, not too much, blah blah blah is a cute little saying if you exercise rigorously at all and follow it you will be absolutely starving about thirty minutes after you eat. Some of this advice is just so unrealistic. You cannot eat mostly plants and not be extremely hungry especially if you are at all active.

I am very active, eat mostly plants, and I am not "extremely hungry."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you get the right kind of peanut butter it does not have sugar in it.

And while the eat mostly plants, not too much, blah blah blah is a cute little saying if you exercise rigorously at all and follow it you will be absolutely starving about thirty minutes after you eat. Some of this advice is just so unrealistic. You cannot eat mostly plants and not be extremely hungry especially if you are at all active.

I am very active, eat mostly plants, and I am not "extremely hungry."

Same. I thought the same as the poster you quoted until my wife converted me to a very plant forward diet. I still eat animal protein (chicken and fish) and a TON of Greek yogurt, but I’ve had a lot of success maintaining my weight (not losing) even at a very high volume and intensity. During build weeks for middle distance triathlon I’m at 14-18 hours of swim, bike, run, and strength. I work 10 hours a day, and have more energy than everybody around me my age (early 40s).

It means a lot of content moving through the system so to speak, which is annoying at times, but it works for me. I’ve also stayed injury free (knocks on wood). My recovery and sleep year are much better - I put half of that down to the food I’m eating.

YMMV