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Do you eat the same thing everyday? or do you eat different things everyday?
What are your favorite foods for:
Breakfast?
Lunch?
Dinner?
Snacks?
What do you find works best for energy?
I am stuggling with finding the right foods to be eating. I would love to hear what works for you.
I'm boring.
Breakfast - grits on days I don't ride, oatmeal when I do. Usually a piece of fruit as well, maybe a piece of toast with jelly, hot tea.
Lunch and Dinner - I do a lot of frozen vege's and meat, rice or mash potatoes, toast or dinner roll. Soup or sandwich if I feel lazy.
Snacks - fruit or granola bars. Tiger Milk or Cliff bars on rides.
I love oatmeal in the morning. I switch it up almost every day. Sometimes I cook it with dried cherries; other days it's frozen blueberries or raspberries topped with slivered almonds and cinnamon or ground ginger.
As for snacks, I crave salty so I always have some edamame, reduced fat cheese, almond butter, and popcorn around. I also love nuts, esp. habanero almonds.
I get a lot of great recipe ideas from magazines as well as a few blogs. My favorites:
http://www.101cookbooks.com/
http://www.neverhomemaker.com/
http://www.savvyeat.com/
Habanero almonds? Do tell!
For energy, I do best on a huge breakfast (pancakes, bacon, hash browns, fruit and a glass of juice), but that's really not practical. My normal breakfast is a bagel and cream cheese or cereal or toast. Or oatmeal. Any of these work pre-ride.
Dinner is usually chicken with rice and some kind of veg. Occasionally it'll be pizza, or I'll get beef or fish. If DBF cooks, it's pasta or hamburgers. (He makes a good hamburger!) Lunch is dinner leftovers, most of the time.
I usually want something salty or salty/sweet for snacks. I keep a supply of apples and peanut butter around. Potato chips or Goldfish in small portions. Nuts and cheese. If I want sugar, DBF introduced me to chili powder-coated dried mangoes. Those things are addictive! (Maybe they'd go nicely with the almonds?) I also have a supply of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies in the freezer.
Martha Rose Shulman's recipes column in the NYT has a lot of great stuff.
As far as maintaining "energy," I really need calories during a ride or run that lasts longer than 90 minutes, and I need protein when I go over three hours or so. If I have a big meal of complex carbs about three hours before a ride (like a bowl of brown rice), I can last longer without calories; but I can't be that heavy during a run. What you can tolerate during a workout is really individual.
For breakfast, I generally have oatmeal with a splash of milk or cold cereal. If I'm going for a ride, I'll add in some yogurt and a banana, too.
For lunch, I generally have a salad with various veggies and beans or a broth based soup (I do not like cream soups as a general rule).
Dinners vary because I like to cook. I usually make two dishes per week that, with leftovers, get us throught the week. One dish usually has meat, preferably lean (but not always as I love a good hamburger or brat). The other is usually meatless. I make a lot of soups (vegetable, split pea, minestrone, lentil, mushroom barley to name a few). I eat a lot of beans and lentils, and I'm fond of pasta with some form of a pesto sauce. When I use cheese, I try to make it a flavorful one so that less is more. We also eat a lot of veggies and fruit, in all their forms. Some of my faves are brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes, sweet red peppers, new potatoes, green beans, squash, beets, summer sweet corn, strawberries, watermelon, peaches, and cherries. I'm big on color.
For a snack at work, I usually have an apple or yogurt. I'd be lying, however, if I didn't admit to having a horrendous sweet tooth. I'm trying to be a bit better these days, but I could live on ice cream. It's not something
I'm proud of. :rolleyes:
A simple, sensible review of general concepts: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/we...me&ref=general
I do best when I eat the same thing every day. I've done well following a routine, but my weight has currently stalled and I want to lose another 15 pounds. I'm switching it up. Below is my plan:
8 AM: Oatmeal made with milk & raisins
11:30 AM: Dutch Chocolate UltraMeal Shake w/ banana + 2-3 servings of vegetables (salad, steamed veggies, etc)
3:30 PM: Fried Egg Sandwich w/ Bacon OR Greek yogurt w/ Granola
7:00 PM: Veggies (Salad, cooked, roasted, etc)
Snacks: Raisins, veggies, fruit. I like popcorn too, so I'll probably have some of that a few times a week :)
During my workouts I have a scoop or two of Endura mixed with my water.
If you're looking to read something about food for fueling your fitness I think chris carmichael's Food for Fitness is a good book. I've read most of it, but since I'm not training don't really abide by it. It talks a lot about how your body uses foods for its activities. It takes into consideration endurance atheletes training schedules and how they are usually periodized/specialized. He then uses that for his theory of food for fuel. Its a pretty easy read and half of it is recipes!
From reading this forum, a lot of women will say that what you can tolerate before a ride and during a ride is personal.
I don't ride long enough to need solid food yet. When I would do day long ultimate tournaments I would have bits of bananas, oranges, and bagels throughout the day.
Breakfast: I personally could live off of eggs and toast, its my favorite meal. So much that I'm considering getting only egg whites because I'm starting to think all the cholesterol will catch up with me. Otherwise a filling grainy cereal with milk. Sometimes pb and toast.
Lunch: sandwiches. Chili leftovers. Or often a small burrito if I have to eat while I work.
Dinner: classic meat(usually chicken), vegetable, and starch(whole grain or potato). I try to stick to equal 3rds or as many vegetables I can fit on my plate. I also like making chili. Its like... $10 to make a huge pot.
Snacks: carrots, bananas, almonds, popcorn, pb on toast, yogurt.
I hate eating the same things and my body needs variety. For dinners, I use recipes from Cooking Light. I hardly use any of the recipes I used even 5 years ago or things that my mom made (although she was a pretty health oriented cook). I also hate left overs. So, I reduce the recipes for 4 to 2 servings, or if applicable, I will bring left overs for lunch. I just can't eat the same thing for dinner. I try to eat meatless two dinners a week and also have fish once. Other than that, it's a mixture of chicken, pork, ground turkey, occasional flank steak, big salads. I make lots of ethnic stuff, too. I love to cook, and it feels like therapy to me, even after a long day.
For breakfast, I vary between egg white omelets, usually with a side of turkey bacon and fruit, plain Greek yogurt, mixed with craisins, almonds, and blueberries, sometimes with a piece of ww toast. Other days I'll have regular eggs and turkey bacon and fruit. Sometimes I eat Canadian bacon. On the weekends, DH usually makes waffles one day. I have tried to avoid bagels, as it seems like even the whole wheat ones put the pounds on, but I do enjoy bagels, light cream cheese and lox every so often. Cereal does nothing for me and oatmeal makes my stomach very unhappy, although I like the taste of it.
For lunch, I make salads with chicken, tuna, or low salt ham, or a thin sandwich with the same. I always eat fruit with my lunch. Snacks are usually cheese, a mix of walnuts and dried cranberries, a piece of whole wheat bread with hummus. I usually need to eat every 3-4 hours, so I have to keep my snacks small.
If I am riding or doing other longer types of exercise, I eat a very big breakfast. I go out to eat a lot, at least twice a week, so I have to really be careful with what I eat at home and when out. My body seems to be exquisitely sensitive to salt right now, in that I will gain 2 pounds just from eating good sushi with a teeny bit of low sodium soy sauce. I also have 2 small squares of dark chocolate 4-5 times a week, after dinner, although I am trying to cut that back to 3 times a week.
I like to switch things up, but I like having leftovers so I don't have to cook every day. Cooking Light, like Crankin said, has some good stuff. I just don't hold with their liberal use of cooking spray and I have to rather increase the spices because my tastebuds are silly.
I change the way I season the chicken and I try to buy different veggies every week, within the bounds of what DBF will eat.