Daily Nutrition

[ibike2]

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.

[pumpkinpony]

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.

[bluebug32]

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/

[Owlie]

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.

[OakLeaf]

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.

[indysteel]

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.

[OakLeaf]

A simple, sensible review of general concepts: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/we...me&ref=general