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I want to eat healthier food but I'm having trouble coming up with ideas with what to eat I like eating cashews, apples, watermelons, bananas, grapes and strawberries as snacks and sometimes have fruit smoothies (I sub the ice cream with yogurt). Do any of you guys have any ideas for tasty

healthy foods so I don't get bored of eating the same stuff?

Cheese Puffs are healthy right?
As are Monsters? They have no calories

Fruit has a lot of sugar in it. Nuts have a lot of fat.


Are you trying to make healthier meals or eat healthier snacks? What are your goals specifically?

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Fruit has a lot of sugar in it. Nuts have a lot of fat.


Are you trying to make healthier meals or eat healthier snacks? What are your goals specifically?

Fructose isn't terrible as long as you don't go on a 100% fruit diet while leading a sedentary lifestyle. The fat from nuts is mono and poly saturated, which is the healthy kind that your body actually needs to survive. Just make sure to measure all portions of nuts because they are extremely easy to overeat.

 trexmeyer wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Fruit has a lot of sugar in it. Nuts have a lot of fat.


Are you trying to make healthier meals or eat healthier snacks? What are your goals specifically?

Fructose isn't terrible as long as you don't go on a 100% fruit diet while leading a sedentary lifestyle. The fat from nuts is mono and poly saturated, which is the healthy kind that your body actually needs to survive. Just make sure to measure all portions of nuts because they are extremely easy to overeat.

Absolutely true. But...

For the OP:

Macronutrients are calories. Caloric intake and expenditure is what matters in terms of your body weight and composition. Everything else is more or less fluff: It matters in the long run, but for the OP it seems like he needs to balance everything, not just eat more X "because it's healthy."

Healthy =/= just going to vegetarian and such as its more just balancing everything. If you do eat meat, just look for leaner cuts with less fat content on them. Remembering more gamey meat like kangaroo, rabbit, turkey have a much lower fat content than beef for example, but this can lead to them being more tougher if cooked the same way so some of them would be better off braised than fried as another example. Other obvious things like limiting egg intake to roughly 6 every 7 days as a maximum, not a guideline as well.

The thing you'll probably be looking at most is fat content, oil types and cooking methods. Canola oil is good and in most cases for frying you're looking at around a table spoon of oil for the pan' measuring it will actually help it along as well. Avoiding stuff like fast food as they tend to use palm oil which is rather fatty and for vegetables you're better off steaming or quickly blanching them instead of boiling.

There's no reason to limit egg content to such an extreme. Unless you're operating under the extremely foolish misconception that saturated fats lead to cholesterol and other problems.

More vegetables. Fruit like squash, cucumbers, etc. are also good because they don't have a ton of sugar.

Stay far away from grains, especially corn and rice.

Meat, veggies, some fruit like apples or whatever will do you good enough.

 Breotan wrote:
More vegetables. Fruit like squash, cucumbers, etc. are also good because they don't have a ton of sugar.

Stay far away from grains, especially corn and rice.

Meat, veggies, some fruit like apples or whatever will do you good enough.

That's accurate, but pretty extreme for the average person. There's really no reason that I see to ever eat corn, but rice and grains in moderation won't prevent weight loss unless you are already extremely lean. Simply reducing intake of sugars, processed foods, and carbohydrates in general will get most people to drop significant weight.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Fruit has a lot of sugar in it. Nuts have a lot of fat.


Are you trying to make healthier meals or eat healthier snacks? What are your goals specifically?

Both healthy snacks and meals.

It depends on your goals and activity level.

I'm not doing this to lose weight as I'm roughly average/thin looking but I eat quite a bit of gakky food (I still eat healthy sometimes) and am worried about the long term effects of it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 trexmeyer wrote:
It depends on your goals and activity level.

Right now I have pretty close to zero physical activity other than walking to school and lifting objects of various weights at work but I plan to start exercising soon (but want to get some body shots first).

Cut back on processed foods, eat more vegetables. If you're experiencing intestinal problems or are gaseous, cut out gluten to see if that relieves the symptoms.

Do you guys have any meal recipe ideas?

You can argue for days about the benefits of this, that, and the other. A common sense approach should serve you well.

Don't eat a crap-ton of anything. If you are eating a portion of something that you would judge someone else harshly for eating in public, then you might want to take a pass. (An entire wedge of cheddar cheese is perhaps not the healthiest light snack, f'rex.)

Natural foods are probably going to be better than processed, chemical laced ones.

Try to seek some balance. You already know your food groups, or whichever version of the food pyramid you were taught. Try and spread your selections out.

There are tons of healthy recipes for working various things in. As a dedicated Cheeto-stained recidivist who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into a healthier lifestyle, I will be happy to provide you with some recipes if you want to PM me.

Healthy eating can easily be undone. It doesn't matter how much fiber you eat if you also eat a half-pound bag of M&Ms. A salad isn't healthy if it's coated in a quart of mayonnaise. Again, common sense.

If you're looking for good ideas, I recommend going to recipe websites like Allrecipes. They often have ways to sort recipes by ingredients so you can find recipes that you like. If you want even more in depth reference material, check out Christine Ingram's Cooking Ingredients, a comprehensive guide to everything you could be using to make tasty, healthy meals.

Hope this helps!

http://www.pinterest.com/cementzel/recipes/

 Cheesecat wrote:

Both healthy snacks and meals.

The best advice that I can give you is to eat a balanced diet. Its actually really simple and quite self explanatory. Don't snack often and if you do fruit and nuts are a good option. You can still eat most foods, providing that you make them yourself and don't fry anything. Watch out for dairy products and stay well away from processed or prepackaged foods and you should be all right. The other thing is eat enough so that you aren't hungry, if you don't eat enough you will have difficulty exercising and you will almost certainly break your diet.

Trying to stick to a diet, especially fad diets, seems to be very difficult going by the number of peoople who can't seem to do it, its much better, and at least as effective, to simply change how you buy and prepare your food.

For exercise start by walking a lot more, if you go to the gym and beast yourself there is a decent chance that you will either do yourself an injury or you will be disheartened. Walking is easy, it burns off lots of calories for little effort and it will help your body adapt for when you start exercising 'properly'.

 Palindrome wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

Both healthy snacks and meals.

For exercise start by walking a lot more, if you go to the gym and beast yourself there is a decent chance that you will either do yourself an injury or you will be disheartened.

What?

Just as I said.

Walking is excellent excercise which is easy to do and requires nothing more than time. Even if you are fit walking is an excellent adjunct to regular regimes as it is something that you can easily do throught the day as part of your normal routine.

How does going to the gym lead to injury exactly?

 trexmeyer wrote:
How does going to the gym lead to injury exactly?

If you are unfit and inexperienced then it is extremely easy to over stretch your boundaries or do something unsafe. You are almost guaranteed to be extremely stiff for a few days afterwards as well although that would happen anyway. Simply 'going to the gym' is not that good an idea, it needs to be structured and it needs to have a decent foundation for it to work in the long term both in terms of health and motivation. Physical excersice always carries a risk of injury, its generally quite small but its something that can't be discounted. This is something that I know from experience.

This is quite a useful document. Its something that I found helpful when i was joining the army http://www.army.mod.uk/documents/general/army_get_fit.pdf

Fajitas with chicken (or just veggies if you prefer) are both healthy and delicious, so long as you take it easy with the cheese/sour cream

 Cheesecat wrote:
I want to eat healthier food but I'm having trouble coming up with ideas with what to eat I like eating cashews, apples, watermelons, bananas, grapes and strawberries as snacks and sometimes have fruit smoothies (I sub the ice cream with yogurt). Do any of you guys have any ideas for tasty

healthy foods so I don't get bored of eating the same stuff?

We use a lot of frozen veggies in any food we make. Spinach or Kale are pretty good if you microwave them with a bit of water until they are very soft, but they go great in eggs or pasta. Frozen veggies, like broccoli, cauliflower and green beans go well in stir-fry. Frozen peas go well in curry or other saucy dishes. Basically, we buy a bunch of healthy stuff and a couple of jars of sauce for flavor, which lets us cook a lot of tasty meals fairly easily. For carbs, couscous and quinoa are both healthy and quick to make, and they go well with lots of sauces.

If you like to bake, then squash, sweet potatoes and brussels sproutsare all things that bake well with just some olive oil, pepper and salt.

For snacks:
frozen peas
frozen blueberries
frozen green beans (the dog loves these)
bell peppers and hummus
light cheese
cucumber slices (with hummus, if you like hummus a lot)

Quinoa and couscous are some of the most bland tasting dishes I've ever had.

If you're quite skinny/normal and have no specific objectives, I don't thing you have much to worry about.

Eat sensible portion, and get a sensible amount of physical activity.

 Cheesecat wrote:
Do you guys have any meal recipe ideas?

Sure...

http://thefitnessrecipes.com/

Overall, a balanced diet is key as other posters have pointed out.

Having said that I find that the simple, light stuff that's relatively easy to make is often the best since you don't need to worry about additives, etc.

For example, congee or black sesame porridge is a pretty good way to start off your day.

Stir frying veggies is also pretty good so long as you go easy on the canola/olive oil and salt. Stir fried bak choi (baby or otherwise) and choi sum are tasty, crunchy veggies that I find is a better alternative than eating raw veggies like salads. Putting in some garlic is a good way to add flavour. They also hold up better to being boiled compared to things like asparagus.

Maybe invest in a decent green supplement and some fish oil caps. That, plus regular exercise, keeps me healthy. I hardly ever get sick these days.

 Albatross wrote:
Maybe invest in a decent green supplement and some fish oil caps. That, plus regular exercise, keeps me healthy. I hardly ever get sick these days.

You only need suppliments if your diet consists of nothing but tinned food or you have a specific nutritional requiement (most people don't). For the average person they are a complete waste of money.

Eat healthiily, i.e a balanced diet, and you will have all the nutrients that you require.

I see it as more of an insurance policy, and really, how many people actually get 5-9 portions of fruit and vegetables a day? Few, I'd wager. At least this way I'm definitely covered.