My cheap, easy, filling 1200 cal/day vegetarian diet!
KeeperOfCorvus
Posts: 15 Member
I'd like to share my super low calorie, cheap, yet very filling daily diet. My main food is ramen. I know! It sounds terrible! But the ramen I eat is not the typical American grocery find. I buy boxes (30 packets each) directly from an Asian market for 10$. Real Asian ramen can come with rice noodles, in duck flavor, with dehydrated veggies and always has several seasoning packets: dry seasoning, dehydrated veggie seasoning, and an oil/fat packet. I add lots of veggies to it, like spinach, green onion, fresh ginger, mushroom etc. It's a great soup base at 250 calories. I add lots of extra water to thin it out. Super filling!
Breakfast: big fruit bowl, lots of hot herbal teas
Lunch: Asian ramen with raw veggies
Snack: Apple and powerbar (for protein)
Dinner: one or two bowls of veggie and ramen
Snack: stove top popcorn with firukake seasoning and some salt.
(About 1200 calories)
I found that the suggested protein for women is 45+grams of protein per day. My meal plan here offers 20-25 grams. If you are vegetarian, you may want to add additional protein and/or supplements.
Anytime time I'm hungry outside of that, I eat more apples and more hot tea. I drink tea all day. I also eat pickles anytime (0 cal) and side salads with homemade dressings anytime. My dressing is vinegar, squeezed lemon/lime, a little olive oil and a little seasoning.
I'm never hungry, outside of battling my sweet tooth.
Try finding filling foods that are low in calorie!
Hope this helps ♡
Breakfast: big fruit bowl, lots of hot herbal teas
Lunch: Asian ramen with raw veggies
Snack: Apple and powerbar (for protein)
Dinner: one or two bowls of veggie and ramen
Snack: stove top popcorn with firukake seasoning and some salt.
(About 1200 calories)
I found that the suggested protein for women is 45+grams of protein per day. My meal plan here offers 20-25 grams. If you are vegetarian, you may want to add additional protein and/or supplements.
Anytime time I'm hungry outside of that, I eat more apples and more hot tea. I drink tea all day. I also eat pickles anytime (0 cal) and side salads with homemade dressings anytime. My dressing is vinegar, squeezed lemon/lime, a little olive oil and a little seasoning.
I'm never hungry, outside of battling my sweet tooth.
Try finding filling foods that are low in calorie!
Hope this helps ♡
2
Replies
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Cool. Do you log your food, and how much protein does this tend to add up to?3
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Now I'm hungry for ramen, lol. I LOVE rice noodles so I'll have to check this out.1
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Janei, I get about 20-25 grams of protein a day. The power bar has 8 grams and each ramen packet has about 5 grams. Vegetables and nuts also contain some protein.
I log all my foods. Although im new to this site, so I'm still trying to figure out how to maneuver it well
: )0 -
Isnt that really low for protein?18
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Andrea, it is SO YUM! That my main hot food. A box will last me over a week and a half for 10 bux! I just add fresh veggies to it. It's my poor-folk, dirt cheap daily meal plan. Lol7
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Ktekc, it may be... I'm not sure how much I'm supposed to get. I've been vegetarian, eating low amounts of protein for years, but I've never felt the difference, so I never thought to look at the required amount.0
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This is a bad idea. You need to get more protein; you are putting yourself at risk of major medical conditions and death from protein deficiency. I'm sure you'd feel okay in the short-term (a couple of years at sub-minimal levels is probably not quite enough to show major deficiency symptoms), but protein at minimum levels is absolutely required for life. I encourage you to do research on how much you need for your age, height, weight, etc.
You might try adding in some tofu chunks to the ramen, eating your apples with peanut butter, having your veggies with hummus, eating things like black beans and rice (which provides all nine essential amino acids) - these are all great sources of vegetarian protein, and won't add much to your calorie count, especially if you swap out, say, one of the apples for a bunch of veggies and hummus.22 -
Doesn't that put your sodium levels through the roof???10
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Unless you're exceptionally tiny, 25g of protein isn't enough. The RDA is .36g of protein per pound of body weight. Eating so little protein while also maintaining a calorie deficit means you're likely losing a lot of lean muscle mass. You need to incorporate more protein (probably about twice as much as you're currently getting) into your diet.6
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How many carbs in the Asian Ramen0
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This does not sound healthy. Way too much sodium and not nearly enough protein or other nutrients.0
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goatsoapgirl wrote: »How many carbs in the Asian Ramen
Vegetarians typically eat high(er) carb. The bigger issue is lack of protein.
Protein sources........
Seitan
Tofu, Tempeh and Edamame
Lentils
Chickpeas and Most Varieties of Beans
Nutritional Yeast
Spelt and Teff
Hempseed
Green Peas
Spirulina
Quiona
If you're not a lacto-ovo vegetarian .....dairy and eggs4 -
Pickles have no calories??0
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Need2Exerc1se wrote: »Pickles have no calories??
close to it. Less than 5 calories per pickle usually.4 -
rainbowbow wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »Pickles have no calories??
close to it. Less than 5 calories per pickle usually.
Kind of like a cucumber?
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CafeRacer808 wrote: »Unless you're exceptionally tiny, 25g of protein isn't enough. The RDA is .36g of protein per pound of body weight. Eating so little protein while also maintaining a calorie deficit means you're likely losing a lot of lean muscle mass. You need to incorporate more protein (probably about twice as much as you're currently getting) into your diet.
This isn't necessarily true.-1 -
It may be cheap and filling, but it in no way is healthy. Way too much sodium, almost no protein, you're going to end up with a lot of health problems.1
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Need2Exerc1se wrote: »CafeRacer808 wrote: »Unless you're exceptionally tiny, 25g of protein isn't enough. The RDA is .36g of protein per pound of body weight. Eating so little protein while also maintaining a calorie deficit means you're likely losing a lot of lean muscle mass. You need to incorporate more protein (probably about twice as much as you're currently getting) into your diet.
This isn't necessarily true.
As with most things related to nutrition, individual needs vary from one person to the next so yes, I agree that it's not necessarily true in all cases. That being said, it seemed to me that OP wasn't aware of either the RDA or the reason why it's important get adequate protein in her diet. I thus felt providing some context on the importance of protein, even if it may not be 100% true in her specific situation, would be useful.7 -
Ah-ramen. Reminds me of that kid in our dorm building that got scurvy when I was at university. Yes- some dude actually managed to malnourish himself enough to get scurvy.. we pretty much figured he must have been subsisting entirely on ramen and foregoing the free pizza at events (that other impoverished students usually jumped on).
At least add some beans (and a multivitamin). You are also most likely consuming a huge amount of sodium too (even when diluted extra).2 -
You might explore cheap foods like dry lentils and dry beans. Even more filling than noodles IMO.
You can cook a big batch and freeze in individual portions for later use.
Beans or lentils and rice are a staple food of many cultures.
6 -
I actually googled to find out how duck-flavored anything is vegetarian. I've been poorer than I am now and spent a few years surviving on student food, but I've never been poor enough to eat anything that includes "artificial duck flavor."9
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You eat this every. Single. Day? Sodium isn't a big deal if you have no health conditions that mean you should watch it so that's not a concern to me.
The lack of protein however, is worrying.3 -
I actually googled to find out how duck-flavored anything is vegetarian. I've been poorer than I am now and spent a few years surviving on student food, but I've never been poor enough to eat anything that includes "artificial duck flavor."
Your Asian grocery usually has lots of odd flavored ramen packets and bowls1 -
And are you going to eat this for the rest of your life?3
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I actually googled to find out how duck-flavored anything is vegetarian. I've been poorer than I am now and spent a few years surviving on student food, but I've never been poor enough to eat anything that includes "artificial duck flavor."
Your Asian grocery usually has lots of odd flavored ramen packets and bowls
Duck itself isn't an odd flavor, but it IS odd to see someone recommend duck-flavored ramen as part of a vegetarian meal plan.12 -
I actually googled to find out how duck-flavored anything is vegetarian. I've been poorer than I am now and spent a few years surviving on student food, but I've never been poor enough to eat anything that includes "artificial duck flavor."
Your Asian grocery usually has lots of odd flavored ramen packets and bowls
Duck itself isn't an odd flavor, but it IS odd to see someone recommend duck-flavored ramen as part of a vegetarian meal plan.
Often it's an ethical choice over a "yuck I don't like how meat tastes" choice. Hence the plethora of meat-like replacement products. So it's not weird at all really.
We have a product called Pot Noodle here in the UK, my mind was blown when I discovered I could eat the meat varieties (or at least some of them, it's quite a number of years since I had one!) because they didn't actually contain any animal products.
I'm no longer vegetarian, bacon lured me back.6 -
Add in chick peas, lentils to your noodles.
Snack on cottage cheese to add both protein and calcium.
Fat seems too low also, maybe add a few hard boiled eggs chopped up or cashew nuts?2 -
VintageFeline wrote: »I actually googled to find out how duck-flavored anything is vegetarian. I've been poorer than I am now and spent a few years surviving on student food, but I've never been poor enough to eat anything that includes "artificial duck flavor."
Your Asian grocery usually has lots of odd flavored ramen packets and bowls
Duck itself isn't an odd flavor, but it IS odd to see someone recommend duck-flavored ramen as part of a vegetarian meal plan.
Often it's an ethical choice over a "yuck I don't like how meat tastes" choice. Hence the plethora of meat-like replacement products. So it's not weird at all really.
We have a product called Pot Noodle here in the UK, my mind was blown when I discovered I could eat the meat varieties (or at least some of them, it's quite a number of years since I had one!) because they didn't actually contain any animal products.
I'm no longer vegetarian, bacon lured me back.
Seeing products labeled as meat-flavored (without also having a label that clearly identifies the product as vegetarian) might be a regional thing; it's not common where I live. I'm a vegetarian for ethical reasons and I wouldn't even think to pick up a duck-flavored product unless it was clearly labeled with something like "Soy," "Meatless" or "Vegetarian," because I would assume that the fact that it mentions meat in the product name means that I can't eat it. I'm pretty comfortable with that assumption, even if it means missing out on artificial duck-flavored ramen
3 -
Your target of 45g+ protein is, IMO, low and your failing to even hit that.
5
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