Nutrition and diet

Steve25k

I though we could have a thread about nutrition and diet.

Mine has been pretty shocking recently. My wife signed up to "hello fresh" some months ago. Basically a box of ingredients and recipes turns up and you just cook it. It takes the stress out of working out what to cook when we're both busy working, and it's been brilliant during lockdown.

The problem is, there's never enough veg and almost everything is fried on some way.

So this week is our last week and we'll be back to cooking meals from scratch. Luckily we have a good collection of hello fresh recipes that we can adapt.

saltysparkle

I am hoping to get my family's meals into a bit of a rotation. The goal is to streamline our shopping, food-prep, and meal decision process so that we are eating healthier meals more frequently, with less angst, instead of defaulting to what's easy, or what's most appealing when we're hungry.

Basically, we do great with breakfast in that we each have something that works for us. Lunch is a little iffy and I'd like to identify some healthy go-to options for that as well, but dinner is where we are most likely to fall down, so that's what I'm focusing on for now.

I'm currently trying to identify 7-10 yummy vegetarian dinner options that we can rotate through. I want them to be meals the three of us like at least a 7 on a scale of 1-10, 10 being we all love it. The five I have so far are:

Chili
Burritos
Chinese-style stir fry
Japanese-style stir fry
Avocado-black bean-quinoa bowl

If any of you have any crowd-pleasing vegetarian meals, I'm all ears. Bonus points if they are one-pot meals or casseroles I can assemble ahead of time!

projectmefitmom

I lack in the cooking department because I have such a picky family!!! Any help would be greatly appreciated

saltysparkle

@projectmefitmom, are there any meals you all already agree on?

Steve25k

I'm back in England now after a trip to France to see the family. The government say I now have to quarantine for 14 days which means I can't leave my house. I ordered a delivery of groceries.
While in France we had the main meal of the day at lunchtime and then a light salad in the evening.

I'm going to try and continue that now I'm back at home as it worked well for me, lost about 5lbs while on holiday for 16 days.

Anyone else have their main meal of the day at lunchtime?

Steve25k

I'm struggling a bit with food at the moment. I've cut back on carbs and I've been making sure I have a large meat + veg lunch, however we're in stupid quarantine which means we can't leave the house so we're eating through things in the cupboard before our grocery delivery arrives tomorrow.

Yesterday's meals were some packet noodles from Korea, a frozen breaded fish and baked potato, some frozen veg, then some pitta bread and humus - so pretty much all carbs!

Hopefully once the delivery arrives tomorrow I'll be back on track.

Hope you're all doing better with your nutrition.
Steve

saltysparkle

I am trying to re-work how I eat to support my increased exercise. I've had some days when my new, added workouts have left me feeling muscle-weak and shaking and feeling like I might pass out. Looking at my macros, I think maybe I need more protein. It's typically less than 25% of my caloric intake. But I've been trying to up it for a week or so, without much success.

So, I'm on the hunt for more recipes I like that are high in protein, and preferably vegetarian or vegan. And I'm trying new veggie-based side-dishes, to try to keep the calories down.

Steve25k

I make little breakfast muffins of chopped veg, beaten egg and cottage cheese mixed up and out in a muffin tin, then baked for 15 mins. I find then quite a good protein filled snack.

I've been reading a lot about fat and carbs recently. I naturally pick fat free food without thinking, but now I realise that's a mistake. I need good fats to help me feel full and to reduce the carbs I eat. So I've recently switched back to full fat versions of yoghurt, cheese etc and replaced bread, pasta with more veg and I've switched from veg oil to coconut oil etc.

Feeling pretty good so far, I just to stick with it when quarantine ends. I need to stay out of shops that have fresh bakeries as that's a slippery slope for me.

saltysparkle

Yes. I'm Italian-American, so pasta and bread have been my life. Shifting away from them is hard. I don't have the self-control to just eat small portions of pasta. Bread...switching to whole grain has helped. I don't love it as much, so I don't binge on it.

I like your breakfast muffin idea @Steve25k . Maybe I will try that after my next shopping trip!