A REAL look at a persons food?

Well, I don't have children but other than that I can tell you this of myself.

1) I rarely mealprep - I do cook in bulk sometimes but nothing more than that.
2) I'm a full-time student who is currently on sick-leave and doing full-time therapy instead. So either way, full time occupation.
3) Other than my occupation I do try to work out whenever I can and feel like it, but those two things don't always line up.

And you know what? No one has to rely on fast food, like ever. It's not cheaper in the long run, nor is it faster really. Just add up all the time from when you get up from your couch, get ready, go to the car, drive the car, wait for your food, drive back, get back inside and sit down to eat - and you'll see that in that time someone else have already cooked an entire homemade meal for themselves.

My general day looks like this:

Breakfast: Oatmeal with banana and cacao, splash of milk.
AM snack: Banana or yoghurt, sometimes both.
Lunch:

• Some type of carb (usually potato, potato gratin, potato salad or pasta)
• Some type of meat(sub) (meatballs, soy skewer (those are pre-packaged), salmon, chicken)
• Some type of side salad (Regular salad (lettuce, tomato, cucumber), oven-cooked root vegetables)
• Sometimes a sauce/dressing, but usually not.

PM snack: Banan or yoghurt, sometimes both.
Dinner: Same as lunch pretty much.

If you don't find you have the energy to cook everyday, I really can't stress enough how helpful it is to sit down once a week and plan. Surely you can spend time once a week, to do something that could change your life forever? You don't even really have to mealprep if you don't want to, just having a plan helps loads too when trying to get it under control.

sf8813 wrote: »

I've been doing my thing for about 3 months, lost 10lbs so far. I just want to know a REAL persons diet. Not this salmon, kale, quinoa stuff. I'm talking someone like me who has a full time job, a household and children. Someone who doesn't have the time or energy to plan and prep every meal who has to rely on frozen, pre-prepped or even fast food sometimes. What are your meals like?

I am a REAL person.

I eat salmon quite a bit - is easy to cook - I buy pre cu t pieces when I do my weekly grocery shopping and then just put in oven to cook.

I dont eat kale or quinoa - not because of anything except they arent foods I like much.

My children are grown up but I do have a household and I work almost full time - that doesnt stop me cooking meals at home.

Although I do eat some fast food and frozen, pre prepped things too. It doesnt have to be totally one or the other.

If you think you dont have time or energy to cook meals, then dont. Or do it sometimes and have easy alternatives other times. Or batch up on weekends.
Or whatever suits you.

I think you will find people on MFP have a variety of combinations of the above.

What's wrong with kale or quinoa? They're both long-shelf life, cost friendly, nutritious and easy/quick to prepare...

Lots of people have full time jobs, kids and households but make the time and energy to plan and prep meals, there is a part here where you have to accept you're making a choice. Can you make meal prep a game with your kids? Can you do one giant set of batch cooking on a Sunday? Do you have a partner who can assist?

Frozen isn't always bad. The pre-chopped veg packs are extremely handy and can help eliminate food waste, as well as ready and available for you to use when you're pushed for time.

I get back from the gym late so always want an extremely nutritious quick meal so I don't end up eating at like 22:00. There are hundreds of "30 minute meals" or "15 minute meals" recipes for every taste, cooking from scratch, that you can find if you just spend ten minutes on google. Make double quantity and you have left overs to cover other meals / when you don't have the time.

My quick meals: (under 30 mins)
Chickpea curry, lentil dahl, stir fries of various types, enchiladas/fajitas/tacos, Thai curry, loaded sweet potatoes, spaghetti/pasta with various sauces and proteins, satay noodles, fried rice, Tuscan bean and sausage stew, chilli and quinoa/rice, 'brunch' - so sausage, beans, scramble, spinach etc.

I ordered a pizza on Friday night and had pizza for dinner on Friday, cold pizza for breakfast on Saturday and the rest of the pizza heated for lunch on Saturday

Hey, it was free HBO weekend, I had to catch up on a show I'm too cheap to pay for.

Sometimes I meal prep and eat lovely pre-prepped meals that could go on Instagram. Other times I eat Lean Cuisines for lunch all week. I have fast food once or twice a week. I make a killer slow-cooker chili, but when I don't I like several varieties of Campbell's Chunky soups.

I actually like salmon, and when kale is super cheap here in the winter I'll slice it and saute the crap out of it in a little garlic and oil and it's not half bad. Quinoa is a little expensive in my area, so I stick to Uncle Ben's rice and Trader Joe's 15 Minute Barley.

I have a full time job, a household and three children. I know you may think you don't have the time to plan and prep, but you find if you try it for a while it actually SAVES you countless hours. Not to mention the stress of trying to figure out what you are going to eat/cook. Sit down in the evening while watching TV or something and come up with a weekly meal plan. To make it simple, plan on the same thing for breakfast, lunch and snacks for the week. Get some variety with dinner. I like to cook breakfast, lunch and prep snacks for the week on Sunday. It just takes an hour or two. I cook dinner each night, but because I know what it is going to be and I already have all the ingredients it usually only takes 15-30min. Especially if you keep it simple with a protein/carb/veggie. PRE-LOG into MFP.

I do use pre-packaged meals. This week I grabbed some chicken and mushroom stir fry from Trader Joes to eat with fried rice (for the fam) and cauliflower fried rice (for me), also from TJ. Takes about 5-10min to cook. Another 5-10min meal is grilled/sauteed shrimp with steam in the bag broccoli and a microwavable pouch of minute wild rice.

MelanieCN77 wrote: »

pinuplove wrote: »

MelanieCN77 wrote: »

I can't get past the "real" thing, it's so dismissive and rude. One or two person households are just pretending life? People who eat kale are pulling a fast one on the world?

I prep off and on but in between I cook "from scratch" in a way that keeps my labour to less than 30 minutes per meal, 15 or less is preferable and totally doable AND my diet features thing like kale and brown rice and fish. it takes longer, it's hands off using the IP or a slow cooker. Are you all so over-scheduled that you really can't manage that or do you actually prefer the taste and convenience of the other food you mention and want a justification? Because you don't need anyone's approval, it's not just one or the other, eat a varied diet and enjoy it all.

While her wording was less than ideal, I understood what the OP was driving at. Sometimes it's nice to see examples from people whose diaries don't look like an art exhibit. Sort of like it's nice to see other people's houses with clutter and a few dirty dishes and laundry all over the couch

There's possibly an availability issue. OP is - in my opinion - illustrating this idea that there are some foods we should be ashamed to have in our diaries, and the people that eat like that AND internalize this silly idea won't be sharing their diaries as much.

When I was logging, I eventually closed my diary because I found with it open I spent way too much mental time and energy making sure it looked good, lest I be judged. Not saying that's anyone's problem but my own (realistically I know folks aren't lining up to read my food diary and pass judgement), just that there may be some merit to that line of thinking.

I think I probably fit the bill of the type of person you're looking for, but before we go into what I eat, I guess I have to ask why you felt compelled to word your original post the way you did. Do you feel pressured to eat a certain way, is someone telling you that you have to eat "clean" (whatever that means) in order to be successful? Did someone make a comment when you shared that you eat fast food or use convenience foods like "oh sure you can lose weight doing that but to be healthy you should cook every meal from scratch, and it really doesn't take that much extra time to do so"? Because I've seen those sorts of posts off and on, here and elsewhere, and yes, it often causes me to bristle as if my choices are somehow inconsistent with wanting to have a healthy diet for myself and my family. But yeah, suggesting that people who do cook meals at home and limit some of those other things are less "REAL" than you, or that their lives aren't as busy as yours, is basically taking the pendulum too far in the other direction. Most people on here have busy lives, careers, families (nuclear and extended), social commitments, etc. Some have even bigger challenges dealing with caregiving for ailing family members, managing their own medical conditions, etc. To suggest that what a person chooses to eat and whether they cook for themselves or rely on convenience somehow makes a person less "REAL" can be quite offputting.

Anyway - I think my diary is open but I eat a mix of things that work for my life and that varies significantly from week to week. I have a busy job that requires me to be on conference calls often at 6am and meetings can carry through till early evening, I often rush out of the office just in time to get my kids from after care to take them to one activity or another, get them fed and manage evening commitments and often don't eat myself until 8 or 9pm, often when I'm logging back in to get more work done. I also travel for work for a week or so every month which makes the balancing act even more frenetic.

I enjoy cooking and sometimes I cook from scratch, sometimes I purchase and use convenient ingredients to help me prepare quick meals at home (like bagged frozen veggies or veggie/rice blends), sometimes I rely true convenience meals like frozen breakfast bowls or frozen lunches, and yes even fast food, fast casual food, all the way up to fine dining food on occasion. I also do some meal prepping and bulk cooking when I have time and gumption to do so.

This weekend I was home and ate at a mexican restaurant Friday night, we had PB toast before baseball games Saturday, lunch from the drive through before more baseball games, a much overdue trip to the grocery store to stock up on the essentials since I had been traveling for 2 weeks straight, and then I was able to make lemon chicken asparagus risotto from scratch that night. Sunday I made biscuits and gravy for breakfast (using a packaged gravy mix and purchased pre-cooked sausage crumbles), leftovers for lunch, and then roast chicken, mashed potatoes and roast carrots for dinner (also from scratch). There will be leftovers of the risotto and the roast chicken for lunches this week. But breakfasts will likely be greek yogurt, berries and granola or prepurchased breakfast sandwiches. Dinners will be quick skillet meals, paninis, breakfast for dinner, or instant pot/crock pot since we have activities every night.


I'm always game to see what other people are eating, to get ideas and inspiration for meal planning which I know the value of but don't always prioritize - so thanks for starting the thread nonetheless and good luck with your continued success.