Anyone with deployment experience?

thepaul35
thepaul35 Posts: 1 Member
edited December 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
So I’m deployed and relying on army cooks as my food intake. In a few months I’m home. But trying to put the finishing touches on my stomach, I want abs now. But I’m so limited on clean eating here. I’m on a outpost and the only fruit veggies I see is either from a can or fresh bananas. Our usual food is 1 protein mashed potatoes, green beans or corn. And cereals. Milk and high sugar fruit juices. Packets of peanut butter. Question is should just eat everything or should I just eat the protein portion with some peanut butter and the canned vegetables.

Replies

  • HeidiCooksSupper
    HeidiCooksSupper Posts: 3,836 Member
    edited June 2020
    The calories the army supplies are somewhat dependent on their expectation of your calorie needs. Their assumption can be really problematic for someone with a sedentary army job like translating who is being supplied with 4000+ calorie combat MREs (happened to a friend of mine -- he ballooned).

    You should make sure you eat enough calories to fuel your body effectively. You may not be able to do anything approaching clean eating with the army limiting the selection. Your body needs vegetables. Often canned vegetables, disgusting as they may taste, have almost as many nutrients as fresh. You can't just stop eating them and maintain health. If I were to skip anything, it would be the high sugar fruit juices IF you don't need them for the energy needed to complete your assigned tasks. With any cereal choices, try to aim toward whole grains.

    "Clean eating" is something with no one definition and even coming close to whatever definition you are using may be hard while deployed. I would put it out of your mind for the time being and work on developing a healthy way of eating while limited to the army's choices. The army thinks of food as fuel for the troops. I'm afraid you'll be limited to the same.

    For good descriptions of what to eat to be healthy go to https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/
  • spr931
    spr931 Posts: 61 Member
    I Deployed to Iraq twice. I had that lovely only MRE diet for the first 4 months of my 2003 trip over there. I got so sick of them. I lost weight on both trips. Even with my second trip over in 2007 not eating as many Mres and more at the chow hall. but then I had access to a gym and they had us doing PT every day.
    My 1st trip we did structured PT like twice the whole year. But I was more active on that trip and didnt have AC so drank sooo much water.
    So yeah I had no weight gain at all eating the army diet.
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